Gayatri Chakaravorty Spivak’s Deconstructio...

Gayatri Chakaravorty Spivak’s Deconstruction of Marxism and Psychoanalysis in Feminism and Critical Theroy

Author Name : Dr. Randhir Singh

Gayatri Chakaravorty Spivak is one of the leading literary theorist and cultural critics of our times. As a true deconstructionist, she does not believe in the fixity of canons and blends feminism and deconstruction in an excellent manner in her much critical essay Feminism and Critical Theory. As a postcolonial thinker she believes that it is not easy to define woman, rather no need to define. She discards a traditional definition of woman and recommends a workable one. She deconstructs the concepts of Marxism and Psychoanalysis in her essay Feminism and Critical theory and asks the readers to go beyond marx and Frend while radically understanding Ferminism. What is more, Spivak includes the issues of race and class while dealing with the gender issues. While deconstructing Marx and Freud, she doubts if we read literature well. As a true deconstructionist she discards final signification to a text. In the essay taken up for the present study, spivak criticizes Marx's labour theory of value because it ignores the unpaid labour of women&childbirth and domestic work. Similarly Freud’s declaration of Penis envy as the primary factor of female desire also ignores the place of womb as a place of production.