Spivak Quotes and Thoughts

Just some quotes and a few thoughts for this week from the Spivak chapter.

First, a baffling one: “The broad strokes of my presuppositions are that what is at stake, for feminist individualism in the age of imperialism, is precisely the making of human beings, the constitution and ‘interpellation’ of the subject not only as individual but also as ‘individualist.’ This stake is represented on two registers: childrearing and soul-making.” (116) I can see women’s role child-rearing as the making of individuals, but I don’t understand what women have to do with soul-making, which is far as I understand it, is a reference to the imperialist discourse of granting humanity to citizens and “savages.” Also, I have no idea what the term “individualist” is doing here.

Here is something that I took as a kind of thesis statement... sort of. “No perspective critical of imperialism can turn the other into a self, because the project of imperialism has always already historically refracted what might have been an incommensurable and discontinuous other into a domesticated other that consolidates the imperialist self.” (130) The second clause is what I take to be a thesis (beginning with “the project of imperialism...”), but I cannot figure out how this logically fits with negation in the first clause: “No perspective critical of imperialism.”

“But it is of course Victor Frankenstein, with his strange itinerary of obsession with natural philosophy, who offers the strongest demonstration that the multiple perspectives of the three-part Kantian subject cannot cooperate harmoniously if woman and native informant are allowed into the enclosure.” (136) This sounds very compelling, and I’m willing to believe that it is, but I do not see where the proof for this is. It doesn’t seem to be in the paragraph before, about the character Clerval in Frankenstein, nor in the sentences that follow, about the categorical and hypothetical imperatives.

This next one I have a little more to say about, from 138: “The sheer social reasonableness of the mundane voice of Shelley’s ‘Genevan magistrate’ reminds us that the radically other cannot be selfed, that the monster has ‘properties’ that will not be contained by ‘proper’ measures: ‘I will exert myself’ he says, ‘and if it is in my power to seize the monster, be assured that he shall suffer punishment proportionate to his crimes. But I fear... that this will be impracticable.’” This is interesting since it is not about the positive affirmation of a “wild” subject, but rather it is about the inability for the dominant system of law to adequately provide punishment. Still, the extension from man-made monster to man-made “subject” (the native, Caliban), seems fraught with trouble. For one, there is the obvious difference of a reanimated person and a discovered person, even if the discovered one is considered savage. Second of all, is the problem is really about the “humanization” of anyone, monster or subaltern, than what do we get by examining the subaltern that we can’t get form examining Frankenstein’s monster? In other words, this passage does not really help us understand what I take to be Spivak’s mission, which is highlighting the specific case of what happens to the effacement involved in “naming” and “humanizing” of the subaltern subject.

From 155. Spivak writes off a student’s attempt to give an ethical reading to Baudelaire’s “negress.” The student suggests that “Baudelaire meant to focus on her predicament as being exiled without history or geography.” Just wondering what everyone thought about this. To me the student’s opinion seemed plausible.

Lastly, I found the conclusion strange. We read several texts, but it ends with just a wrap up of Foe. What’s the rationale for this kind of non-conclusion?