Outside in the Teaching Machine

Gayatri Spivak - teacher, feminist, cultural critic, literary theorist - addresses the crisis of multiculturalism. How are debates over the canon, ethnicity, Third World feminism, and the new cultural studies shaping our understanding of 'culture'? One of the most dynamic scholars in America today, Spivak's writing and lectures have become crucial to the understanding of both feminism and cultural studies. In this major new collection of her essays, she addresses a wide range of issues affecting multicultural thinking in the university, such as the study of the United States Constitution, ideas of post-coloniality, and international feminism. These fourteen recent essays brilliantly cover a wide range of issues and problems, from Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses and the film Sammy and Rosie Get Laid , to the fiction of Mahasweta Devi and Foucault's concept of 'power/knowledge'. Spivak warns us against false anthropological representation, the supposition that everything which emerges from a post-colonial nation is 'necessarily right,' and the easy embrace of a cultural studies insufficiently informed by the traditional disciplines it seeks to augment or displace. With a translator's ear, Spivak listens for difference, and urges us to hear in our language and in our culture the limits and possibilities of expression. Outside in the Teaching Machine is a rich and passionate argument for a fuller, more responsible understanding of different cultures. It will be required reading for anyone interested in cultural studies, feminism, and critical theory.Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty is the author of 'Outside in the Teaching Machine' with ISBN 9780415904896 and ISBN 0415904897.