Derrida and Spivak

Deconstructuralistism and Post-Colonialism

‘The question of deconstruction is the question of translation’ (Leitch 2000: 1815), Derrida wrote. His implication is as deceptively simple and transparent as it is challenging. What Derrida intends with this statement might be considered the backbone to any theory of thinking.

Derrida seems to invite readers, the translators of his own work just as he exhorts them to be of all written texts, to apply his statement to any system of thought. Spivak does so, and finds that deconstructuralism as espoused by Derrida has become politicised. As such, it cannot rise above what it exhorts of its followers.

Derrida’s thesis to understanding the written word is that the assumed superiority of the written text is based on a) Western ethnocentrism and b) the logocentric belief of the superiority of the written word over orality.

Spivak finds that Derrida’s deconstructuralism fails to meet the challenge of understanding the intricacies of post-colonialism. In Spivak’s view, with their thinking that is based on Marxism, deconstructuralists overlook the female contribution to it. Adding insult to injury, rather than allowing critical readers to conceptually (re-) write texts into their own meaning and understanding - the very basis of deconstructuralism, deconstructuralists fall into the historically biased and powerful position of interpreting texts for readers. Worse, without realising their actions, deconstructuralists inadvertently begin again to essentialise the subaltern and consequently to assume they speak for the subaltern.

Spivak’s contention that Derrida does not comprehend post-colonialism is a challenge to one of the tenets of Derrida theory. If there is truth to Spivak’s contention, might it in some part be due to Derrida’s own reluctance to ‘set meaning in stone’? To do so only serves to then set in stone the very medium of language that he says is innately fluid in meaning.

If writing is Western ethnocentric as Derrida claims, has he not somehow taken into consideration that it will not extend to understanding post-colonialism as a result of its Western bias? In this small respect, does Spivak find fault in an area in which Derrida has already allowed has an inherent fault, in which case Spivak is identifying that fault; naming it?

Spivak may be correct in her belief that Derrida’s thinking does not include the post-colonial. But that his thinking can be extended to it, seems, to me, to have been intended in his thesis, as he maintains that what is important is how we read; how we interpret. What he fails to address, and this is too Spivak’s point, is that despite deconstruction, left unveiled is the network of embedded texts that inform opinions; that inform how, where and why texts might be deconstructed.

Bibliography

Leitch, Vincent B. (ed). 2000.

The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.

New York: WW. Norton & Company.