[Reader-list] Kashmir has become the whore of academia

[Ana Valdés]

Dear friends, please accept my apologies if my views seem tainted of
ignorance! But they are posted in a honest intellectual try to analyze and
discuss our complex world. I should love to visit India and I have been
invited several times for friends in Kerala and Bangalore, but I didn't have
the means yet to achieve these goal.
For them not knowing Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak I should recommend you to
make a Google searching about her. She is one of the most brilliant scholars
and writers in our time, specialized in French psychoanalyze and
postcolonial studies. She defined herself as a post-marxist and her best
book, "Can the subaltern speak?" is based in the writings of the Marxist
Italian writer and philosopher Antonio Gramsci, who was so pivotal. for the
books written by Negri and Hardt, Empire and Multitude.
Her translation of Derrida was a great contribution to the understanding of
him.
Spivak is a tenured professor at Columbia University but she is a passionate
and engaged woman in not denial, she is born in India and raised in India
and she founded a project in West Bengal.

*Spivak founded The Pares Chandra and Sivani Chakravorty Memorial Education
Project, a not-for-profit 501(c)3 organization, in 1997, to provide a
primary education of quality for children in some of the poorest regions of
the globe, continuing work that Spivak had started doing in 1986. The
Project currently operates schools in rural areas of West Bengal, India. By
setting up schools and giving sustained training to local teachers who
operate them with the help of local supervisors, the Project seeks to offer
children in these areas the resources to enter the mainstream education
system for high school and beyond. The Project is committed to using the
existing state curriculum and textbooks to train teachers, in the belief
that by using these materials they can better enable their students to enter
the national education system on equal terms with others. "Since India
constantly brags about being the world's largest democracy, and this is a
large sector of the electorate, what I'm trying to do is develop rituals of
democratic habits," she said of the
Project."<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gayatri_Chakravorty_Spivak#cite_note-10>

And she is not only founding it, she is committed to it and teach every year
in rural schools.

Ana


On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 10:56 AM, Samvit <samvitr at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ana,
> I think you must visit India. You will see things first hand. I have
> traveled to the nook and corner of this vast nation and I have found
> women rubbing shoulders with men in all fields. In many fields woman
> have outpaced men. In the Indian society women are treated at par with
> men.
> Roy is a small fry here. She seems to be famous outside India only,
> and yes, in Kashmir. She knows the right places to get publicity. It
> is a typical colonial mindset where some people prefer to be known
> abroad than on the street of their country. You may feel that I am
> biased and I will respect your view. But it is better to be judgmental
> about things only when you seen/tried them first hand.
>
> I have met women who drive trains, buses, are great dancers,
> businessmen, chefs, actors....they are everywhere. India is a vast
> country and it does have its flaws and we all are trying to make
> things better. Science tells us that there is nothing "perfect" in
> this world. We are all learning. Give us some time. Let us overcome
> our warts.
> -Samvit
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 3:10 PM, Ana Valdes <agora158 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Spivak, Roy, it seems only the women who had achieved some international
> presence has the power to provoke and upset.
> > I met Spivak several times and I am always happy surprised for her
> intellectual capacity of renovation and her views.
> > By the way some years ago she told me she spent several months each year
> in India teaching in à very humble  ways in à school for girls in the
> country, far fr.o.m. cities and commodities.
> > Ana
> >
> > Skickat från min iPhone
> >
> > 8 nov 2010 kl. 10:13 skrev Aalok Aima <aalok.aima at yahoo.com>:
> >
> >> comment made in a facebook group by shantiveer kaul:
> >>
> >> " Kashmir has become the whore of academia - subject to merchandizing
> and ‘intellectual summation-characterization’ of essential reductionists/
> fake modernists; Spivak spewing senors and senoras at a safe
> 'university-funded' distance – recording only the passing of a minor, or the
> making of a major academic event; who spout Deleuze and Guattari at the drop
> of a bonnet, deconstruct pointless death into a reading of martyrdom that
> can be packaged and sold at Oxford if not at Harrods and who co-opt our
> brightest young minds to become their articled clerks. We live in sad
> times."
> >>
> >> ......... aalok aima
> >>
> >>
> >>
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