ABSTRACT
Starting from a reverse reading of the text “Can the subaltern speak?”, this essay seeks to recover and twist Spivak’s arguments to find the foundations of a postcolonial thought as a precautionary measure and as an imaginative training. The intention is to present the need to think the thought, the place in which, following Derrida, Spivak argues is the location of the colonialism-in-white of European thought. Finally, we will approach Spivak’s problem with the intentions of anthropological ontology, showing how an ontological exploration in Anthropology depends on an epistemological critique. We intend, with this, to reclaim the validity of Spivak’s postcolonial theory for Anthropology, updating its terms and following its arguments.
KEYWORDS:
Ontology; epistemology; subalternity; deconstructionism; reflexivity