Readings

Beautiful Book

The book is deeply complex in terms of her approach to learning and working with theory, yet conversational and dynamic in its tone. No easy answers, but an exhortation to suspend oneself in the act of reading in order to be woven into the fabric of the text. The question and answer sections are particularly rich.

Generous, honest and a practical exposition of the ethics of reading in an unequal world. In a series of lucid essays that are talks and seminar responses to a graduate class at the University of Pune, India, Spivak argues with passion and an immense rhetorical and theoretical knowledge (her facility in moving into German, French and Bengali is a pleasure to witness) for English Literature students to use their education in working for a more equitable world. Her introduction is a stand-alone manifesto for Literature studies.The rest of the book is a sustained study in how to enter the protocols of the text -- there is no single, abstract, universalizable method. "How does one read? One inserts oneself inside the text of the other, not as her/himself..."(p.31) -- once in the text, Spivak takes the reader along as she reads, say, Fanon reading Hegel (and Spivak reads Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit" at this juncture, pointing out that the version Fanon was reading was the Hyppolite translation from classical German to a "post-Existentialist" French). As Spivak points out, "All texts are transactional, and they teach you how to read, not just the text but also the world' (p.51). This essay alone is worth buying the book; I usually find that Spivak's footnotes alone are what the Tamils call "Tiger's milk" -- precious, rare and come out of a sustained effort not to be duplicated by others.The answers to questions and comments raised in the seminar appear at the end of each chapter, further clarifying the argument.A word of warning -- Spivak's expository style is not what the Aristotelians would call hypotaxis: where a single idea is hammered out in a linear, easy to follow step-by-step fashion. She instead in a single paragraph moves from Coetzee to Mahasweta Devi, and confidently takes you along with her. You will also be laughing with her at her wry asides.