A subaltern who becomes audible thereby ceases to be subaltern.

Evidence

Thinking of the ethical relation as an embrace, an act of love, in which each learns from the other, is not at all the same thing as wanting to speak for an oppressed constituency. Throughout her work Spivak has been concerned with addressing questions of the international division of labor (of the super-exploitation of Third World female labor in particular) and she is well-known for her formulations on the subaltern, that constituency which remains most excluded from the circuits and possible benefits of socialized capital. As she explains in the interview “Subaltern Talk” (see p. 287), when she claims that the subaltern “cannot speak,” she means that the subaltern as such cannot be heard by the privileged of either the First or Third Worlds. If the subaltern were able to make herself heard—as has happened when particular subalterns have emerged, in Antonio Gramsci’s terms, as organic intellectuals and spokespeople for their communities—her status as a subaltern would be changed utterly; she would cease to be subaltern. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 43

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharpens the technical meaning of ‘subaltern’ — an inaudibility condition, not a fixed identity.
• XREF: The paradox — group identity dissolves precisely when representation succeeds — bears on whether collective strategic essentialism can be sustained. — connects to: Subaltern speech fails as a transaction between speaker and listener, not as utterance — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 2296; Spivak meant the subaltern is not heard, not literally mute; Subalternity by definition marks a space that resists being directly witnessed — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 2293 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• The subaltern can speak, as liberation movements attest #contradicts (0.85)
• Subaltern transition from passive thing to active historical protagonist changes their responsibility #qualifies (0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1207
• Subaltern speech becomes agency only within responsive resistance #qualifies (0.80)
• Denied the chance to speak, the subaltern strains hard to gain that voice #complicates (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 845