At Both Ends of the Spectrum

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

To read and write is not simply to learn to make and manipulate letters. Is reading and writing responsibly losing ground because of the many advantages of specifically electronic telecommunication? If you ask this kind of question, you are assuming one sort of society. Or can reading and writing not establish itself because of enforced illiteracy, which is quite often mistaken and celebrated by cultural relativists as orality? Now you are talking about another kind of situation. Or, indeed, can it not be practiced because of the trivialization of the humanities in the general education system, which cuts across the university system worldwide?

We betray contempt for the poor when we think of literacy merely as a primary vocational skill, although it is that too, and if we think employability is identical to freedom, although employability is indeed necessary for legitimate social mobility. I speak from experience. My mother was an indefatigable social worker. At age eleven I learned (I was a bit precocious) how to grade papers, because my mother worked day and night to make destitute widows employable. So I am not speaking out of some ivory tower sentiment. My mother and I talked about what employability meant since I was a pre-teen. I do believe that although employability is indeed necessary for legitimate social mobility, to equate it with freedom is a major mistake and it shows contempt for the poor. Have we ever known what it is to read and to write – two separate but related activities – performances that transform our selves and the world (it is not just learning to read and write but learning to read and write ourselves)? Yet it allows us to privatize the public sphere and to contextualize and decontexualize the other. At the same time, all reading transforms and holds the key to making public our most private being.