Page 210 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

SPIVAK, GAYATRI CHAKRAVORTY (1942– )

intimate spaces whereas a front room or parlour is available for more public
encounters.
The symbolic and power-saturated character of space can be grasped in relation
to the concept of gender since gender relations vary across space and spaces are 187
symbolically gendered. The classical Western gendering of space is manifested in the
division between ‘home’ and ‘workplace’ which is articulated with the ‘private’ and
the ‘public’. Thus, the home is regarded as the domain of the ‘private’ and the
feminine whereas sites of paid work have been coded masculine within the public
sphere. Homes have been cast as the unpaid domain of mothers and children,
connoting the secondary values of caring, love, tenderness and domesticity. In
contrast, places of paid work have been regarded as the domain of men, connoting
the primary values of toughness (either physically or mentally), hardness,
comradeship and reality.
Links Code, gender, place, power, public sphere, symbolic

Speech act The concept of a speech act is associated with the work of Austin who, after
Wittgenstein, developed a philosophy of language that conceives of it in terms of
actions. Hence the title of Austin’s 1962 book, How To Do Things With Words. By
saying ‘I promise’, we are not simply offering information to our audience about
promising, rather, we are enacting or performing a promise. That is, we are engaged
in a speech act. In the same way, saying ‘I name this ship’ or ‘I take you as my
wedded wife’ is performing the action of naming the ship and getting married. In
order to name a ship or get married people say words that constitute the acts they
name. Thus, a ‘performative’ is a statement which puts into effect the relation that
it names as in the marriage ceremony’s ‘I pronounce you . . .’. In addition, Austin
introduced the notion of felicity conditions by which speech acts in order to be
felicitous, that is, in order to work, must satisfy certain conditions. Consequently,
for an order to be felicitous it must be issued by someone deemed to have the power
to do so.
Speech act theory is pertinent to discourse analysis within cultural studies and
also to the widespread use of the concept of performativity, that is, it is a discursive
practice that enacts or produces that which it names through citation and
reiteration. Though originated by Austin in the context of speech act theory, Judith
Butler popularized the concept of performativity within cultural studies during the
1990s through her work on the construction of gendered identities. In particular,
Butler conceives of sex and gender in terms of citational performativity and an
iterable practice secured through repetition.
Links Conversation, discourse analysis, language, language-game, performativity

Spivak,Gayatri Chakravorty (1942– ) Indian-born Spivak is currently a professor in
the Humanities Department of Columbia University in New York. She frequently
cites Derrida as a major influence on her work, a claim that is evidenced in her
deconstructive style of intellectual exploration and writing. At the same time her
work seeks to maintain a strong connection to the cultural politics of feminism and