Revisiting Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak” through the lens of affect theory: Can the subaltern be felt?
ISSN: 1443-9883
Article publication date: 7 February 2018
Issue publication date: 10 May 2018
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to revisit Spivak’s seminal essay “Can the Subaltern Speak” and the perennial challenges of researchers to collect information about the Other, focusing on the recent developments in affect theory.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper brings into the conversation the recent work on affect and sentimentality by Lauren Berlant with Spivak’s claims in the essay concerning the representation of the subaltern by scholars and researchers. The paper draws on Berlant’s work to trouble the liberal culture of “true feeling” as well as the liberal subject implied in Spivak’s essay as a subject who is “actively speaking.”
Findings
Recent theoretical developments on the affect theory make an important intervention to the perennial methodological tensions about representation, ontology and epistemology – as raised by Spivak and others over the years – and inspire new ways of thinking with the tools of doing qualitative research.
Originality/value
Bringing into the conversation, the affect theory and Spivak’s iconic essay have important methodological implications for qualitative research.
Keywords
Citation
Zembylas, M. (2018), "Revisiting Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak” through the lens of affect theory: Can the subaltern be felt?", Qualitative Research Journal, Vol. 18 No. 2, pp. 115-127. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-D-17-00048
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited