Can the subaltern speak?

Gayatri Spivak

Some of the most radical criticism coming out of the West today is the result of an interested desire to conserve the subject of the West, or the West as Subject. The theory of pluralized ‘subject-effects’ gives an illusion of undermining subjective sovereignty while often providing a cover for this subject of knowledge. Although the history of Europe as Subject is narrativized by the law, political economy, and ideology of the West, this concealed Subject pretends it has ‘no geo-political determinations.’ The much-publicized critique of the sovereign subject thus actually inaugurates a Subject. I will argue for this conclusion by considering a text by two great practitioners of the critique: ‘Intellectuals and power: a conversation between Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze.

I have chosen this friendly exchange between two activist philosophers of history because it undoes the opposition between authoritative theoretical production and the unguarded practice of conversation, enabling one to glimpse the track of ideology. The participants in this conversation emphasize the most important contributions of French poststructuralist theory: first, that the networks of power/desire/interest are so heterogeneous, that their reduction to a coherent narrative is counterproductive – a persistent critique is needed; and second, that intellectuals must attempt to disclose and know the discourse of society’s Other. Yet the two systematically ignore the question of ideology and their own implication in intellectual and economic history.

Although one of its chief presuppositions is the critique of the sovereign subject, the conversation between Foucault and Deleuze is framed by two monolithic and anonymous subjects-in-revolution: ‘A Maoist’ (FD, p. 205) and ‘the workers’ struggle’ (FD, p. 217). Intellectuals, however, are named and differentiated; moreover, a Chinese Maoism is nowhere operative. Maoism here simply creates an aura of narrative specificity, which would be a harmless rhetorical banality were it not that the innocent appropriation of the proper name ‘Maoism’ for the eccentric phenomenon of French intellectual ‘Maoism’ and subsequent ‘New Philosophy’ symptomatically renders ‘Asia’ transparent.

Deleuze’s reference to the workers’ struggle is equally problematic; it is obviously a genuflection: ‘We are unable to touch [power] in any point of its application without finding ourselves confronted by this diffuse mass, so that we are necessarily led… to the desire to blow it up completely. Every partial revolutionary attack or defense is linked in this way to the workers’ struggle’ (FD, p. 217). The apparent banality signals a disavowal. The statement ignores the international division of labor, a gesture that often marks poststructuralist political theory. 3 The invocation of the workers’ struggle is baleful in its very innocence; it is incapable of dealing with global capitalism: the subject-production of worker and unemployed within nation-state ideologies in its Center; the increasing subtraction of the working class in the Periphery from the realization of surplus value and thus from ‘humanistic’ training in consumerism; and the large-scale presence of paracapitalist labor as well as the heterogeneous structural status of agriculture in the Periphery. Ignoring the international division of labor; rendering ‘Asia’ (and on occasion ‘Africa’) transparent (unless the subject is ostensibly the ‘Third World’); reestablishing the legal subject of socialized capital – these are problems as common to much poststructuralist as to structuralist theory. Why should such occlusions be sanctioned in precisely those intellectuals who are our best prophets of heterogeneity and the Other? [...].

Available in: https://archive.org/stream/CanTheSubalternSpeak/Can_the_subaltern_speak_djvu.txt. Acess on: Jan. 25, 2026.

Considering the sentences, regarding the highlighted (underlined) discourse marker,

I. [...] first, that the networks of power/desire/interest are so heterogeneous, that their reduction to a coherent narrative is counterproductive [...]

II. Although one of its chief presuppositions is the critique of the sovereign subject, [...]

III. [...] moreover, a Chinese Maoism is nowhere operative [...]

IV. Intellectuals, however, are named and differentiated [...]

V. Why should such occlusions be sanctioned in precisely those intellectuals who are our best prophets of heterogeneity and the Other?

it is found that only the following are correct