Spivak's Planetarity and the Limits of Professional Reading

Abstract

This article argues that Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's notion of planetarity is premised on a practice of reading. Reading for the planet involves deferring the world in order to participate in the text world and its latent re(-)production of ourselves and our world. To the extent that this ethical attention moves us toward different horizons of thinking and feeling, it may also engender political action in the public realm. Reading for Spivak is therefore an important foundation for revolutionary politics and, ultimately, the production of the planet to which we aspire as readers. I proceed to evaluate the planetary efficacy of Spivak's complementary teaching praxis. I show that the aesthetic education she provides does not enable but rather forecloses the experience of literariness and its associated ethics and politics. In response to the limits of professional reading and the worldliness of Spivak's fieldwork in India, I conclude by thinking about the value of deprofessionalization.