ABSTRACT
The work of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak anchors public relations theory in postcolonial studies, interrogating the colonial role/effect of mainstream public relations and re-defining public relations practice as resistive communication. This chapter argues that public relations activities serve the agendas of contemporary capita/colonia-lism. Spivak's work offers critical insights into the relationship between representation and materiality, knowledge production in colonial expansion, politics and dialogue, and the role of the intellectual. The mobilization of representations is central to the circulation of discourses amid global geopolitical processes that sustain and reinforce the new world order. Representation, Spivak suggests, is inherently political as it serves the basis for the politics of power and control exerted by transnational corporations under neocolonialism, and also as the basis for resistive political action directed at emancipatory politics. Spivak's work is insightful for understanding the nature of public relations as it is a strategic tool of representation.
