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tries to ‘contain the other’ and has a relationship is. They only tried to create a hermeneutics
with ‘the incalculable’. Previously, this reviewer of deconstruction as a technique of ethicality.
has pointed out that Spivak is grounded in the Martin Heidegger in his corpus has shown the
unverifiable texere, which leads her, like it led immutability of the Logos within Continental
many before her, to engage with the (hospitable) philosophy.
other. Spivak’s appreciation for the Torah Spivak, as it were, is a votary of power. She
commentator, Emmanuel Levinas is well known writes in the book under review and elsewhere
and needs no further comment here. of the differences between avidya and vidya;
Returning to the book under review, Das’s power that is destructive being informed by
‘Introduction’ reminds this reviewer of Somerset ignorance and power that springs from an ethical
Maugham’s remarks about Sigmund Freud’s engagement with right knowledge. Spivak, unlike
bad writing style in Maugham’s short story The numerous commentators on her, never gives into
Kite (1946). Similarly, Das’s ‘Introduction’ is atheism or nihilism since she is a disciple in the
illustrative of bad writing style. Das mouths a lot tradition of Sri Ramakrishna. She overcomes
of senseless platitudes: ‘The concept-metaphors ‘the structuralist hermeneutics of suspicion’ (3)
… the power axis … [playing] in the spaces of in spite of being schooled in Immanuel Kant’s
marriage and family … the subaltern cannot yet Enlightenment diatribe which fashioned Spivak
speak to the political … this erstwhile subject through her doctoral supervisor Paul de Man and
… the institutional calculus … an epistemically then, her friend, Jacques Derrida. It is necessary
obvious agency’ (xxix). to mention in the passing that Derrida too, like
From medical doctors Freud to Jacques Spivak, was no atheist or nihilist. But Derrida,
Lacan to Das, we have verbal outpourings that like Levinas mentioned earlier, is not the subject
scarcely make any sense to the uninitiated in of this review.
their scientific field. But note that this verbose Adapting the possible anecdotal dictum
medical practitioner has omitted to even once of Sri Abhinavagupta (950–1016 CE), Spivak
point out the nosology of Spivak as an Indian leads a public life as ‘a Europeanist’ (See Steve
subject by herself in Prabuddha Bharata and Paulson and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
of her formation as a devotee of the Shakta Sri ‘Critical Intimacy: An Interview with Gayatri
Ramakrishna (See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Chakravorty Spivak’, Los Angeles Review of
‘Many Voices’, Prabuddha Bharata, 119/12 Books (larb), 29 July 2016 <lareviewofbooks.
(December 2014), 655–63). Spivak, as the Kyoto org/article/critical-intimacy-interview-gayatri-
Prize laureate of 2012, declared her absolute chakravorty-spivak/#!> accessed 29 April 2019),
loyalty to the Ramakrishna Order headquartered a private life as a Totapuri-lineage philosopher,
at Belur Math, West Bengal, India. Because of and in private she has no problems in exquisitely
Spivak’s grounding in Shakta tantra we have constructing the life of Holy Mother Sri Sarada
Das unknowingly, but correctly, identifying Devi and she writes: ‘I … write this for the record.
in Spivak’s writings an ethical preoccupation … I give witness to the great goddesses, Durga and
with ‘the incalculable’. Das again unbeknownst Kali. You will work out my negotiations. “‘I’ is
to himself, rightly maps Spivak’s engagement only a convenient term for somebody who has
with various axes of power or Shakti in this book no real being. Lies will flow from my lips, but
under review. there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with
Now, Spivak’s seeing the text as weaving, them; it is for you to seek out this truth and to
texere, makes sense. Another meaning of ‘tantra’ decide whether any part of it is worth keeping.
is like texere; it is weaving the cosmos into an If not, you will of course throw the whole of it
expansive Logos comparable to the spandana into the wastepaper basket and forget all about
or sphota theory of Indian philosophy. It is it”’ (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Moving Devi’,
good to bear in mind that neither Derrida nor Cultural Critique, 47 (Winter 2001), 120–63; 129).
Spivak deconstructed the Logos since the Logos Chatterjee, Chaudhuri, and Das have all failed
to understand the Shakta roots of Spivak, who while being spiritually initiated by her guru,
like a true Kaula, guards this alterity within Swami Pavitrananda.
her at all times. She is herself, as Gavin Flood Spivak may hate it that her Enlightenment
would write of tantra in his corpus, various credentials are being questioned as an endgame.
texts inscribed. This silent interiorisation of the Yet the truth remains that she bears witness
incalculable is what makes Spivak a true witness to the ancient tradition of svadhyaya or lectio
to the subaltern status of Shakta tantra in the divina and has become a living body where she
here and the now, in 2019. Spivak understands has taken great autochthonous pains to inscribe
that: ‘The only way a reading establishes itself— texts only to reject them for the ‘interruptive
without guarantees—is by sharing the steps emergence of the ethical’ (38) that ‘is neither
of the reading. That is the experience of the a beginning nor an end, only an irreducible
impossible, ethical discontinuity shaken up in grounding condition’ (39). If this is not living
a simulacrum. Unless you take a step with me, within the Shakta tantra tradition, then what
there will be no interdisciplinarity, only the is? This book, a reprint by the Oxford University
tedium of turf battles’ (22). Press, nowhere mentions this theological
To read Spivak is to heed her call, to share orientation of Spivak, whose love for Mother
her steps in reading texts qua life alongside Kali is well known and is no secret (See her
her and that is to take a step into an ‘ethical translation, Ramaprasada Sen and Nirode
discontinuity’ otherwise called Shakta tantra Mazumdar, Song for Kali: A Cycle of Images
embodied in the siddha, the epochal avatara and Songs, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Sri Ramakrishna and his holy tradition that (Calcutta: Seagull, 2000) for a more nuanced
till date is simultaneously Vedantic and tantric. journeying with Spivak).
Spivak, if scrutinised as she deserves to be, in all We must bear in mind that Spivak advocates
her writings including the book under review, is authorial death and her writings are for us to
not a Kashmiri Shaivite, nor is she a practitioner deconstruct. In a moment we shall be firmly
of Sri Vidya. She is a Shakta, plain and simple. convinced from her interviews about her being
For instance, in her 1987 essay, ‘A Literary a Kaula.
Representation of the Subaltern: A Woman’s We have to contextualise her within what she
Text from the Third World’, Spivak insists on is most reluctant to speak of her aporias: ‘As I
knowing Sanskrit. Sanskrit is a language which think I [Spivak] write this for the first time
she is aware is indispensable if we are to recover in my life of 70 years, I realise that I have no
the true meaning of being a woman then and, by interest at all in bringing this into the ambit of
implication, now. Sanskrit, according to Spivak, understanding or analysis. This dwelling in an
‘consolidates’ her entire corpus. Sanskrit, as it unbroken intuition of the transcendental was
were, is the bija (seed) of Spivak’s mentors and part of something into which we were inserted
herself. When she writes, ‘I will suggest that as infants. … This is the closest formulation I
the discontinuities between the ethical and the can make of a wordless precomprehension that
epistemological and political fields can be staged I have never attempted to describe’ (Spivak’s
by means of the play of logic and rhetoric in 2012 lecture, ‘Sri Ramakrishna: A Sacred Life’.
fiction’ (5), she explicitly enters into the Shakta See ‘Damning Evidence of Books’, The Telegraph
Sanskrit domains in which she, her father, and <https ://www.telegraphind ia.com/states/
her great-grandfather were schooled in a plan west-bengal/damning-evidence-of-books/
inscrutable to any human gaze. More on this cid/1282390> accessed 29 April 2019).
inscrutability from Spivak herself later. This ‘precomprehension’, uttered as a
The Sanskrit alphabet inheres Shakta tantra. classical psychoanalytic slip, is the text under
This form of tantra insists on the divine feminine. review. None has bothered to make explicit this
Thus we have Spivak emerging as a feminist qua ‘precomprehension’, the mysterium tremendum
a spandana of that Shakti which she received of Rudolf Otto to be found everywhere in Spivak.