Introduction
Representationality as reaffirmed by Spivak’s “Subaltern” brings in the questionable assertions that now demand a resolution. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak -expands- on important subject matters, power, representation, and voices of the subaltern in her essay entitled “Can the Subaltern Speak?”. The first to mention the term “subaltern” is she (Spivak). By its basic definition, it refers to certain people who stand in a subordinate position in a dominant social order. As Spivak puts it, the subordinated have no way of speaking for themselves due to the discursive regimes and power asymmetry that constrain and limit their capacity to act on their own (Spivak, 1988, p. 300). Such “impossibilities of self-presentation” (Spivak, 1988, p. 308) are caused by the situation of the subalterns being perceived as the elite class and thus the cycle of silencing and inappropriate misrepresentation of the oppressed ones is pursued.
New Insights.
Confronting Colonial Legacies: “Hidden” As A Cinematic Illustration With Its Single And Multi-Layered Meanings.
Offer by Ipek A. Celik of Michael Haneke’s movie “Caché” is of great importance to the Spivak concerns. The movie plots around Georges, a man with a calm job and home in Austria, who is shattered by the videos of his daily activities being posted without the authority of the owner. Their former correspondent is a French-Algerian immigrant named Majid who asks for tapes that force Georges to confront a past that he thought was buried in connection with his father’s role in the Algerian conflict. Thus “Caché” shows the heads of a colonial legacy by letting the past encroach into the present of the happy class that lives the past over and over.
Relation To The Real World.
Strategic Essentialism: A Useful Device Or A Futile Instrument?
Strategic essentialists of Spivak can work as a lens to understand the actions of Majid. While consciously accepting the fact that colonized people, as a whole, cannot be rendered as homogeneous in the film, she still considers strategic essentialism as an inevitable yet powerful instrument for subaltern groups to find a place of existence and voice about dominant discourses(Spivak, 2022). From scene to scene, “Caché” provides Georges with an extra layer to his narrative, one which gives the past those voices that it otherwise lost. Nevertheless, the movie leads to the raising of queries on whether the effectiveness of such policies at all for the majority can be assumed when Majid himself seems partly an offstage character, leaving his intentions and voice unheard.
Dilemma
Navigating The Ethical Minefield: In And About The Risks Of Plundering
Although enumerating the explained things is a difficult task, both “Can the Subaltern Speak?” and “Caché ” reimagine more questions than they answer. What are the non-elite ethical assessment standpoints moving away from strategic essentialism? The question, however, is; how can we avoid power dynamics that accompany speaking for others but instead let people speak for themselves? There are a lot of questions like these which are kind of unexplored. This delves further into the subject required will be done through readings and discussion groups to have a more subtle and ethical understanding of representation.
Enhancing Understanding: The Text’s Influence and Its Connectivity with Other Subjects will be explored further.
Interacting with these plays resulted in a significant gap in the knowledge of the subject as they reveal the existing power struggles even in representation and the difficulty in the depiction of oppressed groups. The concepts link to postcolonialism and critical racial theory which also show the staying effect of colonial power structure and the fact that the dominant narratives should be subjected to introspection. Spivak and Celik not only highlight the ethical complexities in the portrayal but also reiterate the moral dilemmas that arise from the same. Spivak gives the warning about the possibility of being of ‘appropriation,’ and the intellectual’s tendency of speaking for the helpless, ultimately accounting for a mute of the masses. “Cache” is a film that captures the intricate process by which Georges interprets, misinterprets, and projects Majid’s actions onto him, giving an illustration of this difficulty people usually experience as they try to understand our world from a perspective that is different from their own.
Conclusion
As a final remark, the paper examines multiple motifs emerging within how subjects are born and presented in Western Studies as well as in colonial areas. The idea of Western subjectivity is questioned for its inclination to cover its geopolitical bonds in fancy appeals striving at domination. At the same time, the Subaltern Studies Group aspires to critically view Indian colonial history through the prism of peasant rebellion, and bring out the difference in the subaltern category which challenges the reification of a categorical image. Portraying the subaltern category is a challenge: the entry would be impossible without risking mistyping or violating somebody since a true subaltern is another, although able to express themselves. Gender subordination is one important issue with masculinity construction being one of the prominent factors, which usually takes the highest toll in colonial settings. Through the suppression of women who would voice their opinions and write down history, they are alienated, silenced, and eventually lose their visibility in the historical account – thus creating another deeper layer of exclusion.
References
Celik, I. A. (2010). I wanted you to be present”: guilt and the history of violence in Michael Haneke’s Cache. Cinema Journal, 59–80.
Spivak, G. C. (2022). Can the subaltern speak? In Imperialism (pp. 171–219). Routledge.
Stoler, A. (2002). Carnal knowing: Bodies, history, and colonial power in late nineteenth-century India. University of California Press.
Young, R. J. C. (2001). Postcolonialism: An historical introduction. Blackwell Publishing.
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