Volume 19, 2007 - Brown University

Writing, Translation, and Re-Constellation 135
Spivak believes that Mahasweta Devi’s interpretation is inadequate because it
ignores the status of the subaltern. Mahasweta Devi sees the nurse Jashoda as a
symbol of post-imperialist India; Jashoda’s breast cancer represents the fate that
the country will suffer if people neglect its development (Spivak, 1988: 244). In
order to construct a reading that fits with her subject-positions as historian and
teacher of literature, Spivak must reject the author’s own opinion. Furthermore,
she underscores that Mahasweta Devi’s interpretation is a subject-position. The
indefinite article emphasizes that the author’s subject-position is not the only
one and that other interpretations of the text are possible.
In order to make her argument more credible, Spivak attempts to deconstruct
the subject-position of the reader. She claims that although educated people
realize that external factors influence interpretation, “when, however, it
comes to their own presuppositions about the ‘natural’ way to read literature,
they cannot admit that this might be a construction as well, that this subjectposition
might also be assigned” (Spivak, 1988: 246). Spivak suggests that a
constructed notion of the correct way to read literature might influence literary
critics, so that they adhere to certain interpretations unknowingly. The idea that
the subject-position of such a reader is “assigned” suggests that societal forces
can determine the opinions of a critic. In this case, critics who believe that they
should respect the authority of the author might refuse to challenge Mahasweta
Devi’s interpretation. According to Spivak, such an interpretation would also be
congruent with the nationalist forces that draw attention to the state and ignore
the subaltern. Her comments are similar to Matthew Arnold’s ideas about the
“mist” of cultural assumptions that influence a translator’s interpretation of
Homer.
After Spivak begins her deconstructionist reading of “Stanadayini,” she
makes a bold assertion of her own authority as a critic. When she writes, “Any
reader nervous about the fact that Mahasweta Devi has probably not read much
of the material critically illuminated by her text should stop here,” she defines
the audience that she hopes to reach (Spivak, 1988: 247). She stages her interpretation
for those who are not overly concerned with authorial authority
because their own readings of the story are incongruent with Mahasweta Devi’s.
Therefore, Spivak makes her presence as a literary critic clear and paves the way
for her own Marxist and feminist interpretations of the text.
Both Spivak and Arnold believe that the text has a greater authority than
the writers, readers, and translators who interpret it. Spivak justifies her re-constellation
of Mahasweta Devi’s story when she comments that the text always
“upstages” the writer. The concept of upstaging suggests that the text must be
the center of attention, and is similar to Arnold’s idea that English translations
cannot live up to the original Homer. According to Arnold, those who can read
ancient Greek are the only ones who can determine if a translator has attempted
to upstage the original text by imposing his own perspective on it. Since Arnold
can read both English and Ancient Greek, he sees himself as qualified to judge
translations of Homer. He believes that the translator’s goal is to render the text