Under Western Eyes by Mohanty

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).

Mohanty is drawing upon theoretical perspectives of postmodernism to understand difference and by that uncover essentialist and Universalist interpretations (Uduyagiri 1995:159). In particular she is drawing upon approaches familiar to Edward Said’s Orientalism and Focault’s approach to discourse, power and knowledge. Foucault’s theories are especially useful in a postmodernist argument since he acknowledge that there are several structures of power, and that the there is a diversity of localized resistances ( Udayagiri 1995: 161). Mohanty uses Foucault’s conception of power to uncover Universalist categories and how feminist writers define power as a binary structure – to be in possession of power versus being powerless (Mohanty 1991:71). This limited way of theorizing power fails to recognize counteroffensives and the varied forms of power. Mohanty uses Said’s Orientalism to show how the way Western cultural perceptions of the Orient “became a means of controlling the regio...

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...tern Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses”, in Mohanty, Chandra, Russo, Ann and Torres, Lourdes (eds) Third World women and the Politics of Feminism, Indianapolis: Indiana UP: 53-80.

Nussbaum, Martha (1992) “Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defense of Aristotelian Essentialism”, Political Theory 20, 2: 202-246. Online: http://docenti2.unior.it/doc_db/doc_obj_19781_18-04-2010_4bcb27babcf39.pdf

Parpart, Jane and Marchand M. (1995) “Part one: Exploding the canon: an Introduction/Conclusion”, in Marchand, Marianne and Parpart, Jane (eds) Feminism Postmodernism Devlopment, London; New York: Routledge: 1-23.

Udayagiri, Mridula. (1995) “Challenging Modernization: Gender and Development, Postmodern Feminism and Activism”, in Marchand, Marianne and Parpart, Jane (eds) Feminism Postmodernism Devlopment, London; New York: Routledge: 159-179.