On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 3:43 PM, Sruthi Krishnan <srukr...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 6:58 PM, Aadisht Khanna <li...@aadisht.net> wrote: >> On 13-10-2010 18:48, Srini RamaKrishnan wrote: >> >>> Ergo I expect to see a lot of shit flying around on the Internet >>> criticizing this lady (who inexplicably hangs onto the last name of a >>> man from many marriages back), but there isn't? All the heuristics >> >> This may be a professional decision, so that work published throughout >> her career is given citations under the same name. >> > > Why is this curiosity over her choice of a name relevant to > understanding her scholastic merit?
I believe she has a deliberate agenda in cultivating a certain personality: Ref. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/09/arts/creating-a-stir-wherever-she-goes.html -- Ms. Spivak, wears a sari (with combat boots), with vivid pink highlights in her crewcut hair - has this name that is sufficiently unique even for Google (I don't think she minds, she sets off my attention-whore alarm) - and talks non-stop of her Bengali roots and references her family (mother, grandmother, uncle, brother) - bashes her critics at every turn - stops short of calling them names - only talks about her work3/4th of the way into her talk yet pounces on anyone who claims she's got Indian influences in her work for example. Claims she will explain herself if she comes across as being difficult to understand, and then proceeds to speak the most incomprehensible things. Claims her work doesn't inspire Maoism or naxalite factions, denies her subaltern studies movement had students who were maoists and in the same breath claims a close relative (brother / uncle, I forget) was a Maoist intellectual, and her students went on to teach Maoists. She appears to be a deliberate intellectual agent provocateur who spouts incomprehensible obscurities and lays so many political correctness landmines that her critics will step on one of them before they come close to questioning her work. Cheeni
