For almost three decades Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has been ignoring thestandardized rules of the academy and trespassing across disciplinaryboundaries. Today ... » 

For almost three decades Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has been ignoring thestandardized rules of the academy and trespassing across disciplinaryboundaries. Today she remains one of the foremost figures in the study of worldliterature and its cultural consequences. In this new book she declares thedeath of comparative literature as we know it and sounds an urgent call for anew comparative literature in which the discipline is given new life onethat is not appropriated and determined by the market.In the era of globalization when mammoth projects of world literature intranslation are being undertaken in the United States how can we protect themultiplicity of languages and literatures at the university? Spivakdemonstrates how critics interested in social justice should pay closeattention to literary form and offers new interpretations of classics such asJoseph Conrads Heart of Darkness and Virginia Woolfs A Room of Ones Own.Through close readings of texts not only in English French and German butalso in Arabic and Bengali Spivak practices what she preaches.Acclaim for Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and her workSpivak pioneered the study in literary theory of nonWestern women. Edward W. SaidShe has probably done more longterm political good in pioneering feministand postcolonial studies within global academia than almost any of hertheoretical colleagues. Terry EagletonA celebrity in academia... creates a stir wherever she goes. The NewYork Times «