Kolkata, Mar 17 (UNI) West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday congratulated Indian scholar Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak for winning the Holberg Prize of Norway in 2025.
Home grown scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a Professor at Columbia University in Humanities, is being recognized for her interdisciplinary research in literary criticism and philosophy.
" I congratulate our Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak on her attaining yet another top international recognition. She has been chosen this year for the Holberg Prize of Norway, which is considered to be a top prize in humanities and social sciences. She makes us proud by this attainment of this highest honour," CM Banerjee wrote on her social media post.
She said Professor Spivak is widely known for her contributions to literary theory and philosophy.
" But I have been also charmed by her long and sustained association with pro-poor voluntary services in some remote villages of West Bengal. Her endeavours to get translated the all- time classics of Bengali literature into English constitute a project that inspires us," the Bengal CM said, adding warm sincere and best wishes to the
great scholar.
Born in 1942 in Calcutta and a product of the Presidency College then University of Kolkata , Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, the recipient of the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award in India in 2013, she is also a founding member of the establishment's Institute for Comparative Literature and Society.
The Holberg is one of the largest international research prizes (about $540,000) awarded annually for outstanding research in the humanities, social sciences, law, or theology. The prize is established and funded
by the Norwegian Government, and administered by the University of Bergen, on behalf of the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research.
Spivak is considered one of today’s most influential global intellectuals, and she has shaped literary criticism and philosophy since the 1970s. She receives the prize for her groundbreaking, interdisciplinary research in comparative literature, translation, postcolonial studies, political philosophy, and feminist theory. She has authored nine books, and edited and translated many more. Her scholarship has been translated into more than 20 languages; she has also taught and lectured in over 50 countries.
“Taking the core of Western thought as an object of critical analysis, Spivak has inspired, enabled, and supported otherwise inconceivable lines of critical interrogations—both at the centers and margins of
global modernity,” said Holberg Committee Chair Heike Krieger.
The award will be conferred upon Professor Spivak during a formal ceremony at the University of Bergen in Norway on June 5.
UNI PC BD