Speech acts require being heard, not merely uttering

Evidence

So, “the subaltern cannot speak,” means that even when the subaltern makes an effort to the death to speak, she is not able to be heard, and speaking and hearing complete the speech act. That’s what it had meant, and anguish marked the spot. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 2309

Categorization

• DEFINE: Spivak’s own late clarification of what ‘the subaltern cannot speak’ actually means — hearing completes the speech act.
• ADDENDUM: This definitional clarification of ‘the subaltern cannot speak’ as a failed two-party transaction rather than literal muteness bears on the strategic-essentialism tracing since it is precisely her retrospective qualification/retraction pattern.
• XREF: connects to: Bodily action can be a speech act that still fails without a listener — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 2296; Free speech requires being heard, not just the right to speak. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 898; Performative utterances create states of affairs rather than merely describing them. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 83 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Free speech requires being heard, not just the right to speak. #corroborates (0.95) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 898
• Performative utterances create states of affairs rather than merely describing them. #expands (0.80) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 83
• A performative’s force depends on external felicity conditions, not the utterance itself #expands (0.78)
• Spoken words are interpreted against a background of situational context, not in isolation. #complicates (0.72)