Gayatri Spivak says student did not identify as Dalit

New Delhi: Amid the controversy that erupted during her speech at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), researcher Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak said she did not stop the student with whom she had an altercation from asking question, and pointed out that the student had not identified himself as a Dalit.

Talk to The Hindu, she said, “Anshul Kumar had not identified himself as a Dalit. Therefore, I thought he was a Brahmin, since he said he was the founder of an institute of Brahmin studies. I didn't stop Kumar from asking his question. He still mispronounced Du Bois' name and began to speak to me in a very rude manner. As an old teacher confronted with a student, and especially since I had not been informed that he was Dalit, my hurt remark that I did not want to hear his question was a gesture of protest.

She said the audience at the conference “for some reason” was not pronouncing Du Bois' name correctly, which is the Haitian way. “Since Du Bois himself was a black ‘Dalit’, I would like to suggest that the correct pronunciation be learned,” she added.

Calling it an “extremely enlightening experience” for her, Spivak said: “That this kind of public misunderstanding and defamation can be undertaken in contemporary India is deeply troubling for someone like me and others . »

Videos from the May 21 conference that went viral show Spivak interrupting Anshul Kumar as he asked his question, insisting that he pronounce Du Bois's question correctly. The 28-year-old student, who studies at JNU's Center for Social Sciences Studies, asked Spivak how she could position herself as a middle class person.

Kumar had sought to ask during the question-and-answer session: “Spivak claims to be middle class. She stated in her lecture that Du Bois belonged to an upper-class elite. How is she, as the great-granddaughter of Bihari Lal Bhaduri, a close friend of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, supposed to be middle class?

In response, Spivak said the question had nothing to do with the theme of the talk – “WEB Du Bois's Vision of Democracy.” “And I am not the great-granddaughter of Bihari Lal Bhaduri. I believe it was him (I can't be sure) who asked my real great-grandfather (at the time a hired cook in a bourgeois family) to marry a widow.

She continued: “By the way, I didn't say that Du Bois was a member of the upper-class elite. The only thing I said was that he was not enslaved and that he apologized for not having had the experience of slavery.

Responding to the controversy, Spivak in the interview with The Hindu clarified that she was not correcting Kumar's accent, but asking more people in the audience to pronounce Du Bois' name correctly. “It’s because the French had colonized Haiti. Du Bois's father was Haitian. From all the documentation I have consulted, I believe that the term “Haitian” was understood as “English”,” she said.

Meanwhile, Kumar, for his part, used quotes from Du Bois's works to argue against the rejection of subaltern voices due to the demands of “syntactic obedience.” Many scholars have also weighed in on the controversy, questioning whether subaltern voices are heard when they speak out – citing one of Spivak's most widely read essays, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”

Also read: The Gayatri Spivak controversy concerns the implosion of “subalternity” in public discourse

Spivak said: “Subaltern and Dalit are not interchangeable words. The upwardly mobile Dalit in the classroom – and the academy is an instrument of upward mobility – should certainly use his new privilege to work for the entire Dalit community, especially the subaltern Dalits, who do not get into the universities of elite.

When asked if an individual stops being a subaltern when they enter elite academic spaces, she replied, “Yes, they do, although they certainly don't stop being subaltern.” being people of Dalit origin, who should use their privilege to help subaltern Dalits. There is a kind of reverse casteism, somewhat frightened, among politically correct non-Dalits, which serious activists do not take advantage of.”

She explained: “Regarding subalternity: our sustained position has been that subalternity must be destroyed and made more generalizable as citizenship. I regret that Subaltern Studies, which is a historiographical enterprise, does not seem to recognize castes. For forty years, I have worked for subordinates, running primary schools, rather than studying them.