Chandra Mohanty argues in her essay “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” that many Western feminists write about women in the Third World as if they were a homogenous mass. She argues in her essay that the Western feminists need to see the variety among women in the Third World. While at times she falls into the same generalization trap that she accuses the Western women of making, she ultimately proves that the feminist believe that Third World societies oppress all women elevates the Western world view as the superior one again and is similar to the colonialism of previous times.
Mohanty writes that feminists in the US and western Europe act similarly towards women in the Third World. She asserts, “The definition of colonization…is…focusing on certain mode of appropriation and codification of ‘scholarship’ and ‘knowledge’ about women in the third world…as they have been articulated in the US and western Europe” (Mohanty 694). Invoking the word colonization connects everybody in the US and western Europe with the historical and still prevalent belief that Eurocentrism is the predominantly superior culture. She makes the claim saying that colonization still interests the West. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, colonization’s definition is, “The action of colonizing or fact of being colonized; establishment of a colony or colonies”; or “To settle (a country) with colonists; to plant or establish a colony in” (“colonization”). Feminism seeks “Advocacy of equality of the sexes and the establishment of the political, social, and economic rights of the female sex” (“feminism”). Mohanty’s statement that the Western feminists seek to settle their perceived knowledge over women in the Third Worl...
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...ed plenty of times in history before.
Works Cited
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"colonization, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2014. Web. 13 March 2014.
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Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses." Critical Theory: A Reader for Literary and Cultural Studies. Parker, Robert Dale. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. 694-715. Print.
We cannot deny the imperfection of the world today; poverty, violence, lack of education, and the general overwhelming deficiency of basic daily necessities are among some of the most troubling issues on the agenda. By carefully selecting our critical lens, we can gather that there are many aspects of today’s issues where we can focus our attention and begin the quest for solutions to these pervasive problems. Authors Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (2009) utilize their book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide to emphasize the particular struggle of women in the world today and how by addressing three particular abuses of sex trafficking and forced prostitution, gender-based violence (including honor killings and mass rape), and maternal mortality, we may begin “unlocking an incipient women’s movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty” (p. xxii). However, we must first understand the difficulty of addressing such complex issues by a proposing a “one-size fits all” solution and take into consideration the varying feminist perspectives that currently contemplate the oppression of women in societies around the world. To be able to critically digest Kristof and WuDunn’s book we must explore the types of stories and evidence included and how they’re presented, and the generalized theories behind the insight and solutions regarding the women in need around the world. The authors alienate their audience by ignoring the complexity of building a singular feminist movement. Kristof and WuDunn’s book Half the Sky further contributes to the oppression of women because they objectify Third World women by portraying them as victims in need of outside rescue and suggest that an overarching solution...
Compare The Successes And Failures Of Patriarchy In Colonialism, In “The Tempest”, “Translations” And “Things Fall Apart”.
The gender inequalities of colonial Haiti were clearly not lost in the post-colonial era and are indeed still not lost; they are merely disguised. While it is true that Haitian women are still far from achieving full equality and the struggles of Haitian feminists still continue, these feminist movements are a step in the right direction. However, it will take a lot of realization from the men of Haiti and especially those in power for these movements to achieve their goals.
We must also understand the exclusion of gender from revolutionary discourses as being part of patriarchy that is not challenged in certain revolutions. The exclusion of gender equality from what Lumumba struggled for is where there is a certain patriarchy, and this kind of patriarchy is evident in almost all revolutionary anti-colonial writing.
Academic discourse is the means by which new and old theories may be applied to a topic in order to reach a better understanding or challenge a notion raised within the field. It is through discussing and analyzing these concepts that individual voices may be applied to an academic community, allowing for a wider lens of thought to be picked up and further discussed. Grewal participates in this discourse in her article “'Women's Rights as Human Rights': Feminist Practices, Global Feminism, and Human Rights Regimes in Transnationality”. This paper shall analyze and discuss how Grewal applies previous theoretical concepts related to feminist discourse in order to offer a Transnationalist Feminist critique to the Global Feminist notion of Women's Rights as Human Rights.
Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea handle women’s situations in once-colonial countries quite differently. While both novels were written by writers who are actually from cultures with colonised pasts, Rhys is more effective in conveying a more feminist angle by having a female protagonist in a post colonisation period and being a woman with similar personal/racial history herself. This, however, doesn’t mean Things Fall Apart is excused from being potentially sexist. On the other hand, it’s problematic to assume the women in two texts, who are from different far ends of the world, would have the same problems. McLeod suggests that while looking at women in countries with a colonial past as a whole is ignoring their local
Lugones, Maria C. and Elizabeth V. Spelman. Have We Got a Theory for You! Feminist Theory, Cultural Imperialism and the Demand for “The Woman’s Voice.” Women and Values: Readings in Recent Feminist Philosophy. Edited by Marilyn Pearsall. Wadsworth Publishing Company: California. 1986. 19-31.
"Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism", Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in The Feminist Reader ed. Catherine Belsey and Jane Moore (1997).
Gairola, Rahul. “Burning with Shame: Desire and South Asian Patriarchy, from Gayatri Spivak’s ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ to Deepa Mehta’s Fire.” Comparative Literature 54:4 (Fall 2002). 307-324. EBSCOhost.
In her essay, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” Chandra Talpade Mohanty explores the simplified construction of the “third-world woman” in hegemonic feminist discourses. In contrast, in her essay “US Third-World Feminism: The Theory and Method of Oppositional Consciousness in the Postmodern World,” Chela Sandoval specifically analyzes “US third-world feminism” and how it is the model for not only oppositional political activity, but also consciousness in the United States and how this has not been recognized by hegemonic “western” feminist discourses (). While Mohanty and Sandoval are analyzing and critiquing gender and gender politics, Mohanty is specifically focused on the simplified portrayal in “western” feminist discourses of “third world women” as victims, and Sandoval examines an oppositional mode of consciousness, which she defines as “differential consciousness” and how it is employed by “US third world feminism.” Both authors deconstruct gendered bodies of knowledge with an emphasis on the deconstruction of power, race, and colonialism. It is the deconstruction of these gendered bodies of knowledge that this essay will specifically analyze, as well as the depiction of what each author argues is missing from present discourses on gender, and finally, what they believe would be a better way to analyze gender discourses in a postmodern world. (maybe add another similar point, how western feminists are trying to portray “third-world women” and their motivation behind this act)
In specific, she interrogates the notion of gender itself and how it leads to constructed oppression and continued false inferiority by genders, sexes, and races. Her article is a critique of Anibal Quijano's theories. Lugones challenges Quijano's theory because it is constructed in and reproduces several problematic colonial ideas of sex and gender. The Arvin et al. piece, Decolonizing Feminism: Challenging Connections between Settler Colonialism and Heteropatriarchy, confronts the continued colonization of native people's in the United States. Moreover, the article analysis how how "settler colonialism" and heteropatriarchy are linked, benefit and grow through one another. The argument in this article states that Women's and Gender studies and Native Studies cannot continued to be siloed nor fooled into believing they are separate issues if we (feminists) ever hope to see the end of a heteropartriachal state; and therefore end settler
In this paper feminist aspect of post colonization will be studied in “Season of Migration to the North” novel by Tayeb Salih. Postcolonial feminism can be defined as seeks to compute for the way that racism and the long-lasting economic, cultural, and political influences of colonialism affect non-white, non-Western women in the postcolonial world, according to Oxford dictionary. As it mentioned earlier about the application of Feminism theory in literature, the provided definition of postcolonial feminism also is not applicable in literature analysis. Therefore, Oxford defines another applic...
It is argued that societies who supports education for women are more prone to experience dramatic social progress. It is further explained that when women enters the workforce, they contribute to their countries' economic prospects, and this leads to their economic independence thus improve their stature both at home and in the community. According to the report, globalization is the 'antidote to the intolerant fundamentalism' that helps eliminate regressive taboos responsible for the promotion of gender discrimination. When discussing the impact of globalization on women, Subhalakshmi (2012) looked at women workers in India. She explained that globalization has opened up various employment opportunities for Indian women, hence increasing their purchasing power, self-confidence and independency. This, in turn, is seen as a potential way to increase equality between the sexes and afford women an equal stance in
However, partly due to their biological sexual difference and the socio-cultural surroundings to which they belong, the consequences of these above mentioned social evils are much more on women, especially subaltern women. Giving voice to such oppressed subalterns, the gendered subaltern (women of the deprived sections) and Indian women in general, Gayatri Chakvarty Spivak says: “For if, in the context of colonial production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow.” During her analysis of Sati she concludes her essay “can the subaltern” with her declaration that “the subaltern cannot speak” (Ashcroft, Griffths, and Tiffins 218-219).
In this text Mohanty argues that contemporary western feminist writing on Third World women contributes to the reproduction of colonial discourses where women in the South are represented as an undifferentiated “other”. Mohanty examines how liberal and socialist feminist scholarship use analytics strategies that creates an essentialist construction of the category woman, universalist assumptions of sexist oppression and how this contributes to the perpetuation of colonialist relations between the north and south(Mohanty 1991:55). She criticises Western feminist discourse for constructing “the third world woman” as a homogeneous “powerless” and vulnerable group, while women in the North still represent the modern and liberated woman (Mohanty 1991:56).