Subaltern spaces in Brazil

Gayatri Spivak' s now infamous essay, Can the Subaltern Speak, sparked a critical debate on writings of the Indian Subaltern Group. Spivak9 s position provoked a host of earnest responses that misread her critique of the essentialist elements of subaltern theory as an attack, instead, on the whole notion of subaltern discourses and spaces. The more important questions, perhaps, were not to be framed around the critique of essentialism, but rather the need to study the ways in which subalterns speak i.e., whose voices are reproduced and where and our roles as non-subaltern critics.