Open AccessEthical Openness in the Work of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Author(s) -
Jana McAuliffe
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
feminist philosophy quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2371-2570
DOI - 10.5206/fpq/2020.2.7574
Subject(s) - complicity , sociology , privilege (computing) , politics , openness to experience , subject (documents) , negotiation , epistemology , gender studies , social science , law , political science , philosophy , social psychology , psychology , library science , computer science
This paper explores the problem of racial privilege in US American feminist thought. Drawing on Gayatri Spivak’s analysis of ethics, particularly her ideas of epistemic discontinuity and teleopoietic reading, I argue that a specific kind of ethical openness can help feminist social-political philosophy better negotiate the legacy of white privilege. Spivak’s work calls for a reconsideration and reworking of the subject who theorizes. Her analysis of ethics suggests that racially privileged feminists must be able to confront their own complicity in order to engage in political critique less likely to recreate historical patterns of racial domination and exclusion.