In her 1988 postcolonial studies essay, literary critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak famously asked, “Can the subaltern speak?” Thirty-six years later, a Dalit student responded, “If the subaltern cannot speak, he shall abuse” and threw in an expletive for good measure.
The controversy broke out at a lecture on ‘W. E. B. Du Bois and his vision of democracy’ at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), where Spivak had been called as a guest speaker. During the Q/A session, a student ventured to pose his question to Spivak, but was unable to as she interrupted him thrice to correct his pronunciation of ‘Du Bois’.
Spivak Who? pic.twitter.com/T3knEqX6Rm
— Anshul Kumar (@notsomeritorios) May 23, 2024
Later, the student, Anshul Kumar, who calls himself the founding professor and chairperson of the Centre for Brahmin Studies on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), claimed his space on the platform to wryly remark that the ‘subaltern’ can speak, but can he finish his question?
The exchange has since kicked off a debate on Brahmanical hegemony on education and language, class politics, and the pedantry of academia, among other things.
Kulin wat? pic.twitter.com/rHJmsAhaUE
— Anshul Kumar (@notsomeritorios) May 23, 2024
The pronunciation of the name ‘DeBois’
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W.E.B. Du Bois, the pronunciation of whose name is at the centre of the fracas, was an African-American sociologist, historian, author, and activist who co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and led the civil rights movement in the United States during the first half of the 20th century.
Spivak’s repeated corrections stemmed from the fact that Du Bois was extremely particular about the pronunciation of his name. Aldon Morris, writing for the UC Press Blog, says: “Responding to a speaking invitation by the Chicago Sunday Evening Club in 1939, Du Bois made it clear that: ‘My name is pronounced in the clear English fashion: Du, with u as in Sue; Bois, as in oi in voice. The accent is on the second syllable.”
#WEBDuBois was often specific about the spelling & pronunciation of his name. Then, as today, many people believed it was the French pronunciation, but he was clear. See this 1939 letter to the Chicago Sunday Evening Club where he is very specific. https://t.co/qVdSqI8rrX pic.twitter.com/cpjzMAsOV7
— Shawn Leigh Alexander (@S_L_Alexander) November 19, 2018
When Kumar kept on mispronouncing the name of the American sociologist despite her correcting him, Spivak reportedly observed that deliberate mispronunciation of a name is behaviour associated with the upper caste, and somebody pursuing ‘Brahmin Studies’ ought to know better. At which point, Kumar quipped that Spivak was herself a “Brahmin,” a caste identity from which Spivak was quick to distance herself.
The subaltern will speak, but will he be heard?
Some, including Spivak herself, have called the 28-year-old scholar rude, not just for his interaction with the professor, but also for the swear words (some of them with misogynistic import) that he has used for Spivak on X since the lecture. Supreme Court senior advocate Karuna Nundy, citing a tweet of Kumar’s with expletives used for the Columbia professor, wrote on X that “Spivak was rude in response to rudeness.”
Others have pointed out that Spivak repeatedly correcting Kumar’s pronunciation in public and not allowing him to complete his question was a “snobbish” act of linguistic domination, especially given the enduring elitist fascination with English in India, where proficiency in the language is often used as a marker of social status and privilege. Historically, gatekeeping knowledge and language has been a tool to assert caste and class superiority. To those policing his language, Kumar says on X that the bigger issue was that “Spivak can rudely punch me down by rudely asking who are you”.
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Asked for her take on the matter, Professor Manju Jaidka, director of humanities, SRM University, Delhi-NCR, Sonepat, who has previously interacted with Spivak at a symposium, says: “Madame Spivak carries an air of superiority and has the dubious reputation of exhibiting rudeness across various platforms. In fact, the fame she has acquired in academia should humble her. At the same time, those of us – lesser mortals, in her view – who encounter her high-handedness need to preserve our dignity and refrain from stooping to petty name-calling. The gift of language that sets us apart from other creatures should be wielded with restraint and dignity.”
To those fastidious about pronunciation, Kumar cites on X Du Bois’ Criteria of Negro Art (1926): “They insisted he simply follow the accents and idioms of standard English, thereby killing not only his personal but his racial spirit and distinction.”
He also uses snippets of Guyanese-born poet John Agard’s poem, Listen Mr. Oxford Don to drive home his point. The poet mixes Caribbean dialect and formal British English to rebel against the colonial imposition of language: “I ent have no gun I ent have no knife but mugging de Queen’s English is the story of my life I don’t need no axe to split/ up yu syntax I don’t need no hammer to mash/ up yu grammar”
So mek dem send one big word after me
I ent serving no jail sentence
I slashing suffix in self-defence
I bashing future wit present tense
and if necessaryI making de Queen’s English accessory/ to my offence
– John Agard
— Anshul Kumar (@notsomeritorios) May 22, 2024
Who is the subaltern?
Simply put, the term subaltern refers to a person or thing of inferior rank or status. In postcolonial theory, the term refers to people in the lower social classes or displaced and marginalised groups.
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Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci used the term subaltern to discuss the hegemony of the ruling classes over subordinate classes, since then the word has been widely used in postcolonial studies, most notably by Spivak and historian Ranajit Guha. The term has been subsumed by Marxist, feminist, and Dalit studies, among other disciplines.
It was Spivak herself, who in her essay, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ contended that when intellectuals are trying to give voice to the oppressed, this act remains implicated in the oppressor’s discourse – it produces subalternity and the subaltern as a passive object who is spoken for. Famous as Spivak’s essay is for its seminal ideas, it is also equally notorious for being abstruse.
