Spivak - The Labour of The Negative

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Interventions
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The labour of the negative

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivaka
a
Columbia University,
To cite this Article Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty(1999) 'The labour of the negative', Interventions, 1: 2, 268
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13698019900510361
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THE L A B O U R OF THE N E G A T I V E
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Columbia University
In the era of cyberpolitics and electronic Marxist economic analysis and ideology cri-
capitalism, the 'postcolonial' seems to me to tique (with respect to agency - institutionally
be residual. At the moment, is it anything validated action - and rational expectations)
Downloaded By: [SOAS Library] At: 21:52 30 April 2011
more than the name of an academic tendency? remain useful. We understand the Bolshevik
I may be a bit out of the loop. Non-Algerian Revolution, mutatis mutandis, as Marx under-
Maghrebis in Paris, curators in Graz, aca- stood 1848. A tremendous opening that, step
demic Americanists in Wiirzburg, were speak- by sequential step, served to consolidate the
ing postcolonialism two summers ago. You executive power of finance capital over a
mention the contributions of postcolonial seventy-year span, and then dissolved itself.
feminism. What are they exactly? A new Cultural specificities can run interference on
theme in the metropolitan novel? That is cer- the resultant uniformities, but postcolonialism
tainly a gain. About the production of theories has cut itself off from such specificities.
of third women's agency that would be incom- Is this just Gayatri being negative? Maybe
prehensible to both policymakers and the so. I have never been able to understand the
women themselves, I am less sure. imperative to ignore problems as impediments
When did we, as postcolonial critics, resist? to 'practice', whatever that abstraction might
And where shall we intervene? Farid Zakaria, mean. I have always just taught small and
an Indian diasporic who is the editor of large groups how to 'read', texts of word,
Foreign Affairs, said recently that the only thread, power, affect, thought, at both ends of
intervention the United States should practice the spectrum. When I used the word 'post-
is through foreign aid, what Ian Williams has colonial' in the 1980s, it came up in that con-
called The Alms Trade. In this field, I don't see nection. In the 1990s it tended to fade away.
how postcolonial theory as such can intervene Can a new journal called Interventions do
in Mr Zakaria's suggestion by turning crisis- anything? Yes. Form public opinion in a group
driven globalization around where strategy of unevenly consciencized intellectuals. With
would drive it. Certainly UN-based universal- fearless writing, with no foregone conclusions,
ist feminism, which could lay some claim to that takes the world as its topic. As for setting
the adjective 'postcolonialist', helps to keep it them to work, that is always beyond a
crisis-driven by endorsing existing models of iournal's bounds.
restructuring and development.
interventions Vol. 1(2) 268 (1369-801X)

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This article was downloaded by: [SOAS Library]

On: 30 April 2011

The labour of the negative

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

interventions Vol. 1(2) 268 (1369-801X)

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