Double-bind. It's a fighting word. Especially so if it comes from Spivak. In the same auditorium, in which Julia Kristeva tested the patience of her audiences with a could-not-more-Eurocentric talk, in which Zhang Yimou and Tan Dun dined under the hospitality of Orientalism, Spivak gave her first lecture (on double-bind) as UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR, as the successor to Edward Said. Hooray, viva Spivak, viva Said!
......
Double-bind. It's a fighting word. Especially so if you find yourself nowhere to escape it. Double-bind teaches you to identify the contradictory structures and stay in the game. The thing is though there is little or no difficulty detecting binaries, finding faults with and limitation to them, we need something extra, something Ashis Nandy's alternative to stay in the game. It seems a vicious circle that what we seek is what keeps us seeking.
I need help. But am I beyond help?
PS: Apologies for being obscure. Clarification: it's an insiginificant post about basically how frustrating writing and thinking generally are. And of course, celebrating Spivak!
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7 comments:
A professor once asked me, "what if what we have is already what we want"? I never got the answer, but it seems to make a nice pair with your "seek" question:)
thanks, water! perhaps that's why they'd say that we're living our double bind...
how's the trip!
I wonder how many people are stilling listening to Spivak. She has lost her edge; she has reached her limit, as a postcolonialist and upper-middle-class Marxist. Lucky us! We are not academically privileged south asianist and therefore do not have to be in their game which is almost over. Let's play our game.
Thanks for the comment, beautyofsadness!
But the puzzling questions are: what is our game? What if our questions and our games we mean to play are intellectually tainted or worse, structurly limited that would never take us as far as Spivak?
...
In that sense(limitation-detecting sense), Spivak is already courageous enough to stand up and say let's smell the stink and think outside our cell.
I don't believe in "the uncontaminated," and I don't believe there could be a position totally outside of the "structures." But "the (post)colonial" always brings the west to any intellectual conversation and unintentionally places it at the center. It is a ghost that haunts people like Spivak, because she always chooses to speak to the West. If you read her interview with Tani Barlow, you will see that she doesn't even know how to speak to the Chinese without adopting the same mentality as that of the people that she has been criticizing... By "our game," I mean centering the Chinese experience. I apologize for posting this kind of stuff. Don't take it too seriously. Just thought your posts are interesting.
Thanks for the comment! Absolutely interesting! plz don't apologize.
"It is a ghost that haunts people like Spivak, because she always chooses to speak to the West."
yep, it's a ghost, hunting us too. (Post)structuralism prevails. and about always speaking to the west, that's because she actually situates herself as a third world feminist intellectual. she actually goes back to Bengali rural areas to help the kids!
as for 'adopting chinese mentality', that's exactly what she means by 'taking humanities at it's own speed': learn the language and then play the game. btw, she is taking Chinese classes right now.
our chinese game is possible, only if we are not enclosed in our own world. there is always a structure to be bore in mind, however stifling and depressing it might be; and therefore the appeal to look beyond is all the more respect-worthy!
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