by Danny Butt
Abstract
Published
in 2011, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s An Aesthetic Education in the Era of
Globalization compiles and reconsiders two decades of her arguments about the
political constitution of the aesthetic subject. This review essay traces
arguments running through the book that reconcile the deconstructive politics
of the subject with the resurgent interest in universalist theories that
position themselves in relation to global technocapitalism. These arguments
provide us with methodological tools for interrogating the “globalisability” of
our academic work: the co-option of social movements and the need for
epistemological care; Romantic techniques of self-othering toward new
collectivities; Marx’s legacy of value as form; the powerful role of affect and
habit in training the intellect; an expanded theory of reading; the limits of
“culture” as a diagnostic; reproductive heteronormativity as a grounding principle;
attention to intergenerational gendered structures of responsibility; and
finally, a fully secularised understanding of radical alterity.
