Literary Critic and Educator Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Got Kyoto Prize

Renowned literary critic and educator Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak on 10 November 2012 was awarded the prestigious Kyoto Prize in Kyoto.

Kyoto Prize was instituted by the Inamori Foundation. It honours those personalities who had significantly contributed to the scientific, cultural and spiritual betterment of mankind.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, is professor at Columbia University in the U.S. She won the award in the Arts and Philosophy category for her “deep thinking on humanities against intellectual colonialism in relation to globalisation”.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak shifted the critical theory of “deconstruction” into political and social dimensions, and had applied a sharp scalpel to intellectual colonialism which is being reproduced in our heavily globalised modern world, said the Foundation.

Gayatri Chakravorty exemplifies what intellectuals today should be, through her theoretical work for the humanities based on comparative literature and her devotion to multifaceted educational activities.

Also, U.S. computer scientist Ivan Sutherland, regarded as a father of computer graphics, won the Advanced Technology Prize while Japanese molecular biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi was awarded the Basic Sciences Prize.
Each laureate received a diploma, a 20K gold Kyoto Prize medal and a cash gift of ¥50 million ($630,000).