Only our alternative can solve unlearning – checks structural privileges

This essay suggests that the avoidance of such tragic hubris lies in a self-interrogative stance towards theory, taking as a guide Gayatri Spivak’s view of herself as a theorist who is engaged in ‘the careful project of un-learning our privilege as our loss’ (9fia process in which, she says, Derrida is also engaged (14). Spivak’s stance implies that the careful unlearning (as opposed to the mere abandonment) of any stance has to be a conscious and always provisional process, which would allow theoretical strategy to enjoy neither a privileged position nor unambiguous closure. Theory used in a conscious way should offer a liminal space which encourages the conscious deconstruction of our own discourses, in order to ensure that we do not rest in the privileged position which theory often assumes for itself. This essay will suggest that those who construct utopian worlds are among those who need to un-learn their privilege, in the awareness that this entails a kind of necessary loss. However there is also the prospect of gain, since a more conscious utopian discourse would offer an increase in aware and consensual ways of defining community, thus obviating the usual need to police the boundaries of utopian societies.