Tokyo, Nov 10 (IANS) Renowned literary critic and educator Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak was awarded the prestigious Kyoto Prize in Kyoto Saturday.
Instituted by the Inamori Foundation, the prize honours those who have contributed significantly to the scientific, cultural and spiritual betterment of mankind.
Spivak, professor at Columbia University, won the award in the Arts and Philosophy category for her "deep thinking on humanities against intellectual colonialism in relation to globalisation".
Spivak has shifted the critical theory of "deconstruction" into political and social dimensions, and applied a sharp scalpel to intellectual colonialism which is being reproduced in our heavily globalized modern world, said the Foundation.
"She exemplifies what intellectuals today should be, through her theoretical work for the humanities based on comparative literature and her devotion to multifaceted educational acivities."
US 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 yen ($630,000).
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