CONCEPT
The Spivak Framework
The integrated analytical apparatus — subalternity, epistemic violence, the native informant, strategic essentialism, worlding, planetarity, translation as betrayal — that Spivak developed across five decades and that this volume applies to the AI transition.
The Spivak framework is not a single doctrine but a coordinated set of analytical instruments, each illuminating a different face of how systems of knowledge production reproduce asymmetries of power. The concepts are not independent. They interlock: subalternity names the structural position, epistemic violence names the mechanism by which the position is reproduced, the native informant names the figure who labors within the position, strategic essentialism names the tactical response available from within it, worlding names the world-making operation that produces the position as such, planetarity names what exceeds every framework including the one that produces the position, and translation as betrayal names the specific operation by which signals crossing the boundary between positions are transformed. The framework's power is its refusal of easy resolution.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Spivak has never offered a unified theory in the systematic sense. Her method is closer to what she herself calls critical intimacy — sustained engagement with specific