So, as coincidence has it, we talked about this philosopher named Levinas in one of my other classes today, and he had some pretty interesting ideas about "the other" that I will try to apply to Spivak's theories (though it was really difficult to understand either text). Levinas, I think, would criticize Spivak for being so married to an ideology of subjecthood, of the other as a type of subject. Levinas seems to criticize the narcissism of extrapolating one's own subjecthood to the other--of allowing internal life to dominate the external world. He questions the subject that only arises out of discourse, and instead proposes a sort of mutual "being for each other." He redefines the other as a sort of mysterious, unreachable being, a third party to the I/You of discourse. It seems that Spivak is too willing to apply the notions of "speech" and "subjectivity" to the other, and that she doesn't recognize the inability of the theorist to understanding or capture that other. Levinas is deeply distrustful of conceptualizing the external; rather than theorizing a conceptual understanding between subjects, he posits a sort "face-to-face" interraction with an actual person. In this interraction, each person is, in a way, buoyed toward a transcendent state by a language that pre-exists selfhood, that exceeds the totality of understanding. In this sense, language is not a violent tool for carving subjectivity, but a common plane upon which all personal interraction is grounded. While an internal world still exists, it is overwhelmed by the irreducibility of a "third party" exceeds any sort of narcissistic, subjective understanding. I think Spivak could have been more aware of the problems of subjecivity (especially of the other) rather than attacking at a chiefly political and ideological angle. Spivak might argue that the other is precisely at a disadvantage because of the imperialism of subjectivity, but she certainly upholds the primacy of the subject.

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