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

Mon Nov 8 16:39:43 IST 2010

ana

(since you have copied the mail to me)

i do apologise for my lack of knowledge about spivak ...... comes out of my lack of interest generally in academics or their work

after your mail, i did try to read up on her but unfortunately her work, i realise,  would be too terse for the layman that i am

what i can certainly appreciate is the work of "The Pares Chandra and Sivani Chakravorty Memorial Education Project" and the focus in:

"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."

a dire need in india

thanks

........... aalok aima

--- On Mon, 11/8/10, Ana Valdés <agora158 at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Ana Valdés <agora158 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Kashmir has become the whore of academia
To: "Samvit" <samvitr at gmail.com>
Cc: "Aalok Aima" <aalok.aima at yahoo.com>, "reader-list list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Date: Monday, November 8, 2010, 2:14 PM

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."

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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