Abstract

The author revisits the question raised during the 1990s by Gayatri Spivak in her famous and difficult article « Can the Subaltern Speak ? », a question which fuelled endless debates in the field of postcolonial studies. He shows that the question is deceptive : the issue is less to decide whether, in the absolute, the subaltern can speak - they obviously can -, but to see whether they actually manage to do so, and to make themselves heard when it really matters, i.e., within a specific political situation