Opinion: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and the democratic politics of pronunciation

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s lecture on “WEB Du Bois and his Vision of Democracy” hosted by the student group JNU Academic on May 21 at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, has erupted in an internet-driven controversy about her alleged “arrogance” directed at a “subaltern” student who identified himself as Anshul Kumar, “founding professor and chairperson of the Centre for Brahmin Studies” (according to his profile on x, formerly twitter). I was present at the event, sitting one person away from where the student stood as he questioned her after the lecture.

I would like to offer a brief account of Spivak’s lecture, much of which I believe has been lost in the identity-driven mêlée that has followed. The lecture is significant for the valuable lessons on the practices of democracy that it carries for all of us in these fraught times, and the event for its most immaculate irony.

The irony lies in what has followed on social and news media, carried out precipitously by many not present there, well before they have had the opportunity to even watch the entire proceedings on video (and not via clips). This is entirely contrary to what Spivak in her lecture was exhorting the mainly student crowd to do: to...

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