Spivak and Parry Notes

separately from the putative “author” – the text emerges out of a set of
social, political, and aesthetic forces that the author “channels” more than
“controls”
Spivak is explicitly uninterested in the author’s intention; she is interested in the text’s
“usefulness” in exploring the dynamics of individualism and imperialism (810-811)
Spivak reads the novel as a type of re-writing of The Tempest only here the
“Other” (the Creature/Caliban) refuses to be “selfed” (as Safie has been or
Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea); he cannot be brought under the law [and we
can tell here, that Spivak is rooting for the Creature – she celebrates his
refusal to be brought under the rule of law]
in a persuasive reading of the novel’s conclusion, Spivak argues that (in fact) the
Creature’s fate remains utterly unknown – “lost in darkness and distance”
further supported by the fact that we don’t have evidence of Margaret Saville (the
ideal English female subject) receiving the letters – the frame is open (268)
In a revised version of this essay, Spivak reads these texts as “supplements” of each
other because each contains what the other lacks; her refusal to treat the intentionality
of the author as well as her use of the term “supplement” reveals yet another critical
dimension to her work ; a postcolonial feminist, she draws upon deconstruction as
well
Benita Parry, [Two Native Voices in Wide Sargasso Sea] (from “Problems in
Current Theories of Colonial Discourse” pub. 1987)
Takes explicit issue with Spivak’s deconstructionist response to identity, particularly at
the end of the excerpt:
Spivak’s deliberated deafness to the native voice where it is to be heard, is at
variance with her acute hearing of the unsaid in modes of Western feminist
thought . . . in her own writings [she] severely restricts (eliminates?) the space in
which the colonized can be written back into history, even when ‘interventionist’
possibilities’ are exploited through the deconstructive strategies devised by the
post-colonial intellectual. (250)
Antoinette must (in Spivak’s articulation) be sacrificed to Jane’s “subjectconstitution”
and Christophine cannot be heard at all
In only recognizing Antoinette as playing “the part of the woman from the colonies”
who is silenced and “unselved,” Spivak (according to Parry) misses the opportunity
to hear Christophine, a “native” agent