Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

"Feminism cannot be reduced to a single message or demand."

"History is not a linear progress but a contested terrain."

"We must learn to think the unthinkable."

"The postcolonial is not a historical period but an analytical position."

"Language carries within it the traces of power relations."

"The critique of humanism is not anti-human but more human."

"We cannot escape representation, but we can remain vigilant about it."

"The other is not an object of knowledge but a limit to knowledge."

"Solidarity is not sympathy but a practice of accountability."

"The university must educate for responsible citizenship."

"We must think without guarantees."

"The production of knowledge is always political."

"Literature gives us a chance to imagine ourselves otherwise."

"The question of the global is not separate from the question of the local."

"We are responsible for what we cannot control."

"The archive is incomplete and always already interpretive."

"Teaching is a practice of hope."

"The other teaches us the limits of our knowledge."

"We must persistently question what we think we know."

"The text is always more than what we can say about it."

"Power operates through the production of knowledge and truth."

"We cannot think outside of language, but we can think against it."

"The subaltern's silence is not absence but a presence we cannot access."

"History is written by those with the power to write."

"The responsibility to the other is infinite and unconditional."

"Literature creates spaces for alternative possibilities."

"We must learn to read for what is not said."

"The nation-state is not a natural form but a historical formation."

"Knowledge production is always a practice of power."

"We are all complicit in systems of representation."