Spivak admits prior essays failed for lacking preparation in tribal specifics.

Evidence

I believe that the same habit of mind—a vision of impossible justice through attention to specificity—may draw a reader to Marx, to Mahasweta, and to Derrida, in different ways. My earlier companion essays perhaps showed this too enthusiastically. And the general uneasiness about (or unexamined celebration of) Derrida’s critique of humanism compromised their reception. My own sense of their inadequacy is related to an insufficient preparation in the specific political situation of the Indian tribal. … Here I want to supplement her remarks by a few observations about a general (rather than nation-specific) political urgency to which these stories relate—a vision of internationality that is not only impossible but necessary. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 2199

Categorization

• XREF: Spivak’s self-correction on abstraction-without-specificity is a candid companion to her strategic essentialism retractions.