Frontier Congratulates
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Sourav Chattopadhyay

Few are those who are not familiar with the name of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. For the last 35 years–the readers of Frontier would know–she has consistently contributed to this weekly, founded by the legendary poet-journalist Samar Sen, every year. Prof Spivak holds the position of University Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. Besides, as an activist, she has been working for the theoretical and practical cause of pedagogy, especially rural education in India. Some of the frontier readers may be aware that what she has been doing in rural education for the last four decades is neither running a Bhadralok-styled NGO nor a simple variety of the much-lauded Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. She emphasises “imaginative training for epistemological performance”; for her, education is “uncoercive rearrangement of desire.”

In recognition of her lifelong contribution to the fields of literary theory, philosophy, and postcolonial studies, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has been awarded the 2025 Holberg Prize. Frontier extends its heartfelt congratulations to her on this. The announcement was made by the Holberg Committee, highlighting Spivak’s immense influence as a scholar, educator, and activist. The citation, undersigned by Heike Krieger, Holberg Committee Chair goes as follows:

The Holberg Committee Citation
Born in Kolkata in 1942, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is a graduate of the University of Calcutta and of Cornell University. Holding the post of University Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, she is one of the most influential global intellectuals today. Spivak continues to shape several fields in an interdisciplinary manner. These include comparative literature, translation, postcolonial studies, political philosophy, and feminist theory. Her scholarship has been translated into well over twenty languages. She has taught and lectured in more than fifty countries and has received nearly fifty honorary doctorates and prizes from across the globe.

Spivak’s essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988) has become a formative text within postcolonial studies and beyond. Its global impact exemplifies her challenge to Western scholarship that occludes the perspectives of minoritised groups and their struggles. It was groundbreaking in starting from the experience of women in colonial India to examine questions of voice and power. Her concept of “planetarity” in her book Death of a Discipline (2003) further developed this critical approach, offering an ethical alternative to “globalisation”. Among her many influential books are Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999), An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization (2012), and Ethics and Politics in Tagore, Coetzee and Certain Scenes of Teaching (2018).

Spivak is committed to an interdisciplinary critique of structures of power and knowledge in an unequal world. In this sense, the labour of translation becomes an act of thinking through the limits of dominant modes of knowledge production. She defines translation as a profoundly philosophical and political act. Her highly influential English translations demonstrate her deep attention to multivocal and diverse epistemes. This is evident in her celebrated translations of Mahasweta Devi’s literary works from Bengali, as well as Derrida’s philosophical works and Aimé Césaire’s political writings from French.

As a public intellectual and activist, Spivak combats illiteracy in marginalized rural communities across several countries, including in West Bengal, India where she has founded, funded and participated in educational initiatives. For Spivak, rigorous creativity must intersect with local initiatives to provide alternatives to intellectual colonialism.

Her concepts, such as “strategic essentialism” and “global criticality,” are now widely used and debated. Spivak’s work challenges readers, students, and researchers to “train the imagination” through a sustained study of literature and culture. Taking the core of Western thought as an object of critical analysis, she has inspired, enabled, and supported otherwise inconceivable lines of critical interrogations, both at the centres and margins of global modernity. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is a highly worthy recipient of the 2025 Holberg Prize.
(Collected from https://holbergprize.org)

This selection has a stirring impact not only on global academia but also on those associated with Spivak’s activism and work at the grassroots level in India. The news of Spivak receiving the Holberg prize has been the cause of celebration for many members of the Sabar community in Purulia. As reported by journalist Sanchita Mukhopadhyay in EiSamay, Spivak’s long involvement in the welfare of the Sabar people has left a lasting bond with them. Beginning in 1988, Spivak collaborated with the Paschimbanga Kheriya-Sabar Kalyan Samiti (estd. 1968) and established four non-formal schools entirely through personal expenses, four non-formal schools for the Sabars in the villages of Kuda, Janara, Byangthupi, and Akarbaid. Often working with Mahasweta Devi, Spivak remained deeply invested in the working of these schools, visiting Purulia every few years to remain in conversation with the stakeholders. The schools were forcibly closed by the local landowner in 2006. Subsequently, she worked selflessly for 24 years, living among the Lohars in Birbhum. When they became enamored with capitalism and felt she was no longer needed, she established one, then two, and now, perhaps three schools in another "backward" area, driven by local demand. She insists that her approach is to learn from below, to learn from her mistakes, and that her motive is to see if the intuitions of democracy can be pedagogically transmitted to the children of the very poor and the work is to attempt to repay ancestral debt, although that is de facto impossible.

Prasanta Rakshit, the director of the Paschimbanga Kheriya-Sabar Kalyan Samiti, effusively responded to the news of Spivak being awarded the Holberg prize: “Many may be unaware of all that she has done for marginalised people, especially children and women, but we know it. The Sabars of Purulia know it. After all, Gayatridi had taken such innovative steps for their education.”

Out of concern for the children’s nutrition, Spivak set up a system of mid-day meals in these schools. This predated even the governmental schemes that would later be put in place for all classes till the eighth grade. Meghnad Sabar, Spivak’s student from one of these schools, mentioned: “I have studied in her school. I am very happy to hear the news. No words can express what she has done for us, Sabars. I have eaten her mid-day meals. These meals were crucial for us in these lands. Many among us today have received higher education and become well-established, all thanks to her.”

Nandalal Rajwar, a teacher at the school in Byangthupi, fondly remembers, “Every year, she visited us and provided training on how to teach the children. Following her approach made the children so much more interested in the lessons. The concept of mid-day meals was hers too. This remarkably increased the attendance rate of Sabar children who were critically behind in education. This is still ongoing. That was the beginning of the Sabars’ battle against illiteracy.”

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 41, Apr 6 - 12, 2025