The Spivak's essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" certainly explores whether subalterns can speak though it is more interested in whether they can be heard. Spivak argues that there are a number of factors preventing this. The most important is that more powerful people-academics, religious leaders, or people who are otherwise privileged in society-always speak for them. When they do this, the elite rob subalterns of their own voice. If subalterns could both speak and have a forum in which to be heard, Spivak hopes these people would achieve an effective political voice. Spivak combines ideas from Marxism, feminism and deconstruction. These specialties help her make an argument about the oppression caused by differences in power, gender, and access to knowledge. She discusses how scholarship, and particularly Western scholarship, always misrepresents so-called “Third World" peoples, and shows why subaltern women are doubly marginalized, first as the colonized, then again as women.
Spivak focuses on what she calls “epistemic violence”, violence inflicted through thought, speech, and writing, rather than actual physical harm. For Spivak, a good example of epistemic violence is when accounts of history leave out subalterns. When oppressed peoples are not allowed to speak for themselves, or to have their contributions recognized, they are in effect erased from their place in the world. This is especially common for subaltern women. In Spivak's words: “If, in the context of colonial production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow." For Spivak, women are silenced by both colonialism and patriarchy.
Spivak argues that the case of Indian sati is illustrative of how the subaltern cannot speak. She asks, "What did Sati say?" Can the subaltern be understood? Or is it always a "speaking for?" Sati was understood either, through the English, as the slaughter of innocent women or, through the male Hindus who spoke for the female Indians, as a voluntary act. In other words, the subaltern in this instance, the Indian women, have no voice. The widow's act is never considered a form of martyrdom, "with the defunct husband standing in for the transcendental One." It was just considered a crime. The nationalist Indians accepted the British reading of sati, and made it a point to reclaim the practice. "Caught in the relay between 'benevolent' colonial interventions and national liberation struggles that both construct her will for her, the subaltern," Spivak suggests, "cannot speak."
According to Spivak, subaltern women are subjected to oppression more than subaltern men. They do not have proper representation, and therefore, are not able to voice their opinions or share their stories. No one is aware of the daily struggles they face; subaltern women are ghosts in society. Spivak says, “I think it is important to acknowledge our complicity in the muting, in order precisely to be more effective in the long run”. It is not only colonialism that silences the subaltern, but also those of us who are watching the oppression taking place around the world, and not doing anything about it.
A middle-class woman can potentially be subject to subalternity, and this is depicted in Spivak’s narration about Bhubaneswari Bhaduri in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Technically Bhaduri was not a “true subaltern woman” as Spivak puts it, because she was a middle-class woman with access to the Independence movement. This however, did not give her the right to have a voice that could actually be heard. Therefore, “Bhubaneswari attempted to ‘speak’ by turning her body into a text of woman/writing” and she hanged herself to make a statement.
Spivak concludes that “the subaltern cannot speak." This is because they are always spoken for by those in positions of power, and are never able to represent themselves. Further, if they do speak, they are not heard. Spivak understands speaking as a transaction between a listener and a speaker, writing: "When you say cannot speak, it means that if speaking involves speaking and listening, this possibility of response, responsibility, does not exist in the subaltern's sphere." A poor peasant can say: "No matter how hard I work; my family does not have enough to eat." But will this be heard in a way that can begin to effect change? For speech to be successful, it must transmit its message. For Spivak, subaltern speech does not achieve this.
Spivak in Can the Subaltern Speak and Deconstructing Historiography talks about how people oppressed by colonialism are not allowed a voice because they do not have importance to be heard. Women act out in acts of violence to make a point, and no one understands or does anything to change the way the subaltern is being treated today. women are objectified by society and men, and because of their “culture” it is considered acceptable. Women, the oppressed, the uneducated, the poor, and the subaltern group as a whole are treated unfairly, and need to be heard. They have stories that should not be considered trivial just because of their gender or socioeconomic status. These people need to be heard, but are they heard, can the subaltern speak?
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