Reading Spivak was definitely not an easy task. I felt like I had to keep going back to re-read what I had just read to keep some type of coherence with the ideas she illustrates throughout her text. I can’t be sure that I understood very many, so I am going to focus on what I think I did understand from the text, which is the section “the problem of subaltern consciousness”. In this section, Spivak brings up that consciousness within the subaltern study is a “historicized social” conscious; therefore, in this scenario, it is “never fully recoverable”. This is so because the consciousness cannot be recuperated after being oppressed through the “negative consciousness.” Through this, it is evident that the problem lies in this repression of the conscious, causing a change in society. After this, Spivak goes into “self-consciousness” and states that this is the type of consciousness that should be used in the strategy or the study of the subaltern because it has more power than “class consciousness”. This is so, because this last concept isn’t a real representation of humanity. “Class consciousness on the descriptive level is itself a strategic and artificial rallying awareness which, on the transformative level, seeks to destroy the mechanics which come to construct the outlines of the very class of which a collective consciousness has been situationally developed” (205). With this, the descriptive level may be referring to the consciousness constructed by society to differentiate between different economic standings of humankind and set the standards for belonging to a certain consciousness of classes. Therefore, since it is a construction, it is a label that is man-made and goes back to Marx and the Communist Manifesto where there is a clear distinction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Hence, the working class/the proletariat will eventually be in the power since it will outrun the bourgeoisie “by means of a revolution” and the collective consciousness will help achieve this. So then is this the problem with the subaltern consciousness: that since it cannot be recuperated, it needs to be changed to confine to a social norm???
Good job Cinthia Maria, I think i understood a lot more from your interpretation than from the text itself. I was planing to go to this lady's conference on Sunday but if she speaks like she writes, I'm pretty sure it will be like listening to Pavarotti. Anyway, I just wanted to ask you a questiuon: How exactly the deconstructionism delimits the Subaltern Studies colective's perspective of the Historiography? Thanks for your post again.
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