An Aesthetic of Education in the Era of Globalization

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, An Aesthetic of Education in the Era of Globalization (Harvard University Press, 2012)For over a quarter of a century, Gayatri Spivak's scholarship has remained at the forefront of postcolonial studies, pushing the discipline forward, asking the uncomfortable questions, and engaging in spirited debates. Spivak's 1988 essay, 'Can the Subaltern Speak?' launched her into academic prominence, and while the essay still is regarded as enormously influential, unfortunately, it often overshadows many of her other important works, which is why her recent book, An Aesthetic of Education in the Era of Globalization, published by Harvard University Press, is such a welcome reminder of her varied and important contributions. The 25 essays, spanning nearly an equal number of years, not only reveal Spivak's unwavering commitment to an ethical, aesthetic engagement with literature (and the world) as a way of fulfilling the humanities' promise to contest the logic of capital, but also they reveal her enormous capacity as a teacher.In the preface and introduction, Spivak informs readers that she writes now with a 'desperate honesty' and that doubt will be her guiding refrain (x). From the outset, it is clear that she is concerned deeply by 'this era of the mantra of hope' and deploys doubt, which she sees as a great inheritance of the Enlightenment, as a way to recuperate the aesthetic (1). This meditation on the aesthetic gives the collection a thematic thread for readers to grasp as they move through the essays. Additionally, running throughout the collection is the frame of the double bind. Spivak instructs readers to keep this structure in mind while engaging with the essays as it reveals the tensions that undergird many of her arguments. Ultimately Spivak's work attempts to displace globalisation's hold on information, data, and capital through a 'productive undoing' of the legacy of the aesthetic coupled with the structure of the double bind (1). At times this lofty project is undermined by a determined insistence to use the double bind framework even when the fit isn't comfortable, leading to several unnecessarily opaque moments. The introduction also is mired in a selected history of the double bind that contain large tracts of quoted text, with little exposition, that divert readers from Spivak's more urgent claims. To be fair, Spivak asks for 'an interactive reader' that is willing to take this journey with her in which the 'reconsiderations and realizations' of the introduction are not always expounded in the essays themselves (3).The book is not divided into sections, but there are narratives that reflect a progression of ideas. Spivak's essays transition fluidly from issues of difference to translation to disciplinary concerns. Throughout these movements, readers will observe Spivak's willingness to draw from intimate, often private moments to forward a thesis. It is this vulnerability that reveals the stakes of Spivak's work. The most striking moment of intimacy occurs in the final chapter, 'Tracing the Skin of Day,' Spivak takes readers on her journey to view Chittrovanu Mazumdar's Nightskin. We walk with Spivak through the museum, and it is here that Spivak brings her discussion of the aesthetic to a close, remarking how 'in the visual, the lesson of reading is the toughest' (507). Spivak offers a poststructural meditation on Mazumdar's artwork, suggesting that his work 'protects the trace away from the promise of the sign' leaving viewers 'with no guarantees' (502). …