ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Padma Bhushan award winner Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak unpacks the ethics of literary criticism, pedagogical methods, subjectivity and social justice while commenting upon the political and intertextual significance of Rabindranath Tagore's poetry (1861–1941) and J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace. Drawing from philosophy – Kant, Derrida and Levinas; politics and social change – Marx, Sen, King and Mandela and literature – Kabir, Shakespeare and Kafka, Spivak theorizes on instruments of social and ethical change with a particular focus on the texts we read (literary texts and primary school textbooks) and how we derive meaning from them. Weaving literary criticism of Coetzee's Disgrace with her personal account of providing private tuition to impoverished girls in West Bengal, Spivak explores epistemology, ethics, and education whilst calling for a change in the way we, in Tagore's words, ‘reveal us to each other’. Referencing a poem by Tagore that is nestled within an artwork of his own creation that features on the cover of the first Pratichi Education Report, which aims to ensure the quality and equality of primary education in West Bengal, this chapter is both a practice of and comment upon intertextuality. In this chapter, Spivak considers not only fiction as an event but also fiction as a task. The second part of the chapter moves into the field of education: the ethics of education, education as an ethical necessity (if the largest sector of the electorate misses out on early education, democracy cannot function) and the way in which literary criticism can reveal new ways of thinking and acting (as a task) to improve equality and education outcomes in West Bengal and beyond.
