A chunk of work that needs to be shared
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
The Engaged Feminist Intellectual
What comes to me very strongly is that in many ways in order
for what we recognize as feminism to operate as an engagement we must presume
socialist norms, which are written within capitalism, because it means turning
the use of capital from capitalist to socialist uses.
Where there is no agency of turning and development of
capitalism not noticeable except as remote victim, today the task has been
picked up by the international civil society, which I have described as
"self-selected moral entrepreneurs" on many occasions. These people
are confident that gender redress can be computed in terms of making the
phenomena of gendering accessible by general terms provided by world governance
style documents, every unit in fought over in prep com meetings, everything
most simply understood, as in a PowerPoint presentation; as in knowledge
management plans, decisions made by logic rather than subject-engagement.
A certain kind of anti-capitalism, not invariably present in
this sector which is often dependent upon, and happily so, upon corporate
funding, substitutes for a proactive socialism here. The slow and deep language
learning that must accompany accessing cultural infrastructures so real long
term change might be envisaged is largely absent.
The distinction between problem solving and the un coercive
rearrangement of desires between doctors without Borders and primary health
care, let us say, is often ignored here. This
kind of "feminist engagement" is not noticeably
"intellectual," if the intellectual is a person who analyses the
existing situation before choosing the most convenient instrument for solving a
problem that has been constructed as a "case" by looking at the grid
established by people in a completely different level of capitalist society.
In this sort of below the radar rural situation, in eastern
India, at least (that is another problem, we tend to generalize too soon,
because of the alliances of the international civil society with the benevolent
feudal feminism of the global South), the problem-solving approach can apply to
clearly visible cases of domestic violence.
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