Gayatri Spivak once asked: Can the subaltern speak?
Not because the silenced lack language,
but because the world is full of ears
that only listen when a voice sounds familiar.
So maybe the real question is:
Can you listen?
Not politely.
Not selectively.
But deeply-
with the willingness to be changed.
We like to think we know the world.
But knowing has always been political.
Edward Said called it Orientalism-
how the West didn’t discover “the East,”
but imagined it into being.
Not to understand,
but to control.
Real people turned into symbols:
exotic, backward, dangerous-
never fully human.
And we still do it.
In textbooks that praise colonizers as explorers.
In the myth of the European miracle-
as if reason and science were born in a vacuum-
untouched by Egypt, India, or the Islamic world.
As if colonialism brought civilization,
instead of extracting it.
We say everyone has the right to leave.
But what good is that right
if there’s nowhere you’re allowed to go?
Without the right documents,
your freedom is just theory.
Your life becomes an application,
a rejection,
a closed door.
And when they do arrive-
their stories turn into headlines like migrants drown,
as if the sea is the problem-
not the laws,
not the fences.
And still-
we judge others quickly.
We treat the headscarf like a symbol of oppression,
rarely asking what it means to the woman who wears it.
We condemn control in the name of religion,
yet enforce control in the name of secularism.
In Western democracies,
headscarves are often restricted in schools, courts, and offices-
in the name of laïcité,
as if neutrality means disappearance.
We say we defend freedom,
but punish modesty when it doesn’t look like ours.
It’s culture when it’s ours.
It’s extremism when it’s not.
We strip away choice,
then call it liberation.
Even those who claim to challenge power
often speak in ways no one understands.
What good is theory
if it cannot reach the people it’s meant to defend?
If clarity is sacrificed for prestige,
if elitism wears the mask of insight,
the subaltern is still silenced-
while academics chatter on.
No-
difference is not the enemy.
We need difference.
It’s how we know ourselves.
But othering exaggerates it,
twists it,
uses it to divide and dominate.
It doesn’t ask, “What makes you unique?”
It asks, “Why are you a threat?”
It makes people into problems
before it sees them as people.
It speaks about you
while pretending to speak for you.
It builds mirrors of fear
and asks you to see yourself through them.
Spivak’s question still echoes:
Can the subaltern speak
in a world that only trusts certain accents,
only recognizes certain pain,
only listens when the story is easy to accept?
So maybe we need a new question:
Can you hear what doesn’t flatter you?
Can you sit with discomfort
instead of reshaping it into something familiar?
Because as long as you only listen
to voices that echo your own,
the subaltern will keep speaking-
but you won’t hear a thing.
This article was written by Héléna Clinckart, edited by John Shotton & Alaïa Lafleur. Photo by Sam Mann on Unsplash
