Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Critique of Western Feminism and its Implications for the study of subaltern masculinities.

Abstract Gayatri Spivak’s critique of Western feminism, especially its universalizing tendencies, offers a profound intervention in feminist studies by exposing how Western feminist discourses often homogenise non-Western women, thereby reinforcing dominant patriarchal structures. Through Derridean deconstruction, Spivak dismantles essentialist notions of gender and identity, revealing the contradictions in universalizing feminist frameworks. This article presents Spivak’s contribution to subaltern femininities by highlighting her critique of Western feminism and applies her critique to masculinity studies, showing its potential implication and applications to masculinity studies. I have demonstrated that her contribution in the field of feminism is useful for interrogating how hegemonic masculinity sustains through marginalisation of other form of masculinities thus recognizing that certain masculinities, like those of homosexual masculinity, Dalit masculinity are also subaltern. I have shown that Spivak’s critique of western feminism paves way to think about alternate masculinities as well