Preface; 'Postcolonial Critique of Reason Spivak between Kant and Matilal

Abstract

The paper ponders the location of Gayatri Spivak in the discursive space between Kant and Bimal K. Matilal (but she is also dislocated by her own enactments, disavowals). So it wonders what a postcolonial critique of reason would look like. In the chapter on philosophy, Spivak (1999) develops a sustained critique of just this kind by decoding the works of the ‘Three Wise Men of Continental Europe’ (Kant, Hegel, Marx), pointing, via the European impact on the Third World, to the ultimate ‘foreclosure: [in the fashion of] the native informant’. But the paper detects another triangular imaginary of reason—this time without an apex, and with limited strategies, each deconstructing and challengin..