Imagine you're a well-intentioned liberal academic who speaks out on injustices to "'subalterns"' (the economically dispossessed, the lowest of the low), especially those in other countries. Do you think you're actually helping these people out? Think again!
In this landmark essay, Spivak skewers the (possibly white, probably male) liberal academic who attempts to "'speak for"' the subaltern and argues that, in fact, the subaltern can't speak, at least not in a way that wouldn't reinstate colonialist values.
If, according to Spivak, "'the subaltern cannot speak"' for herself without drawing on the philosophies and language of the colonizer, then what can the subaltern do for herself? Does Spivak hint at any other solutions?
Why does Spivak end with the case of Bhuvaneswari Bhadhari, a woman who practiced sati (self-immolation) as—according to Spivak—a form of "'ad hoc, subaltern rewriting of the social text of sati-suicide"' (translation: as a form of political resistance)? What does she mean to suggest with Bhadhuri's story?