Spivak vs. Deleuze and Foucault

In this episode, I present Spivak's critique of Deleuze and Foucault from "Can the Subaltern Speak?"
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[@theo_korner]

"And we can hear Zizek screaming in the background" really got me

[@vhyomet620]

Wonderful explanation. Thank you so much! You are absolutely brilliant.

[@quinncowdroy5164]

the way you speak is so satisfying. you're so pleasant to listen to.

[@pjeffries301]

Thank you once again.

[@nadjetbouzid5573]

Thank you for the awesome video. I was wondering if you can cover something related to geocriticism and spatiality

[@yeonsu0326]

not kidding... you are one of the best things that i ever stumbled upon during my master's program please do not stop thank you *do you also take requests just wondering

[@kaidenkondo5997]

Hi David, I am sorry if I am being irritating and I absolutely love your channel. I enjoyed your series on the Derrida/ Foucault debate, however, you forgot that Derrida responded to My Body, This Paper, This Fire, with his speech, "To Do Justice to Freud": The History of Madness in the Age of Psychoanalysis. I think it only fair to examine the last piece on the issue.

[@keanuclark4833]

Critiquing Deleuze and Foucault with.... Derrida. That was a curveball; wasn't expecting that

[@panoptos4163]

The archive of analysis you have accumulated is really something. I was looking at poll data across age groups on the question of whether or not people feel that democracy in US is weakening. The under 30 age group data is startling-most do not recognize the looming threat against democracy. Educationally speaking, we are failing our young people. Among other things, I blame the fact that colleges have drained the life-force of Humanities. All this to say, your work is, unfortunately, under-appreciated, which I argue speaks to serious defects in American society.

[@____toomuch____]

what is this comment, what amerikkkan democracy, the illegitimate settler state??

[@MeineKleineWeltOO]

@@____toomuch____ you speek about a legitimation of states and socialinstitutions thought blood and soil and romantisice the time befor colonialism where the people were soo authentic, peacefully, originalily, ther culture so natural... This negation of the meanings of social relation, the ambiguity and conflictful conditions of human existens and the fetishization of blood and soil seems coomon to me. Care about your democracy and freedom, the institutions and rights of every citensen. Great Videos on this channel! Greetings from germany!

[@crazysheepfilms]

The fact that you speak of a "looming threat against democracy" presupposes you hold the US to be a functioning democracy and not a de facto constitutional oligarchy, which exposes even deeper "defects" than the one you mention. The US can't fail its working class because, in its current form, it was never meant to support it. The disregard for humanities isn't a failure but a consequence of a state that values productivity and economic growth higher than life - i.e. it is not a phenomenon endemic to the US.

[@panoptos4163]

@@crazysheepfilms Thanks for your comment. I am not sure how my speaking to a particular threat to democracy necessarily presupposes my views on the current functionality of US democracy overall. Threats to the prospect of democracy in America exist regardless of the current state of US political institutions. For one, there is a bottom-up culture component that is distinct from, though not entirely exterior to, top-down governance frameworks. The truth you speak about this global hyper focus on growth and profit are tendencies that have posed a threat to democracy, historically. Such tendencies, I argue, are remedied, in part, by, wait for it, strong critically-minded Humanities-driven college programs without which the prospect for democracy withers and wanes regardless the current state of the American political system.

[@RetroCausation]

Meanwhile...Spivak, when visiting universities, refuses to speak with professors who did not get their PhD from an ivy league institution. And Derrida accuses Spivak of not being able to read in Spectres of Marx.

[@mates.2994]

Can you give some context/sources to this?

[@RetroCausation]

@@mates.2994 Derrida comment: Spectres of Marx pg. 223 Personal comment about Spivak: hearsay and personal experience

[@Mareyy666]

It's also worth noting that alongside her awful translation of Of Grammatology, which has led to pervasive misunderstanding of Derrida in the anglosphere (I recommend Jeff Bennington's 'Embarrassing Ourselves' for more context on where Spivak went wrong), Spivak never even bothered to publish her doctoral thesis and proffered a beginner's guide to Yeats instead.

[@WilliamofOckham990]

I like Spivak and I feel extremely uncomfortable critiquing a subaltern queer woc as a queer white man but you’re right

[@robtherub]

Like all marxists, fake rebels, snobs, liars and oppressors, buffoons cheering on moral and academic fraud as if it were oh so clever to tell lies, childish racist sexist fascists, marxists generally

[@demhai4560]

Wonderful work! Can you make it for Leonardo (liberation theology)? It seems very important in the arena of philosophy and theology. Thank you!

[@amelmahmoud8221]

THANK YOU VERY CLEAR AND USEFUL INDEED

[@nawfalAbdullah]

شكراً لك

[@ZombieFrankcom]

Thank you

[@brettbarker3073]

David could you please clarify what the category of “transparency”refers to in the context of this theory?

[@whereisawesomeness]

Just listened to the podcast episode, want to clarify: the lectures at the Collège de France comprise 13 volumes, not 8. Also, there’s his inaugural lecture there (‘The Order of Discourse’), which can be found in a few different places; my copy’s an appendix to the Vintage edition of The Archaeology of Knowledge, where they give it a different title for some reason

[@tcpip9999]

In over-emphasising the role of speech in systems of domination and resistance you miss a whole aspect of Foucault, present in AK onwards. And you seem to be rather relying on ideology to be a simple explanatory concept. And then false consciousness comes into the mix of course, again applied as if it was unproblematic. Interesting but a bit curious.

[@plinden]

His Judo is also solid, even in no-gi contexts. His ideas are just never going to throw any real light on anything. He will submit Lewis.

[@godspeed3832]

This is funny. There was an MMA fight between Sergey Spivak and Derrick Lewis but this ain't it, chief.

[@nawfalAbdullah]

Do you think that spivak read Edward Said's Orientalism ? He was dealing with Colonialism and post-colonialism and also with ideology ( capitalism in his case) by using deconstruction, history of ideas, power/knowledge in political view.

[@Ray-zy4be]

not sure if she read that specific text, but she does refer to his essay ‘Traveling Theory’ in ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’

[@vinayarun2287]

Lol definitely

[@raulduarteferraz]

of course she read it, ppl in middle school are working with parts of orientalism nowadays

[@itsirrelevant4565]

God: pestilence, wrath, floods. They’re so wicked. Moses: we could try explaining it to them God, Moses: thou shall not…. Sociopaths: okay guys, god said we’re supposed to spend the next 4,000 years legislating murder and theft. God: Here, I’m just going to send them a sweet communist carpenter with FREE WILL. Jesus: guys you have FREE WILL. Romans, Israeli priests: kill that man. Vatican: can you guys believe our merciful God sent his only son to die for our sins? Good thing we don’t have to think about it too much. No those aren’t books we’re burning. Humans: still traumatized and enslaved 2,000 years later.

[@87Julius]

I'm not sure if there is any insistance on speech as she says - it seems too easy, as Foucault explains by large in his Archeology of knowledge that his concept of discourse goes beyond speech acts. Same with Deleuze who has little to say about discourse or communication, but rather thinks through something like the affective turn. There is an accusation of formalism there but I think it misses the mark. And of course the concept of ideology is negated in their work, but it doesn't mean there is no concept of critique, as you no doubt know. Also these accusations of intellectuals being too elite to speak for the dominated are rather trite. They are sociologically obvious. And they smell of a kind of resentment, not to mention something like weaponizing suffering or injustice in an academic debate. One can spin around as much as they want in guilt of intellectual privilege, it isn't of much use. The figure of the "other" indeed seems very derridean in nature ; it has little place in Foucault or Deleuze, I would think. They aren't interested in the great other or western reason which seems to be an obsession for Derrida.

[@viljamtheninja]

"these accusations of intellectuals being too elite to speak for the dominated are rather trite" Yeah, that always struck me as a bizarre argument, especially from one whose writing is as intentionally obtuse as hers. She seems to be speaking *about* the fact that philosophical, academic texts have nothing to do with the reality of the "subaltern" experience, and therefore is meaningless when discussing "the subaltern" because it objectifies them into a stereotype. Or something. So... what's the point to what she's doing in any way, in her own perspective? It seems the only value *she* sees in what she's doing is to render academic discussion pointless by putting it in a sphere entirely separate from reality and turning it into a game for elites.

[@87Julius]

​@@viljamtheninja I don't have knowledge of her work but I'd say that in the case of Foucault and Deleuze, one has to note how they tried to salvage intellectual efforts from the imperative that it should be regulated under a political or moral imperative (namely a Marxist one). It isn't so much that they were aloof, petit-bourgeois and didn't try to make their thought resonate with social struggles, but they came in with the assumption that thought itself would be useless for anyone if it formulated what everybody already knew. I think one has to be sensitive to this, or we're just repeating history by accusing intellectuals to not fall in the party line. I'm not saying intellectuals shouldn't be critiqued by all means ; it's mostly a strategic, contextual question. Critiquing intellectuals as a way to advance in academia obviously comes off as hypocritical. I personally don't care if she's a hypocrite, as long as the work is useful for someone.

[@sammorrison8042]

This is so far removed from reality as in what is actually happening in the world. They have minor differences while agreeing with the overall attitude they have towards the institutions

[@adamlagerqvist8111]

But that is the spirit of philosophy isn't it thinking about things no matter how irrelevant.

[@artnarchist1392]

spivak needs help, she is really off her zoinkies. thanks for your work

[@queersnowflake]

Omg half of the video about subscribing and following

[@deviantvc]

Epistemic violence.

[@UrbanOspreys]

Surely you're a subaltern if you are territory. A figment in someone else's narcissism. Assumption: 'Women are the sexual territory and men are actors upon that territory.' The worst chauvinist filming the gang-bang of a drunk on his mobile phone thinks this, and popular feminists start their analysis from the same place, just with different moral lines. The assumption which may need to change is therefore under no impetus to do so. D&G resorted to categories to conclude the branching out of subjectivity but they were writing academic books, not live schizoanalysis where it might be tested both ways. They probably arrived at categories and conclusions despite themselves.

[@tiberiumofgreece437]

Does Spivak's analysis include the subjectivities of white or Christian slaves? Every critique is limited by the boundaries of the hegemonies that allows them to exist in the first place.

[@degenmilus8459]

it's 2022

[@skylarjon3464]

Touch grass, friend

[@Karamazov9]

This white victim complex is too much.

[@Firmus777]

Maybe we should just accept the orientalism. Long live the Foucaultian Jihad!