Does it matter how you pronounce W.E.B Du Bois?
It does for scholar and literary critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
Spivak, author of "Can the Subaltern Speak" has kicked up a row-- after a video clip went viral-- over the way she chose to shut down a member of the audience when he rose up to ask a question to her at JNU recently. Spivak, in turn, accused the person for being "disrespectful to an elderly woman" like her.
Spivak was in JNU to give a lecture on W.E.B. Du Bois and Democracy.
During the Q&A session, Anshul Kumar, who introduced himself as the founding professor of a centre for Brahmin studies, was reportedly going to ask Spivak about how she can consider herself middle-class, given her background. Instead, she interrupted him and corrected his pronunciation of Du Bois.
Anshul Kumar said on platform X that when he stood up to raise his questions after Spivak was done with her lecture on W.E.B. Du Bois and Democracy, she interpputed him thrice on his pronounciation of Du Bois.
"Du Bois (pronounced Do Boys). Will you please learn his name? If you're going to talk about the man who is perhaps the best historian sociologist of the last century and this is supposed to be an elite university, then please take the trouble to learn how to pronounce his name," Spivak reportedly said.
Spivak also went to explain that Du Bois is an Englishman and not French.
Kumar responded, "If you're done with the trivialities..." at which Spivak rebuked him for being rude to an elderly woman. The moderator intervened, urging Kumar to keep his questions “short and crisp”.
Anshul Kumar later put out a slew of messages on X one of which said that what unites the Brahmin Left and Brahmin right is Spivak.
Reacting to the incident on platform X, author and activist Meena Kandasamy wrote, "Bullying someone over their pronunciation is just not done. You slip in the right pronunciation, gracefully, when you repeat the same thing, move on, and focus on the content of what is being said. That's what a committed, dedicated teacher does. Only dogmatic, religious zealots believe that mispronunciation of holy names/verses can alter their meaning. To snub someone over their pronunciation, in a hall filled to the brim with people, shows insecurity, pettiness, and the unwillingness to be magnanimous. My first and only experience with her was five minutes of being bullied. I will say/write more at a later point when I find the time/headspace--mostly I don't want to say anything because such a petty person does not deserve any more our attention."
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is an Indian literary theorist, feminist critic, postcolonial theorist, and professor of comparative literature noted for her personal brand of deconstructive criticism, which she called “interventionist.”