To begin this week, I want to remind you of what I wrote at the end of my blog from last week:
Sayeed’s article, which she wrote in 2002, is an example of the reaction of “Third World” feminists to the WESTOCENTRIC focus not only of mainstream feminism, but also of Chicana and Black Feminisms. Although raised in the U.S., Sayeed faces some struggles and problems as an Indian Muslim that her Midwestern feminist community can’t seem to appropriately reckon with. This is where we’ll start next week, and you might want to take a look at the movie Bend It Like Beckham (2002) to start thinking about the ways women negotiate their existence in the in-between of culture, tradition, and history. Here's the trailer, just for a little preview of the movie, directed by Indian feminist Gurinder Chadha:
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If you do get the opportunity to watch this film, use the questions on Worksheet #7 to help make sense of some of the tensions inherent as Jasminder negotiates being a Hindu woman of Indian descent living in contemporary London, which is the capitol city at the centre of the former empire that, up until India’s independence in 1947, used to govern India as a colonial possession.
Administrative Stuff
Before I get into some other important information concerning our reading and class activities for this week, let me remind you of the following:
• You should already be well into researching your Term Project by now, so please start thinking about when you’d like to meet with me about it. Meeting with me by October 29th is a requirement of the assignment, so don’t let that slip by. Of course, I’d love to talk to you about your project as many times as you’d like, but we’ve got to have at least one conversation in which you come prepared as described in the Term Project assignment sheet. Please make that appointment as soon as possible.
• On that note, one of my favorite parts of being a professor is getting to know my students, so if you have any questions or concerns at any point about anything this semester, please don’t hesitate to stop by to chat during my office hours or, alternatively, e-mail me to arrange an appointment.
• As you know, the Weekly Reading Worksheets are intended to help guide you through our reading materials each week. In addition, I’ve posted some general strategies for reading and note-taking that will help you not only prepare for our class discussion, but also for assignments and your final exam. You can also access this guide via the link on the right under "Important Course Info."
• Please remember that, with the exception of your Discussion Questions, you’ll submit all your work in hard copy by the beginning of class on the date that it’s due. The only exception to this is the Discussion Questions, which should be submitted to me via e-mail by 5 PM on Thursday evening the day before we’re scheduled to discuss your readings.
Transnational Feminist Politics
Since the early 1980s, developments in transnational feminist politics and activisms originating in the global South/East have greatly influenced the evolution of feminist theorizing in the North/West. In large part, this has been because of what I mentioned last week: One of the major consequences of ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION (which is driven by capitalism in the world’s wealthiest countries) has been that most of the world’s people are poor, and the overwhelming majority of those people are women, children, and other historically marginalized groups (such as aboriginal peoples). It has been feminists of colour living within the global North/West and non-western feminists who have identified this growing problem, critiqued mainstream Anglo-American feminists for not dealing with it, and attempted to theorize solutions to it.
Their work made possible the United Nations Decade for Women (1975-1985) and dozens of subsequent Conventions and Commissions which for the first time questioned normative approaches to “development” projects carried out in the global South/East by their (former?) colonizers in the North/West. Their work insisted that women’s lives, concerns, and experiences be placed at the centre of “development” projects. According to feminist intellectual historian and economist Devaki Jain (2005), feminists from the global South have impacted discussions at the United Nations in four significant ways:
1. They have radically altered the ways in which issues are conceptualized and identified agendas for action.
2. They have repeatedly insisted that countries take stock of the experiences and perspectives of women.
3. They have enabled strategic transnational coalition building to achieve desired changes.
4. They have become formally embedded in institutions as a means of carrying their social justice agendas forward.
But, as you’ll read in Isla, et al. this week, even despite their extraordinary influence, the United Nations remains largely a patriarchal institution embedded within the processes of the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (hooks 1985) otherwise known as ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION. Consequently, there are some inherent problems even with the ostensibly feminist BEIJING PLATFORM FOR ACTION, which was/is supposed to recognize women’s rights as human rights and take into account women’s lives, experiences, and concerns within processes of “development.”
Developments in Feminist Theories and Epistemologies
Additionally, and most importantly for our purposes, the work of non-western feminist theorists and activists, along with the work of women of colour feminists located within the global North/West, has caused a major epistemic shift within western feminist theorizing. In other words, the problems they’ve identified, their visions for a just future, and their proposed strategies for getting there have completely altered western feminist thought in innumerable ways, some of which you’ll read about this week.
But this epistemic shift has not been without conflict and debate between and among feminists, which you’ll also read about. You had a bit of a taste of this with Sayeed’s article from last week, but our reading this week will illuminate them more fully. So, as you’re reading and preparing for class this week, think about the following theoretical development: During the early 1980s, the mainstream WLM was (rightfully) accused by women of colour feminists within the global North/West of being inattentive to the SYSTEMS OF DOMINATION identified by bell hooks (1985), especially the intersection of gender and socio-economic status with race/skin color/ethnicity (see the materials on BLACK and CHICANA FEMINISMS, for example). And then, in the mid-1990s, non-western feminists began to critique Anglo-American feminists (which included women of colour feminists) of being exclusionary of their experiences as post-colonial subjects. These non-western feminists (also referred to as THIRD WORLD and/or POST-COLONIAL FEMINISTS) called out western feminist thought for not attending to issues of nation, culture, religion, capitalism, or the legacies of colonialism and the current consequences of globalization.
The positive results of this for feminist theories have been many, and one of these is Burn's introductory chapter to her basic Women's Studies textbook (2005). That Burn insists on a transnational/global feminist approach to the study of women globally that avoids ethnocentrism and conceptualizes women's rights as human rights signals the vast influence that women of colour and post-colonial feminists have had on western feminist theories.
Reference
Jain, Devaki. 2005. Women, Development and the UN: A Sixty-Year Quest for Equality and Justice. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
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