Kolkata-born literary theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak wins Holberg Prize

Indian scholar and literary critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is set to be awarded the 2025 Holberg Prize, as announced by the Holberg Committee on Thursday. The ceremony will take place on June 5, with Norway's Crown Prince Haakon officiating.

The Holberg Prize which is often regarded as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the fields of humanities and social sciences. includes a prize of EUR 515,000 (approximately ₹4.6 crore).

Who is Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and why is she acclaimed?

At 82 years old, Spivak serves as a professor in the humanities at Columbia University and will be presented with the prize by Crown Prince Haakon of Norway during a ceremony on June 5. The Holberg Prize committee stated, "She receives the prize for her groundbreaking interdisciplinary research in comparative literature, translation, postcolonial studies, political philosophy, and feminist theory."

“As a public intellectual and activist, Spivak combats illiteracy in marginalised rural communities across several countries, including in West Bengal, India where she has founded, funded and participated in educational initiatives,” Heike Krieger, the Holberg committee chair wrote.

“For Spivak, rigorous creativity must intersect with local initiatives to provide alternatives to intellectual colonialism,” the committee’s citation adds. “Spivak’s work challenges readers, students, and researchers to ‘train the imagination’ through a sustained study of literature and culture.”

Spivak was born in Kolkata on February 24, 1942, and is widely seen as one of the most significant intellectual figures of her time, having significantly influenced literary criticism and philosophy since the 1970s. She obtained her PhD from Cornell University in 1967 after attending the University of Calcutta.

Since 2007, Spivak has been a faculty member at Columbia University and is one of the founding figures of its Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. Throughout her career, she has taught at more than 20 academic institutions. Her accolades include the Padma Bhushan (2013), the Kyoto Prize in Art and Philosophy (2012), and the Modern Language Association Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award (2018). Additionally, she has accumulated over 50 faculty awards and holds 15 honorary doctorates from various universities around the globe.

Spivak's influential 1988 essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ transformed the fields of postcolonial and subaltern studies by exploring how marginalized voices are often suppressed within the framework of global capitalism. This essay continues to be widely cited and remains a topic of debate, impacting discourse on political subjectivity, state access, and the systemic obstacles that hinder the voices of subaltern groups.

Established by the Norwegian Parliament in 2003 and managed by the University of Bergen, the Holberg Prize acknowledges exceptional contributions to research in the arts, humanities, social sciences, law, and theology. Named after Danish-Norwegian writer and philosopher Ludvig Holberg, the prize is considered the closest equivalent to the Nobel Prize in the humanities and social sciences.