A lecture at Jawaharlal Nehru College (JNU) by literary critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak not too long ago veered into sudden territory, sparking a fiery debate that reverberated far past the confines of the lecture corridor. What started as an educational discourse progressively reworked right into a verbal conflict, ignited by a correction over pronunciation.
Ashok Kumar, self-identified as a Founding Professor and Chairperson of the Centre for Brahmin Research, posted a video of the incident on his X deal with, stirring the talk on-line.
Throughout the lecture, whereas making an attempt to pose a query, Kumar confronted interruptions from Spivak, who corrected his pronunciation of WEB Du Bois, a notable Black civil rights activist.
“Du Bois (pronounced Do Boys). Will you please be taught his identify? If you are going to speak concerning the man who is probably the very best historian and sociologist of the final century and that is alleged to be an elite college, then please take the difficulty to learn to pronounce his identify,” Spivak remarked.
Moreover, she clarified, “He’s an Englishman, not French”.
Kumar’s response, “Should you’re carried out with the minutiae…”, prompted Spivak to reprimand him for his perceived rudeness in direction of an aged girl. The moderator intervened, urging Kumar to maintain his questions concise.
Upon resuming his question, Kumar once more mispronounced Du Bois, main to a different correction from Spivak. His subsequent response led to Spivak ignoring his query, and the moderator moved on to different attendees.
Taking the matter to X, Kumar commented on Spivak’s claims of middle-class standing and referenced her lineage, together with connections to figures like social reformer Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. He highlighted the “irony” of the state of affairs by citing Spivak’s famend work, ‘Can the Subaltern Communicate’, which critiques the silencing of the maginalised voices.
After I stood as much as increase my questions after Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak was carried out together with her Lecture on WEB Du Bois and Democracy, This Bastard and Bitch Woman had the audacity to interrupt me thrice on my pronunciation of Du Bois. Can the Subaltern Communicate? pic.twitter.com/VkZI0eLewy
— Anshul Kumar (@notsomeritorios) May 21, 2024
Verbal Spat At JNU Lecture Corridor Reverberates On X
Kumar’s X put up ignited a heated on-line dialogue. Some customers condemned Spivak’s conduct as smug and unnecessarily humiliating, with author Meena Kandasamy sharing an identical destructive encounter with Spivak, advocating for a extra sleek method to pronunciation correction.
“Bullying somebody over their pronunciation is simply not carried out,” tweeted Kandasmay. “You slip in the fitting pronunciation, gracefully, if you repeat the identical factor, transfer on, and concentrate on the content material of what’s being mentioned. That is what a dedicated, devoted trainer does… To snub somebody over their pronunciation, in a corridor crammed to the brim with folks, reveals insecurity, pettiness, and the unwillingness to be magnanimous,” she added.
Conversely, some customers defended Sivak’s actions, asserting that Kumar warranted correction and praising Spivak for upholding commonplace of correct pronunciation.
“She was completely proper to highschool you,” acknowledged one consumer. Nevertheless, one other consumer remarked: “When the subaltern lastly spoke she rattled”.
Gayatri Charavorty Spivak, aged 82, is a extremely influential scholar identified for her multifaceted contributions to literary concept and feminism. As a college professor at Columbia College and a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. Spivak is thought for the character of her work which challenges patriarchal buildings, explores girls’s experiences in colonial and postcolonial contexts, and advocates for the amplification of marginalised voices. Notable amongst her works are ‘Can the Subaltern Communicate?’ and ‘In Different Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics’.