What really sparked the connection was my involvement in this past Tuesday's protest at the JPMorgan Chase recruiting event. Our goal, well my goal, was to speak to not only Chase for its morally unjust practices, not only the school for inviting in such a toxic company, but also my fellow students, to get them to maybe examine their own morals before seeking just any job offer. And although I don't appreciate everything that happened during that protest, the next few days made me think I had really voiced my message.
But then the dissent came. The old-hat arguments of "get a job", "these students worked too hard for this", etc., which made me think the people I'd been trying to reach weren't listening. Either that or worse, I never really "spoke" like I thought I did. Like Bhaduri, whose suicide was muted, I often feel like the occupiers are putting effort into a silenced cause, like my roommates were arrested and are facing an academic hearing in vain.
America is most definitely creating a more and more imbalanced hegemony, creating a larger group of "Others" (the 99% if you will), silencing these American subalterns into repression. Can the American non-elites speak? Or is it more that, because of a perverted capitalistic terminology, most business oriented and powerful individual refuse or are unable to listen?
"Capitalism has been transformed into imperialism" (809).
True dat.
I've been quite interested in the Occupy Wall Street and related movements since we read Spivak. It seems to me almost like the protesters, when they say, "We are the 99%," are saying, "we are the other," or "we are the subaltern." This is an interesting re/presentation quandary. I'm not sure that claiming subalternity is in line with Spivak's theory, though, since key to her theory is being silenced and/or misread.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think that the protesters are claiming to be the "other" while simultaneously "otherizing" the not-99%. What interests me in particular is the representation of this movement of a highly diverse (claimed) 99%. Perhaps this movement is a good example of non-essentializing representation. People who claim to be part of the 99% are represented by the movement and simultaneously represent the movement. Yet, a diversity of experiences within the movement is expected. Usually it is people outside of the movement who essentialize the movement (as evidenced by the “get a job” type epithets). However, I am wondering, does the Occupy movement essentialize the "1%"?
This is quite an intriguing connection you have made here with the possible voicelessness of the of Occupy movement. I honestly have to agree with you when you mention that the statement that you think that you are making is being misinterpreted by everyone on the outside of the movement looking in. I honestly don't really know what the movement is truly trying to say, because every time I attempt to discuss it with one of my friends, I get a response like, "Its just a bunch of hippies complaining because they feel like they shouldn't have to work for money." I think that it is that image that people see first that gives of an initial message that the occupy people probably are not trying to send. People look at the tents and hear the bongo drums being played, and that alone has a voice first and foremost. I am not trying to sound like I am against the movement because I don't know enough about to have much of an opinion, but I do think that in terms of what Spivak talks about, how you are portrayed adds to your voice as well.
ReplyDeleteQuintin, this is a fascinating thread and I couldn't help but jump in. (Mysteriously, my first long comment disappeared, so I'll try to comment briefly this time.)
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I struggle to extend "subaltern" in this way. For Spivak, the term wasn't used merely to describe the condition of not behind heard, not having a voice, or not being understood. It really was a term that had been contextualized in colonized spaces, rather than in movements that emerged from free-speech/free-press cultures. (Although, some cultural critics have been extending "subaltern" to American culture in various ways.)
But more importantly, whenever the term is used, it tends to be used to describe the condition of having forgotten or obscured the mechanisms of the oppression (or the imperialization).
In other words, if Bhaduri's grand-niece now works for a global financial market that represents the same kind of imperalist goal that Bhaduri tried to protest by ending her life, then that might explain why Spivak first said that Bhaduri "could not speak." The gesture of Bhaduri's suicide is still there and visible and memorable and spoke loudly and clearly, so that action was not lost. But the mechanisms underlying the oppression are alive and well in the the way that the grand-niece misremembers, and moreover, they are not seen.
But here's the question that your post really sparks for me: By what conditions or criteria do we label someone/thing as "other"? Today, is our ultimate other--the one who guides our self construction in literary texts--the white male? The black female? The Asian? Someone else?
What determines who/what is the "other" in shifting cultural and textual milieux? Is it race? Gender? Class? Ecology? Is is the same in literary representations of culture as it is in cultural representations of literature?
No definitive answer, in this case, only some questions.
-Prof. Graban