The continued silencing of Gayatri Spivak’s subaltern: A critique of the elite nexus of NGOs, academia and corporations

By drawing from Gayatri Spivak’s works on the subaltern, we argue that marginalized people are still suffering from silencing. Silencing occurs due to the powerful coalition of elite NGOs, academia, and corporations that perpetuate neocolonial mechanisms in developing countries. This condition pushes the subaltern out of the public sphere and deprives them of opportunities to live a dignified life. Moreover, we posit that the current Western-centric neocolonial policies and practices utilized by these elite actors are worsening the pre-existing socio-economic inequalities of the subaltern. Henceforth, we must scrutinize and challenge the dominance of the elite nexuses so that violations of the subaltern’s rights and dignities end, and their voices are recognized in policies and practices that currently affect them negatively. However, to start the decolonization process, the necessary perspectives should be adopted and the groundworks put in place by elite actors, rather than elites waiting for the subaltern to resist neocolonialization all the time. By changing the old habits of neocolonialization, elite actors must genuinely work with the subaltern, on the terms of the subaltern, and with the consent of the subaltern, to create conditions and possibilities for freedom for oppressed and marginalized people around the globe.