Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity

Abstract

Introduction: Political stance in terms of knowledge production and her work: Ø "ideas are always communally wrought, not privately owned" (1) Ø "Feminism without borders is not the same as 'border-less' feminism. It acknowledges the fault lines, conflicts, differences, fears, and containment that border represent." (2) Ø "I want to speak about feminisms without silences and exclusions in order to draw attention to the tension between the simultaneous plurality and narrowness of borders and the emancipatory potential of crossing through, with and over these borders in ou everyday lives" (2) What do Mohantys feminism consists of? Ø being a woman has political consequences Ø there can be unjust and unfair effects on women depending on our economic and social marginality and/or privilege. Ø Recognizing that sexism, racism, misogyny, and heterosexism underlie and fuel social and political institutions of rule and thus often lead to hatred of women and (supposedly justified) violence against women. (3) Antiracist feminist framework: Ø anchored in decolonizationand anticapitalist critique(3) Ø It also means being attentive to small as well as large struggles and processes that lead to radical change -not just working (or waiting) for a revolution. Thus everyday feminist, antiracist, anticapitalist practices are important as larger, organized political movements." (4) Ø Mohanty's feminist informed and formed by: 1. Standpoint epistemology: (Harstock, Dorothy Smith, Harding) "defined the link between social location, women's experiences, and their epistemic perspectives." 2. Third World/South Nation Feminist: they made a critical review of "the relationship of feminism and nationalism and of the centrality of struggles for decolonization in feminist thought." (5) Mohanty's idea of feminist practice: Ø Operates at a number of levels: at the level of daily life through the everyday acts that constitute our identities and relational communities; at the level of collective action in groups, networks, and movements constituted around feminist visions of social transformation; and at the level of theory, pedagogy, and textual creativity in the scholarly and writing practices of feminist engaged in the production of knowledge." (5) Critique of U.S. feminist practice: Ø The classless perspective creating and even wider gap between academic feminist and everyday struggles (my own words). Ø Incorporation "of capitalist values that has its own profound influence in engendering a neoliberal, consumerist (protocapitalist) feminist" (6) Ø Identity politics "the critique of essentialist identity politics and the hegemony of postmodernist skepticism about identity has led to a narrowing of feminist politics and theory whereby either exclusionary and self-serving understanding of identity rule the day or identity (racial, class, sexual, national, etc.) is seen as unstable and thus merely "strategic". Thus, identity is seen as either naïve or irrelevant, rather than a source of knowledge and basis for progressive mobilization." (6) Mohanty's proposal of solidarity as the common ground of struggle: Ø Rather than assuming an enforced commonality of oppression, the practice of solidarity foregrounds communities of people who have chosen to work and fight together. Diversity and difference are central values here -to be acknowledged and respected, not erased in the building of alliances." 1. Concept of reflective solidarity: "to reconstruct solidarity as an inclusive ideal (instead of) us vs. them"( Jodi Dean cited b Mohanty: 7). 2. "solidarity is always an achievement, the result of active struggle to construct the universal on the basis of particular/differences." (Mohanty:7) Conceptualization De/Colonization: Ø Franz Fanon: "argues that the success of decolonization lies in a "whole social structure being changed from the bottom up"; that this change is "willed, called for, demanded" by the colonized; that it is a historical process that can only be understood in the context of the "movements which give it historical form and content"; that is marked by violence and never "takes place unnoticed, for it influences individuals and modifies them fundamentally"; and finally that "decolonization is veritable creation of new men." In other words, decolonization involves profound transformation of self, community, and governance structures. It can only be engaged through active withdrawal of consent and resistance to structures of physic and social domination. It is a historical and collective process, and as such can only be understood within these context." Ø "decolonization is not only the creation of new kinds of self-governance but also "the creation of new men" (and women)." (8) Ø "if indeed these processes are interwoven with racial, national, and capitalist domination and exploitation such that lives of women and men, girls and boys, are profoundly affected, then decolonization at all levels (as described by Fanon) becomes fundamental to a radical feminist transformative project." (8) Anticapitalist critique: Ø "entails a critique of the operation., discourse, and values of capitalism and their naturalization through neoliberal ideology and corporate culture. This means demystifying discourses of consumerism, ownership, profit, and privatization -of collapse of notions of public and private good, and the refashioning of social into consumer identities within corporate culture." (9) Colonizing Feminist Scholarship and the formation of woman as a subject: Ø "This connection between women as historical subjects and the representations of Woman produced by hegemonic discourses is not a relation of direct identity or a relation of correspondence or simple implicationI would like to suggest that the feminist writings I analyze here discursively colonize the material and historical heterogeneities of the lives of women of Third World, thereby producing/representing a composite, singular "Third World woman" -an image that appears arbitrarily constructed but nevertheless carries with it the authorizing signature of Western humanist discourse." (19) About Third World Difference Ø "I argue that assumptions of privilege and ethnocentric universality, on the other hand, and inadequate self-consciousness about the effect of Western scholarship on the Third World in the context of a world system dominated by the West, on the other, characterize a sizable extent of Western feminist work on women in the Third World. Ø "Third World difference" -that stable, ahistorical something that apparently oppresses most if not all the women in these countries. And it is in the production of this Third World difference that Western feminism appropriate and colonize the constitutive complexities that characterize the lives of women I these countries." (19) (See also Volpp) About imperialism and its cultural discourse: Ø In Malek words "Contemporary imperialism is, in a real sense, a hegemonic imperialism, exercising to a maximum degree rationalized violence taken to a higher level than ever before -through fire and sword, but also through the attempt to control hearts and minds. For its context is defined by the combined action of the military-industrial complex and the hegemonic cultural centers of the West, all of them founded on the advanced level of development attained by monopoly and finance capital, and supported by the benefits of both the scientific and technological revolution and the second industrial revolution itself."(Malek cited by Mohanty: 20) About problematic methods of feminist/erasure of agency: Ø "assumes that "women" have a coherent group identity within the different cultures discussed, prior to the entry into social relations." (38) Ø The setting up of the commonality of Third World women's struggle across classes and cultures against a general notion of oppression (rooted primarily in the group in power -i.e., men) necessitates the assumption of what Michel Foucault calls the "juridico-discursive" mode of power, the principal features of which are "a negative relation", an "insistence on the rule" (which forms a binary system), a "cycle of prohibition," the "logic censorship," and a "uniformity" of the apparatus functioning at different levels." (38) Ø The major problem with such definition o power is that it locks all revolutionary struggles into binary structures possessing power versus being powerless." (39) Ø "the application of the notion of women as a homogenous category to women in the Third World colonizes and appropriates the pluralities of the simultaneous location of different groups of women in social class and ethnic frameworks; in doing so it ultimately robs them of their historical and political agency." (39) Colonial state/neoliberal state: Ø Thus, the embodiment of power of empire by officers in colonial service led to particular relations of rule and forms of knowledge. This was accomplished through the creation of the "English gentleman" as the natural and legitimate ruler -a creation based on a belief system that drew on social Darwinism, evolutionary anthropology, chivalry myths, Christianity, medical and "scientific" treatises, and the literary tradition of empire. Institutionally, colonial rule operated by setting up visible, rigid, and hierarchical distinctions between the colonizers and the colonized. colonial setting were transmuted to a moral plane: the ideal imperial agent embodied authority, discipline, fidelity, devotion, fortitude, and self-sacrifice." (59) Ø These following ideas are drawn by R.W. Connell which Mohanty uses) Unlike, the colonial state, the gender and racial regimes of contemporary liberal capitalist states operate through the ostensibly "unmarked" discourse of citizenship and individual rightswhite capitalist patriarchies institute relations of base