Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is an Indian literary critic, theorist and a University Professor at Columbia University. She is best known for the monograph “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, considered a founding text of post-colonialism, and for her translation of Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology. She describes herself as a “practical Marxist-feminist-deconstructionist”. She is also a visiting faculty member at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Calcutta. Spivak is best known for her contemporary cultural and critical theories to challenge the “legacy of colonialism” and the way readers engage with literature and culture. She often focuses on the cultural texts of those who are marginalized by dominant western culture: the new immigrant, the working class, women and other “post-colonial subjects.” In March 2007, Spivak became the University Professor at the Columbia University, the only woman of color to be bestowed the University’s highest honour in its 264-year history.
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