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An interview with Gayatri Spivak

Judy Burns , Jill Mac Dougall , Catherine Benamou , Avanthi Meduri , Peggy
Phejan & Susan Slyomovics

To cite this article: Judy Burns , Jill Mac Dougall , Catherine Benamou , Avanthi Meduri ,
Peggy Phejan & Susan Slyomovics (1990) An interview with Gayatri Spivak, , 5:1, 80-92, DOI:
10.1080/07407709008571142

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80

An Interview with Gayatri Spivak

Conducted by Judy Burns and Jill Mac Dougall,
with Catherine Benamou, Avanthi Meduri,
Peggy Phejan, and Susan Slyomovics.

Edited by Judy Burns

JB: Tell us about Mahasweta Devi. What is her reputation in India?
How long has she been working there? To whom is her writing impor-
tant? Did you know her before you began translating her work, or did
you meet her as a result of your translations?

GS: Mahasweta is a 65-year-old Bengali woman who comes from a

family of activist intellectuals. The other members of the family who
are illustrious, immediately recognizable, are all men. Her uncle,
Ritwik Ghatak, was a very, very famous filmmaker. Her husband, Bi-
jan Bhattacharya, was one of the leaders of the Indian People's Thea-
tre Association, the IPTA, which is a very well-known organization.
When it was illegal to agitate at the time of the famine in Bengal—
which the British created when they stopped buying food to feed the
military during the Second World War—Mahasweta's husband inge-
niously used his plays to mobilize people politically. This led to a politi-
cal movement generated completely through this theatre association's
performances.
Mahasweta's father, Manish Ghatak, was also a very active leftist in-
tellectual, and so Mahasweta is based in a tradition which has been
very important for many decades. She herself has been an activist since
1942; she now works almost completely with the Indian tribals and out-
castes, the lowest castes of Hinduism. The tribals are quite often mobi-
lized for armed struggles in support of other people's causes because
they are fearless, and they know how to fight and die. But nothing re-
ally happens for them as a result of this. Certain rights are sanctioned
for the tribals in the Constitution, and money can be obtained in their
name by lower level bureaucracy, but since a large part of the tribal
organization is unaware that they have these sanctions, these rights,
nothing happens for them. Mahasweta helps the Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes, as they are called in the Constitution, with tribal uni-
fication. She and other well-known full-caste Hindus, upper class Indi-
 Interview with Gayatri Spivak 181

ans, work in this movement to guarantee that when the tribals make
their demands, they are not dismissed as unreasonable, or the tribals
punished with violence.
Mahasweta also runs a journal where the tribals can express their
own analyses, critiques. There is a very strong critical movement
among the tribals. It's not like they're completely mired in their ethnic
authenticity; they are quite critical of various things that exist among
themselves. The fact that they write for this journal is, in itself, a great
achievement, because generally literacy programs are not involved
with any kind of content. Usually there is simply a confidence that lit-
eracy leads by some kind of "trickle-down" effect to an entry into the
slow pace of upward class mobility and full citizenship. This is, of
course, a boondoggle in most cases, when we are talking about disen-
franchised groups.
It's really a tremendously resourceful thing that she's done. She's an
extremely active facilitator of tribal unity, rather than a leader who is
imposing various kinds of plans on them. This I find very moving and
very admirable.
Her reputation in India is certainly a very solid one. She is nationally
recognized as one of our most important writers. She has a readership
among the reading public, the Calcutta middle class and, in general,
the educated public. But she also has a very strong connection as a
writer with the tribals. She has told me that she reads some of her work
to them, and since I've seen her interact with very, very large groups of
tribals, I can believe this. And of course, she draws very much from
them. She is also a very funny person, an incredible stand-up comic in
any kind of situation.
I met her in 1979 through an old friend of mine, but I had read her
work before. I had no particular intention of translating her work or,
indeed, translating anything. But at the time I read "Draupadi" I was
asked by two U.S. journals—Yale French Studies and Critical In-
quiry—to write an article on French feminism for their issues on femi-
nist theory. I had a certain moment of truth then. Certainly I am no
longer an authority on French feminism, but in 1979 these two journals
seemed to perceive that I should be the person to be contacted for
French feminism. And 1 asked myself, "How is it that I have this repu-
tation in the United States?"
In that moment I thought. I've got to do something else. So for Yale
French Studies I wrote a piece called "French Feminism in an Interna-
tional Frame," trying to understand what that was. For Critical Inquiry
I suggested that 1 translate "Draupadi." So that's why I started translat-
ing her.
821 Women & Performance

Let me ask you a question. I am outside the field of ethnography.

When one speaks of ethnography, one assumes that a person goes to a
place, and that the idea of fieldwork in the traditional sense is involved.
I know that the status and value of fieldwork are now being questioned
and critiqued. But what is the traditional model?

SS: The classic ethnography by a social anthropologist trained via Ma-

linowski, Levi-Strauss, would be a work in which the life of a tribe
would be encapsulated into a volume, divided very clearly into certain
topics: life cycle, economics, land tenure, social organization of the vil-
lage notables as opposed to the various classes. In the appendix you
would put a section on folk tales. For the most part, there would be no
investigation of individual lives.

GS: So the ethnographer learns the language to some extent and tries
to become as integrated into the group as possible so that his or her
questions are asked in a way that would be accessible... whatever the
questions might be. And then the ethnographer's material is trans-
formed into a "graphy," an analysis. The ethnographer's ability to inte-
grate him- or herself into that community also becomes something that
is used to validate the scientific analysis... as opposed to the experi-
ence itself. Right?

SS: The traditional model would be to encode the account so that it is

implicit that you have been there, without actually stating it.

GS: When we talk about ethnography, I'd like to point out that ethno-
graphy doesn't necessarily mean that you're a Western ethnographer.
Indians are not just the objects of ethnography; there are also Indian
ethnographers and anthropologists.
There is a tendency for the post-colonial to be obliterated. I was
present when someone at Cornell asked a question about Africa and
cultural imperialism—she had just come back from Nigeria—and it
was quite clear from the way she was answered that her respondent saw
Africa as a place without universities, a place without intellectuals, a
place where you do not write examinations and get certified, and get
doctorates.
The idea that this encounter continues to be an encounter is a denial
of history. We have to take into account how we are going to deal with
the fact that those otherspaces are not just repositories for pure objects
of investigation. They themselves contain investigators. Who are they?
How would they like to represent themselves? In what context in a
 Interview with Gayatri Spivak 183

multicultural world would they represent themselves? These are politi-

cal questions, not just questions about ethnography.

JB: Speaking of political questions, before this interview we were talk-

ing about Western feminists' responses to Indian performance. Would
you talk a little bit about your take on feminist ethnography, specifi-
cally about how those two words do or do not go together?

JM: And also how the text that you have translated relates to that, if it
"fits."

GS: I'm going to approach this question in a slightly roundabout way. I

discussed this story with the Asian Studies group at Pittsburgh, and a
couple of anthropologists were present. One of them said something
very interesting to me, and I began to think about this question, be-
cause of his intervention. I suppose I knew that anthropologists do not
look at individuals, but it was good to have that stated as part of a clas-
sical description of what they do. James Watson—he was then at Pitts-
burgh, he's now at Harvard—described for me an individual in a tribal
situation using a festival and transforming it into a political weapon.
Once he said that, I began to look at the story somewhat differently.
In my view, Mahasweta is thematizing the post-colonial, but in a dif-
ferent space from that in which you normally would colonialize her or
him. We generally think of the national bourgeoisie, dining out on be-
ing in exile, talking about "I can't go home again." This is a longstand-
ing topos of self-representation. Another topos of the indigenous elite
is "my mind has been contaminated by the West." This is a deeply dubi-
ous story because most of these people come to the West for certifica-
tion, for validation. And on the other hand, they did not come from an
uninscribed space. There is some continuity.
Mahasweta thematizes the post-colonial in a body model as opposed
to the mind model I've just mentioned. In place of the pure ethnic, the
full-fledged tribal, she focuses on a half-caste, half tribal, half white
woman. Named for the largest of the 300 tribal groups, the Oraon,
Mary Oraon, the main character in the story, is the product of a rape.
But she is also the child of what I have in the past called epistemic viola-
tion, enabling violation. You and I would not be able to sit here and
talk to each other if I had not been touched by the culture of imperial-
ism. There is a very strong desire to deny that, and on the other hand it
is that enabling violation that we must bitterly come to terms with. By
"we" I'm speaking about the post-colonial Indian. We must come to
terms with that, because that is what makes it possible for us to estab-
lish sociality in the contemporary context.
841 Women & Performance

PP: Do you see the rape, then, as a metaphor for colonialism?

GS: In the story, we are dealing with the daughter of a rape. When she
kills the Collector, she re-enacts a rape in which a machete becomes
like the phallus in the missionary position—up, down, up, down. But
it's not a story which actually stages a rape. I think of the rape as a sort
of concept metaphor. I don't think that it is a metaphor of anything
specific, such as colonialism. But I want to read it as a descriptive re-
production of the post-colonial.
My emphasis is not on colonialism. My emphasis is on the inform-
ants who are now the middle-persons in the so-called "new nations,"
and therefore, on the production of the post-colonial. Mahasweta
takes that production and thematizes it in terms of the women's body.
When the "real" tribals are talking to Mary Oraon about the way she
looks, she is able to say, (not in a very consciousness-raised political
way, but this is after all a story), "Well, my mother should have throt-
tled me when she saw that she had a white child." When they ask her,
"what about you?" she says, "I would not have been." Now that struc-
ture—"I would not have been if what I represent myself as suffering
from had not taken place.. .but I am"—that is the structure of the post-
colonial consciousness.
Mary Oraon, this individual who is and is not, completely undoes
the binary opposition between the pure East and the contaminated
West, the desire to present oneself in a kind of primitive differentiation
which is completely ahistorical. This half-caste tribal woman takes the
static re-enactment of the festival and transforms it into something ac-
tive; and that performance script becomes indistinguishable from po-
litical agency.
Ethnography is now trying to breach its disciplinary outlines, like lit-
erary criticism and all of the humanities. Just as literary criticism will
have to re-examine the line between aesthetic representation and polit-
ical agency, so anthropology will have to be concerned with subject for-
mation, touched with authoritative psycho-biography—great
narratives of history—if it wants to become more than it has been. It
seems to me that Mahasweta's way of taking the performance of a tribal
rite into the area of political agency offers some sort of allegorical
model of the breaching of the outlines of disciplines.

JM: Can I jump in and ask what your role as translator was? You have
said that you translated these works because you were personally
touched by the material. You have rejected being defined as a third
world feminist. How do you consider your translation in relation to
ethnography?
 Interview with Gayatri Spivak 185

GS: Well, personal choice is, of course, the least trustworthy explana-
tion. On the other hand, we can't work without making personal
choices. When I say I made a personal choice, I did make a personal
choice, but I'm given over to the reader, who is both sympathetic and
knowledgeable enough to know that my personal choice is something
written in a much larger script. In my books, personal choice is some-
thing that I offer to the caring interlocutor [much laughter] as some-
thing to be worked out. It's something that I cannot work out myself. I
can go on defending and apologizing by making my personal choice
completely placed within the United States, India, the emancipated
bourgeoisie, the history of Bengal... but finally somebody has to read
it.
I have translated only two authors: Derrida and Mahasweta. When I
first read Derrida I had no clue as to who he was. I did not know any-
thing about him at all. But having read the text, I felt that it was the best
critique I had ever seen of the European ethical universal, done philo-
sophically. So I wanted to translate it. Because for me translation is the
most intimate way of reading. You become invested in the text.
I translated Mahasweta for a similar reason. She captured the actual
heterogeneity of India, and without the usual kind of name calling or
breast beating of the national bourgeoisie. And I'm going to put on
record something that Mahasweta had said to me that I'm just extraor-
dinarily happy about. Last summer, she said very affectionately about
"The Hunt," "You know, I feel that when I read this translation, I'm
reading the original Bengali." She really enabled me by that remark.
I can't say that I am translating this story into my own language and
making it my own, because Bengali is my mother tongue. I went to mis-
sion school; I did not go to an English medium school... one class, for-
eign language. Certainly I do not speak or write to my family in
English. Nonetheless, my relationship to English is very strong be-
cause I have taught English in an English-dominant culture for 25
years.
On the other hand, I'm not interested in making the story available
to an international reading public. The gesture is in fact a personal ges-
ture. When it comes to making it available to an international reading
public, the gesture immediately enters into a deeply contaminated
area. I have talked about the persistent critique of a structure that you
cannot not want to inhabit. So my desire for this intimacy that is in-
volved with translation, in fact, works in an interest that I find ex-
tremely suspect. In that sense I don't know what to say about my
motives.
861 Women & Performance

And as to the Third World, I just explained to you my relationship to

the two languages. It is hard for me to think that the decision to em-
brace in that intimate way a story written in my mother tongue is neces-
sarily representative of involvement with the Third World. It's very
difficult to put it in that bag. It seems to me that if one wants to think
about Third World feminism, then one has to think about the way in
which the world has been rewritten, because of the new economic pro-
grams attendant on the dissolution of territorial imperialisms; and in
what way women have been dispersed along different lines because of
that rewriting. In what ways are (or are not) women's movements in the
various Third World countries organizing in terms of coming to grips
with this dispersion? In what ways do "feminism" and the "women's
movements" relate to each other? One has to take into account that
feminism is an old theory, dating from the end of the 18th century. It
doesn't have a prophet. But like Marxism, feminism too has the possi-
bility of capitalism and imperialism as pharmacoi, that is both medi-
cine and poison, in their relationship to decolonization, revolution,
post-revolution, trans-national global trade arrangements. That's the
theme of Third World feminism, it seems to me.
I think that just because I've translated Mahasweta Devi and written
these essays in order not to have them read in certain ways—that
should not give me the alibi of doing Third World feminism. I don't
completely reject that description, but I do say that to find in this a
Third World feminism specialist points to a political agenda in the
space where we work. I would like to be able to deserve the description
of a Third World feminist, and I'm doing what I can. I'm writing a book
for Verso called Feminism in Decolonization, and I hope by the time
I've done all the research and written it, that perhaps people might
then say that among the other things that I do, I also have an involve-
ment with the question of feminism in decolonization, if you like, in
the Third World.

PP: Could you comment a bit more on enablement, on what is actually

enabled by translation, by rewriting this "most intimate way of read-
ing?"

GS: When I am at African literature conferences, as I quite often am,

and I sit with people from Senegal, from Nigeria, from Mali, from Tan-
zania, we are all able to establish sociality because of the scandal of
colonialism. Whether it could have been some other way... one cannot
reverse history. But I am interested in the extraordinary desire to cre-
ate a polarization among the national bourgeoisie.
 Interview with Gayatri Spivak 187

It seems to me that rewriting the world is something that we have to

deal with. People like ourselves who are producing theoretical ac-
counts are not doing direct political mobilization, although we like to
think so. The political calculus in a crisis situation is different from an
institutional calculus. It might be important to mobilize in the name of
a golden age. But, after all, one enters a crisis in the hope that the crisis
will be resolved. And if this golden age is taken to be true, an historical
account, then with the return of the everyday, what you get is the ex-
treme right, murderous nationalists. Nothing can be said in their
favor.
So that my interest in global post-coloniality, rather than my interest
in the West, makes me look at enablement more carefully. Because if
one looks at the allies of imperialism, and at individuals specifically—
just as I'm saying that one should look at individuals in the ethno-
graphic situation—it is very hard to say that they were all beasts. And
in fact, it is very hard to distinguish some of them from the way we are.
And since we are ourselves so ambiguous and ambivalent about what
we want in terms of our class alliances, I think it is important for me, as
a person working in the United States, to be clear-eyed about what
kinds of things you get from trans-national capitalist structures. Other-
wise it would be impossible for me to think what I could tell my stu-
dents in terms of searching for help, in terms of searching for
application, in terms of establishing themselves. One has to see that
one is bound by the ties of deep desire to the thing that violates one,
and against which one wants to become an agent.
Mary Oraon is not a victim. But on the other hand, it seems to me
that what Mary is doing here should not be taken as a blueprint for
political action or interventionist action in any field, any more than
King Lear should be taken as a model for running bare-headed in
storms. Or for how to be a king.

CB: In many neocolonial societies, tribal culture has been virtually

eliminated. When such traditions are invoked, one is aware that one is
invoking a sort of imaginary past, and something that has already be-
come somewhat impure. In the Indian context, when you are taking
conditions and putting them to political use, what are the implications?
Can those conditions still have some empirical validity?

GS: You are absolutely right in saying "postcolonial" and "neocolo-

nial," because you are thinking of Latin America. And in the context of
Latin America, you cannot fit the United States into this other story of
conquest, colonization, decolonization, post-coloniality. Neocolonial-
881 Women & Performance

ism is the thing that took the relay at the moment of decolonization. So
it is in fact the agent in this case. This has implications all over the na-
tural, political, social, economic spheres. Because in the decolonized
context, one of the crucial problems is that, as much as one wants to
declare a rupture, or a past undisturbed by the vicissitudes of imperial-
ism, what comes back is also the epistemic violation, the resemblance
to the violator. So that even the so-called cultural artifacts, cultural
possessions and remnants from the past become enmeshed into certain
tangled class structures and certain kinds of banalization. Postcolonial-
ity is a negotiation with the banal.
In the national anthem of India seven Indian religions are men-
tioned: Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism,
Islam, and Christianity. The tribal religions are outside. There is no
mention of the tribals; they are only called the "original inhabitants."
When I was talking of the Bengali famine and the Calcutta intellectual
left organizing protests through performance, no tribal traditions were
involved in that at all.
In fact, in many ways, one could say that, although there was no di-
rect sort of influence-mongering or anything, Bengal was the first place
colonized. With the strong collaboration of the nascent national bour-
geoisie more than 200 years ago, the permanent settlement was en-
acted in 1793. Bengali landowners were the ones who became most
rapacious as a result of all of that, self-consciously using folk forms.
The folk forms have a history as well. There is a folk form from
northwest Indian that comes from the epic, Mahabarata. And it has, in
fact, been an instrument of political expression over the centuries.
That's a different thing altogether. These people were clearly self-con-
sciously using some folk forms. But tradition was in a different place
there. They were not imitating tribal forms. Not at all. They were not
even imitating authentic reproduction of folk forms. Not at all.
In Mahasweta's story "Doloti," Mahasweta truly has a lot of sympa-
thy for a teacher who is trying to invoke a feeling for the new nation's
independence day. He and his students have cleaned the clay yard in a
very careful way, and then have inscribed the map of India in chalk
powder upon it. Doloti, a bonded labor prostitute, whose body has
been completely broken, drags herself back to the village in the dark.
Finally she knows she can't go any further, and she feels this beautifully
cleaned yard under her feet. So she falls and she dies. And on the
morning of Independence Day, when the people come to raise the flag,
they see this woman lying all over the map. All kinds of Indian dialects
and languages have been used in the story, including all the different
words that mean "bonded laborer." But in the end Mahasweta rises to a
 Interview with Gayatri Spivak 189

very elegant prose which is not used in "The Hunt," and she says, "Do-
loti's all over India."
The name "Doloti" is extraordinary because, in all of the northern
languages it means "traffic in wealth." But it is also the bonded labor-
er's proper name. The idea behind this final image is that, with the pas-
sage into neocolonialism, the indigenous structures in the new nation
simply took over the task of exploiting the bonded laborers, and so
nothing changed for them. So in a sense Doloti's body all over the map
of India is a spectacular inscription of that space which is displaced
from imperialism, culturalism, colonialism, empire, nation, and is out-
side the new nation formed by negotiated political independence.

AM: How would you comment on the ending of "The Hunt?" The uni-
versal is so plain and simple. She does away with the Collector. It's
somehow not complex.

GS: I have the feeling that in Mahasweta's short stories there is a cer-
tain reaction against the established style of Bengali modern and con-
temporary fiction. I think that's something one has to take into
account. I also feel that the idea of putting complex solutions aside can
be worked out just like personal choice has to be worked out. In "De-
fining the Statement," the central section of The Ideology of Knowl-
edge, Foucault says at a certain point, "I'm not interested in the depth
and richness of signification. I'm interested in poverty and rarefaction
of reference." So he's trying to catch at the skeleton in a discursive for-
mation rather than involve himself in the hermeneutic project of the
depth and richness of signifying practices. I think, given time, I could
make a relationship between these two influences, both important.
Certainly one wouldn't want to throw away the hermeneutics of signifi-
cation. Mahasweta's fiction encourages us to read it in the way I was
trying to read it, through parataxis and because it avoids, in some ways,
hypotaxis.
It also seems to me that in the story she is doing what I call "negotiat-
ing the structures of violence." We must foreground the fact that we are
not dealing just with this content, but the content-ness of this content
as arranged by other contents... you know, the production of versions
of the real. It's like playing tennis... you play by the rules of the game,
but also by the laws of nature. Like a physicist, you control the laws of
nature as much as you can... you can put a spin on the ball or smash it
and so on and so forth, but nonetheless, ultimately, you are playing by
those rules, just as much as you are playing the game as well as you
can.
901 Women & Performance

One of my students asked me, "How do you read the young tribal
women at the end of 'The Hunt?' Weren't they dancing?" The men
generally do this dance, but every twelve years the women do this
dance. When the women are dancing, they don't know why they are
dancing. The men know. But the women don't know. And so provoked
by James Watson's comment which I mentioned earlier, I thought,
here's the ethnic script, and here is Mary Oraon interpreted in such a
way that her action becomes political agency. To an extent the women
are repeating the structure given in the ritual so that the ritual can go
forward. But Mary has rewritten it, doing something transgressive with
it.
When Mary takes up the machete and kills the Collector in that way,
it seems to me that she is once again negotiating with the structures of
violence. We negotiate with these structures every day. This is not a
problem that can be solved, but just stating the problem makes it a
source of possibility. Whereas if it is not stated, in many ways we partic-
ipate in the production of a new Orientalism which may look different
from the old one. But neocolonialism allows the aspiring colonial to
monumentalize herself in various ways.
As I said earlier, what Mary Oraon does in the story should not be
taken as a blueprint for political or interventionist action in any field.
These are paralogical stories. I don't think theory is just written in ex-
pository prose. To the extent to which theory is instanciated in the pro-
duction of a story, the relationship between them is askew,
asymmetrical, not direct. In fact, the problem with Marxism is that it
has said that theory and practice are united in the concept. That brings
in all kinds of censorship. If one recognizes that theory and practice
always bring each other to crisis, and that's a productive crisis, not a
sign of paralysis-I think one can make way for this moment as well as
the other moment. If one acknowledges the limits of one's practice, I
think a collectivity will emerge.

AM: So it's a ritual, then, that has happened.

GS: It's a reinscription of the ritual, yes.

A M : . . . from a simple reversal into a sort of collective community

transformation.

GS: I believe that's what's going on. It's a reinscription of the enable-
ment that is given by the ritual. And in fact, that's why I called it "The
Hunt." I didn't think it through at the time; this discussion is making
 Interview with Cayatri Spivak 191

that more accessible to me. The word in Bengali could mean "The
Prey," but I had trouble calling it that.

SS: So the Bengali word could mean both the victim, the person who is
being killed, and the act of killing?

GS; Yes, by keeping it as "The Hunt" I felt, and I feel, that the idea of
the ritual is stronger, because the title emphasizes that there is a real
thing going on between Mary and the Collector, not just an individual
act. And by making her the not-quite-Indian (because the tribals are
not inscribed in the national anthem), not-quite-white, and not-quite-
tribal, therein is the agent of the translation. And my emphasis on the
importance of the fact that we are post-colonials, and that post-coloni-
als are also investigators.

SS: Given our talk for several hours, would it be possible for the phrase
"feminist ethnography" to mean something, and could you speak
about what it might mean?

GS: Well, it would seem to me that the inscription of women's body

within the value coding of cultures has always been elsewhere. If you
want to look at individuals rewriting scripts in the context of the United
States (since I believe in anthropologizing the West as well as well as
the East), one of the really important things about women entering na-
tional agency through constitutional amendments and transformative
opinions, is that woman has never been coded as the subject of the ethi-
cal universal. That is the place of the persistent critique.
The most important critique of the European ethical universal came
when decolonization began in the second wave after the Algerian revo-
lution in the 60s—all that stuff which is called poststructuralism these
days. It is so paradoxical and ironic that the real sites for its use are the
places which paid the price of the enlightenment: the decolonized
spaces. People ask idiotic questions like "How can you use Western
theory?", when in those places the regulative political concepts came
from the enlightenment: sovreignty, democracy, socialism, culturalism,
secularism. Nobody would deny that those Western theories are cor-
rect in the South African struggle for nationhood.
Women were obliged to become the custodians of culture by the peo-
ple who had travelled with cultural imperialism. Women's space was
therefore removed from the mainstream. If one reads development ec-
onomics, one sees that the indigenous structures of patriarchy have in
fact collaborated with this neocolonialist program. Women have been
the gender that was not coded for the subjectship of the ethical univer-
921 Women & Performance

sal. And at the other end, they are the gender that is bearing the brunt
both of indigenous political structures—which are helping transna-
tional capitalism in many ways—and social national production.
It seems a paradox, but those in the "other" space can use this instru-
ment that was developed under other circumstances and conditions.
Paradoxically, as we are critiquing the great knowledges of history, the
real agents—if you like that word—of the inscription then become the
ones who have been systematically separated from those knowledges.
So I would say that Mahasweta's story can, to an extent, also remind us
of that strange gift which wasn't an enabling violation. It was a disabl-
ing violation. But now that we are looking for a way of reinscribing, it is
the dis-ablement that becomes the instrument of unlearning the old
privileges.