EVENTS
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. "The Question of Subalternity"
01/12/2009 – 02/12/2009
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. The Question of Subalternity
1st and 2nd December // 17:00-20:30
The seminar and reading group has been co-organised by the Universidad de Murcia. Everyone who has enrolled and attended these sessions will be able to claim academic credits from the UMU.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak will lead a seminar at CENDEAC over two three-hour sessions on the 1st and 2nd December 2009. It will be a unique opportunity to engage deeply with Spivak’s thought, confronting one’s reading of some of her more influential texts with the author herself. Anyone interested in subaltern, postcolonial and feminist thought stand to benefit from such an encounter.
This seminar will discuss the history and usefulness of the elusive concept of the subaltern based on questions emerging from three texts by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak available in Spanish translation. The two sessions will be entitled: “The Subaltern: Use and Abuse” and “Women, Subalternity, and Strategic Essentialism”.
Biography
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, is University Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University and holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Toronto and London and Oberlin College.
She has published, Of Grammatology (translation with critical introduction of Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie, 1976); Thinking Academic Freedom in Gendered Post-Coloniality (1993); In Other Worlds (1987); Outside in the Teaching Machine (1993); A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999); Death of a Discipline (2003), Other Asias (2007). And the forthcoming An Aesthetic Education in an Age of Globalization. She has also translated from Bengali, Mahasweta Devi: Imaginary Maps (1994); Breast Stories (1997), Old Women (1999); Chotti Munda and His Arrow (2002) and Ramproshad Sen’s (eighteenth century Bengali mystic):Song for Kali (2000). The texts “Translation As Culture” (2005), “Translating into English” (2005), and “Rethinking Comparativism” (2009) reflect her concern for the task of the translator. “Righting Wrongs” (2001), and “Ethics and Politics in Tagore, Coetzee, and Certain Scenes of Teaching” (2004) give a sense of her dedication to supplementing vanguardism. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1983) has become a controversial classic.
Professor Spivak’s seminar will be based on discussions around three of her most influential essays. In order to make your experience of the seminar more fruitful and productive, CENDEAC invites you to take part in a Reading Group through which you might become familiar with these essays in order to prepare questions, contrast your readings with those of others and engage in discussions with the other members of the group. The reading group meetings will take place on Thursdays from 7:00 p.m. at the CENDEAC library, on the 12nd, 19th and 26th November.
Information and enrolment
Language of the Seminar: English with simultaneous translation into Spanish
CENDEAC is accessible for wheelchair users and people with diminished mobility. Whenever possible, we will strive to provide on request a transcript of papers for users with impaired hearing.
Auditorium Capacity: 140 people
Free entry to those who do not wish to receive an attendance certificate (paying users will be granted preferential entry if the auditorium reaches its full capacity).
In order to enrol and obtain a certificate of attendance, you need to:
- Attend all sessions of the course
- Fill in the enrolment form
- Pay the appropriate fee
Fee: 30 € professionals, 15€ students, unemployed and OAPs (proof of status will be required). Free for holders of a Friends of CENDEAC card.
In order to enrol online it is necessary to fill in the enrolment form and make a payment for the appropriate fee WITHIN TWO WEEKS OF ENROLMENT to CAJAMURCIA bank, Account Number 2043 0090 34 2000550928, specifying as a concept the name of the seminar and SENDING ONE COPY OF THE PAYMENT RECEIPT to CENDEAC (you can do this by email or fax in order to save time and avoid de-enrolment, however, if you are de-enrolled you will be enrolled again on receipt of your payment slip). Alternatively, you can enrol and pay your fee at the CENDEAC office (Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 4p.m. to 8 p.m.).
CENDEAC
Antiguo Cuartel de Artillería. Pabellón 5.
C/ Madre Elisea Oliver Molina, s/n
30002 - Murcia (España)
cendeac@cendeac.net