2. Key Terms: hegemony, subaltern, revisionist history, traditional vs modern model of subjectivity, representation
Preliminary Concepts Needed to Understand Spivak:
1. Hegemony: the political, institutional, ideological root of power
(Status Quo)
2. Subaltern: (for Spivak) relates to limited or inaccessibility to hegemonic power.
3. Subject/Subjectivity:
a. Traditional Model: Subject is “undivided” i.e., desire and
interests are untied [general description].
i. Desire may be a facet of the unconscious and thus the
subject is said to arise from “parasubjective culture”
b. Marxist Subjectivity: Subject is profoundly divided, and this division is the condition for subjectivity.
c. Class Consciousness → Subjectivity (For Marx)
d. Class Consciousness:
i. Political Identity
ii. Not a consequence of familial collectivity
4. Two forms of Representation:
a. Representation: as Vertreten: as in political representation, e.g., representational democracy.
b. Representation: as Darstellen: as in re-presentation is economic value.
i. The role of aesthetics / philosophy
ii. E.g., Aristotle’s form/function and the table/sled example. [Re-presentation].
iii. Re-presentation is thus technically functional transformation.