An Aesthetic Education in the Era of GlobalizationDuring the past twenty years, the worldÕs most renowned critical theoristÑthe scholar who defined the field of postcolonial studiesÑhas experienced a radical reorientation in her thinking. Finding the neat polarities of tradition and modernity, colonial and postcolonial, no longer sufficient for interpreting the globalized present, she turns elsewhere to make her central argument: that aesthetic education is the last available instrument for implementing global justice and democracy. SpivakÕs unwillingness to sacrifice the ethical in the name of the aesthetic, or to sacrifice the aesthetic in grappling with the political, makes her task formidable. As she wrestles with these fraught relationships, she rewrites Friedrich SchillerÕs concept of play as double bind, reading Gregory Bateson with Gramsci as she negotiates Immanuel Kant, while in dialogue with her teacher Paul de Man. Among the concerns Spivak addresses is this: Are we ready to forfeit the wealth of the worldÕs languages in the name of global communication? ÒEven a good globalization (the failed dream of socialism) requires the uniformity which the diversity of mother-tongues must challenge,Ó Spivak writes. ÒThe tower of Babel is our refuge.Ó In essays on theory, translation, Marxism, gender, and world literature, and on writers such as Assia Djebar, J. M. Coetzee, and Rabindranath Tagore, Spivak argues for the social urgency of the humanities and renews the case for literary studies, imprisoned in the corporate university. ÒPerhaps,Ó she writes, Òthe literary can still do something.Ó |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Chapter 1 The Burden of En glish | 35 |
Chapter 2 Who Claims Alterity? | 57 |
Chapter 3 How to Read a Culturally Different Book | 73 |
Chapter 4 The Double Bind Starts to Kick In | 97 |
Situating Feminism | 119 |
Chapter 6 Teaching for the Times | 137 |
Chapter 7 Acting BitsIdentity Talk | 158 |
Chapter 15 Ethics and Politics in Tagore Coetzee and Certain Scenes of Teaching | 316 |
Chapter 16 Imperative to Reimagine the Planet | 335 |
Chapter 17 Reading with Stuart Hall in Pure Literary Terms | 351 |
A Speech after 911 | 372 |
Chapter 19 Harlem | 399 |
Chapter 20 Scattered Speculations on the Subaltern and the Popular | 429 |
Chapter 21 World Systems and the Creole | 443 |
Chapter 22 The Stakes of a World Literature | 455 |
Chapter 8 Supplementing Marxism | 182 |
Chapter 9 Whats Left of Theory? | 191 |
Chapter 10 Echo | 218 |
Chapter 11 Translation as Culture | 241 |
Chapter 12 Translating into English | 256 |
Chapter 13 Nationalism and the Imagination | 275 |
Chapter 14 Resident Alien | 301 |
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An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak No preview available - 2012 |
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