Chakravorty Spivak Quotes & Sayings

In this era of global capital triumphant, to keep responsibility alive in the reading and teaching of the textual is at first sight impractical. It is, however, the right of the textual to be so responsible, responsive, answerable. The "planet" is, here, as perhaps always, a catachresis for inscribing collective responsibility as right. Its alterity, determining experience, is mysterious and discontinuous - an experience of the impossible. It is such collectivities that must be opened up with the question "How many are we?" when cultural origin is detranscendentalized into fiction - the toughest task in the diaspora. — Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

There is, in my mind, no higher compliment to pay a non-fiction book than to say it reads like a novel. — Jon Weisman

Such as we are made of, such we be. — William Shakespeare

Love is just a four letter word! (laughter) Because that's what it is for me! I don't know what it means... I mean, love didn't work, whatever the hell that is, in my life. Alone I am. I'm not particularly into self-love either. I'm quite prepared to die. And all the objects of my love slowly trail off. — Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

When America has been discovered in America it will be discovered in Europe. They are looking for America now. — Gerald Stanley Lee

THE WOOKIEE SIGHED, a low rumble, and gazed at the medal in his palm. On the humans it looked substantial and solid, fit to be worn around the neck. In his hand the scale was altered, and if he brought his fingers together he could conceal it entirely. A pretty thing, hastily engraved in a stylized flower meant perhaps to recall the emblem of the Republic. At its heart a rising sun, halfway above the horizon, both symbolized the dawn of a new hope in the wake of this victory over the Galactic Empire and recalled the Death Star's destruction. — Greg Rucka

If one really thinks about the body as such, there is no possible outline of the body as such. — Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Politics of Friendship is, in other words, only a book between covers. For the real text, you must enter the classroom, put yourself to school, as a preview of the formation of collectivities. A single "teacher's" "students," flung out into the world and time, is, incidentally, a real-world example of the precarious continuity of a Marxism "to come," aligned with grassroots counterglobalizing activism in the global South today, with little resemblance to those varieties of "Little Britain" leftism that can take on board the binary opposition of identity politics and humanism, shifting gears as the occasion requires. — Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

The misfortune is that many people, men and women, think that the perfect face has no flaws, no pores in the skin; and that gives unrealistic levels of esteem. Somebody feels they're not right because they haven't got that type of refinement. — Douglas Kirkland

Autobiography is a wound where the blood of history does not dry. — Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Food is the place where you begin. — Vandana Shiva

Deconstruction seems to offer a way out of the closure of knowledge. By inaugurating the open-ended indefiniteness of textuality-by thus 'placing in the abyss' (mettre en abime), as the French expression would literally have it-it shows us the lure of the abyss as freedom. The fall into the abyss of deconstruction inspires us with as much pleasure as fear. We are intoxicated with the prospect of never hitting bottom — Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Cultural Studies and Ethnic Studies are on the rise, and many minority protests that I have witnessed say, in effect, "Do not racially profile us, we are Americans. — Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

The social science fear the radical impulse in literary studies, and over the decades, we in the humanities have trivialized the social sciences into their rational expectation straitjackets, not recognizing that, whatever the state of the social sciences in our own institution, strong tendencies toward acknowledging the silent but central role of the humanities in the area studies paradigm are now around. — Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Having the opportunity to play a strong woman is a good one. — Kari Matchett

So capital is in fact borderless; that's the problem. On the other hand capital has to keep borders alive in order for this kind of cross-border trade to happen. So therefore the idea of borderlessness has a performative contradiction within it which has to be kept alive. — Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Once a person has become detached from his possessions, his customary duties, his moments of solitude, where is he? What is he? — Patricia Highsmith

I think being organized should be in your lifestyle. I run a few different businesses, so I have to be organized. And I think everyone around me will also feel organized. To have chaos going on, it just doesn't work. — Olivia Palermo

This is a turf battle. They are saying, 'The songwriters aren't getting paid.' Baloney. Songwriters are getting paid. They're paid sync rights and (mechanical) rights. They aren't getting paid for the public performance in a download because there is no public performance in a download. — Jonathan Potter

But what is shape? Only a cup for the blazing soul that God provides us all. — Ray Bradbury

When we seem to have won or lost in terms of certainties, we must, as literature teachers in the classroom, remember such warnings
let literature teach us that there are no certainties, that the process is open, and that it may be altogether salutary that it is so. — Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Nationalism can only ever be a crucial political agenda against oppression. All longing to the contrary, it cannot provide the absolute guarantee of identity. — Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

There is no regret God cannot redeem. — Mark Batterson

I can tan. I get tannish. It's not really tan, it's tannish. That kind of color. — Alan Tudyk