UNDER WESTERN EYES Feminist Scholarship and colonia Discourses Chandra talpade mohanty ny discussion of the intellectual and political construction of"third world feminisms"must address itself to two simultaneous proj ects: the internal critique of hegemonic"Western"feminisms, and the formulation of autonomous, geographically, historically, and culturally rounded feminist concerns and strategies. The first project is one of deconstructing and dismantling; the second, one of building and con- structing. While these projects appear to be contradictory, the one working negatively and the other positively, unless these two tasks are addressed multaneously third world"feminisms run the risk of marginalization or ghettoization from both mainstream(right and left)and Western fem inist discourses It is to the first project that I address myself. What I wish to analyze specifically the production of the third world woman"as a singular monolithic subject in some recent(Western) feminist texts. The definition of colonization I wish to invoke here is a predominantly discursive one, focusing on a certain mode of appropriation and codification of"schol arship""and"knowledge"about women in the third world by particular This is an updated and modified version of an essay published in Boundary 2 12, no 3/13, no. 1(Spring/Fall 1984), and reprinted in Feminist Review, no 30(Autumn 1988)
52 Power, Representation and Feminist critique analytic categories employed in specific writings on the subject which take as their referent feminist interests as they have been articulated in the U.S. and Western Europe. If one of the tasks of formulating and understanding the locus of third world feminisms"is delineating the way in which it resists and works against what I am referring to as"West ern feminist discourse, an analysis of the discursive construction of third world women"in Western feminism is an important first step Clearly Western feminist discourse and political practice is neither singular nor homogeneous in its goals, interests, or analyses. However, it is possible to trace a coherence of effects resulting from the implicit assumption of"the West"(in all its complexities and contradictions)as the primary referent in theory and praxis. My reference to"Western fem inism is by no means intended to imply that it is a monolith rather i am attempting to draw attention to the similar effects of various textual strategies used by writers which codify Others as non-Western and hence themselves as(implicitly) Western. It is in this sense that I use the term Western feminist. Similar arguments can be made in terms of middle-class urban african or Asian scholars producing scholarship on or about their rural or working-class sisters which assumes their own middle-class cul- tures as the norm, and codifies working-class histories and cultures as Other. Thus, while this essay focuses specifically on what I refer to as Western feminist"discourse on women in the third world, the critiques I offer also pertain to third world scholars writing about their own cultures which employ identical analytic strategies It ought to be of some political significance, at least, that the term colonization has come to denote a variety of phenomena in recent feminist and left writings in general. From its analytic value as a category of ex ploitative economic exchange in both traditional and contemporary Marx isms(cf. particularly contemporary theorists such as Baran 1962, Amin 1977, and Gunder-Frank 1967)to its use by feminist women of color in the U.S. to describe the appropriation of their experiences and struggle by hegemonic white women s movements(cf especially moraga and An zaldua 1983, Smith 1983, Joseph and Lewis 1981, and Moraga 1984), colonization has been used to characterize everything from the most ev ident economic and political hierarchies to the production of a particular cultural discourse about what is called the third world. 1 However so phisticated or problematical its use as an explanatory construct, coloni zation almost invariably implies a relation of structural domination, and a suppression-often violent-of the heterogeneity of the subject(s)in question My concern about such writings derives from my own implication and investment in contemporary debates in feminist theory, and the urgent political necessity(especially in the age of Reagan/ Bush)of forming stra
UNDER WESTERN EYES 53 tegic coalitions across class, race, and national boundaries. The analytic principles discussed below serve to distort Western feminist political prac tices, and limit the possibility of coalitions among (usually white)Western feminists and working- class feminists and feminists of color around the world. These limitations are evident in the construction of the(implicitly consensual) priority of issues around which apparently all women are expected to organize. The necessary and integral connection between feminist scholarship and feminist political practice and organizing deter- mines the significance and status of Western feminist writings on women in the third world, for feminist scholarship, like most other kinds of schol arship, is not the mere production of knowledge about a certain subject It is a directly political and discursive practice in that it is purposeful and ideological. It is best seen as a mode of intervention into particular heg emonic discourses(for example, traditional anthropology, sociology, lit- erary criticism, etc. ) it is a political praxis which counters and resists the totalizing imperative of age-old legitimate"and"scientific"bodies of knowledge. Thus, feminist scholai relations of power-relations which actices(whether reading, writing, critical, or textual) are inscribed in they counter, resist, or even perhaps implicitly support. There can, of course, be no apolitical scholarship The relationship between"Woman-a cultural and ideological com posite Other constructed through diverse representational discourses(sci entific, literary, juridical, linguistic, cinematic, etc -and"women-real material subjects of their collective histories-is one of the central ques tions the practice of feminist scholarship seeks to address. This connection between women as historical subjects and the re-presentation of woman produced by hegemonic discourses is not a relation of direct identity, or a relation of correspondence or simple implication 2 It is an arbitrary relation set up by particular cultures. I would like to suggest that the feminist writings I analyze here discursively colonize the material and historical heterogeneities of the lives of women in the third world, thereby producing /re-presenting a composite, singular"third world woman-an image which appears arbitrarily constructed, but nevertheless carries with it the authorizing signature of Western humanist discourse. 3 I argue that assumptions of privilege and ethnocentric universality on the one 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. An analysis of sexual difference"in the form of a cross-culturally singular, monolithic notion of patriarchy or male dominance leads to the construction of a similarly reductive and homogeneous notion of what I call the third world difference-that stable, ahistorical something that apparently op
54 Power Representation, and Feminist Critique presses most if not all the women in these countries. And it is in the production of this third world difference"that Western feminisms ap propriate and " colonize"the constitutive complexities which characterize the lives of women in these countries. It is in this process of discursive homogenization and systematization of the oppression of women in the third world that power is exercised in much of recent Western feminist discourse, and this power needs to be defined and In the context of the West's hegemonic position today, of what Anouar Abdel-Malek(1981)calls a struggle for" control over the orientation, regulation and decision of the process of world development on the basis of the advanced sector s monopoly of scientific knowledge and ideal cre- ativity, Western feminist scholarship on the third world must be seen and examined precisely in terms of its inscription in these particular re- lations of power and struggle. There is, it should be evident, no universal patriarchal framework which this scholarship attempts to counter and resist--unless one posits an international male conspiracy or a monolithic, ahistorical power structure. There is, however, a particular world balance of power within which any analysis of culture, ideology, and socioeco nomic conditions necessarily has to be situated. Abdel-Malek is useful here, again, in reminding us about the inherence of politics in the dis- courses of"culture Contemporary imperialism is, in a real sense, a hegemonic imperialism, ex ercising to a maximum degree a 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 content 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 levels 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.(145-46) Western feminist scholarship cannot avoid the challenge of situating itself and examining its role in such a global economic and political frame work. To do any less would be to ignore the complex interconnections between first and third world economies and the profound effect of this on the lives of women in all countries. I do not question the descriptive and informative value of most Western feminist writings on women in the third world. I also do not question the existence of excellent work which does not fall into the analytic traps with which I am concerned In fact I deal with an example of such work later on. In the context of an overwhelming silence about the experiences of women in these coun tries, as well as the need to forge intermational links between womens political struggles, such work is both pathbreaking and absolutely essen
UNDER WESTERN EYES 55 tial. However, it is both to the explanatory potential of particular analytic strategies employed by such writing, and to their political effect in the context of the hegemony of Western scholarship that I want to draw attention here. While feminist writing in the U.S. is still marginalized (except from the point of view of women of color addressing privileged white women), Western feminist writing on women in the third world must be considered in the context of the global hegemony of Western scholarship-1. e. the production, publication, distribution, and consump tion of information and ideas. Marginal or not, this writing has politica ffects and implications beyond the immediate feminist or disciplinary dience. One such significant effect of the dominant"representations f Western feminism is its conflation with imperialism in the eyes of particular third world women. 4 Hence the urgent need to examine the political implications of our analytic strategies and principles My critique is directed at three basic analytic principles which are present in(Western) feminist discourse on women in the third world Since i focus primarily on the Zed Press women in the third world series my comments on Western feminist discourse are circumscribed by my analysis of the texts in this series. 5 This is a way of focusing my critique. However, even though I am dealing with feminists who identify them elves as culturally or geographically from the"West, as mentioned earlier, what I say about these presuppositions or implicit principles holds for anyone who uses these methods, whether third world women in the West, or third world women in the third world writing on these issues and publishing in the West. Thus, I am not making a culturalist argument about ethnocentrism; rather, i am trying to uncover how ethnocentric universalism is produced in certain analyses. As a matter of fact, my argument holds for any discourse that sets up its own authorial subjects as the implicit referent, i. e. the yardstick by which to encode and rep- resent cultural Others. It is in this move that power is exercised in dis course The first analytic presupposition I focus on is involved in the strategic ocation of the category"women"vis-a-vis the context of analysis. The assumption of women as an already constituted coherent group with identical interests and desires, regardless of class, ethnic or racial location, or contradictions implies a notion of gender or sexual difference or even patriarchy which can be applied universally and cross-culturally.(The context of analysis can be anything from kinship structures and the or ganization of labor to media representations. The second analytical pre supposition is evident on the methodological level, in the uncritical way proof"of universality and cross-cultural validity are provided. The third is a more specifically political presupposition underlying the methodol ogies and the analytic strategies, i. e. the model of power and strugg
56 Power, Representation and feminist Critique they imply and suggest. I argue that as a result of the two modes-or rather, frames-of analysis described above, a homogeneous notion of the oppression of women as a group is assumed, which, in turn, produces the image of an"average third world woman. This average third world woman leads an essentially truncated life based on her feminine gender (read: sexually constrained )and her being third world"(read: ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, domestic, family-oriented, victimized, etc. ) This, I suggest, is in contrast to the(implicit)self-representation of Western women as educated as modern, as having control over their own bodies and sexualities, and the freedom to make their own decisions The distinction between Western feminist re-presentation of women in the third world and Western feminist self-presentation is a distinction of the same order as that made by some Marxists between the main- tenance"function of the housewife and the real"productive"role of wage labor, or the characterization by developmentalists of the third world as being engaged in the lesser production of"raw materials"in contrast to the real"productive activity of the first world. These distinctions are made on the basis of the privileging of a particular group as the norm or referent. Men involved in wage labor, first world producers, and, I suggest, Western feminists who sometimes cast third world women in terms of ourselves undressed"(Michelle Rosaldo's [1980 term),all construct themselves as the normative referent in such a binary analyti Womenas Category of Analysis, or: We are All Sisters in Struggle By women as a category of analysis, I am referring to the crucial assumption that all of us of the same gender, across classes and cultures, are somehow socially constituted as a homogeneous group identified prior to the process of analysis. This is an assumption which characterizes much feminist discourse. The homogeneity of women as a group is produced not on the basis of biological essentials but rather on the basis of secondary sociological and anthropological universals. Thus, for instance, in any given piece of feminist analysis, women are characterized as a singular group on the basis of a shared oppression. What binds women together is a sociological notion of the"sameness"of their oppression. It is at this point that an elision takes place between women"as a discursively constructed group and"women"as material subjects of their own history. 6 Thus, the discursively consensual homogeneity of"women"as a group is mistaken for the historically specific material reality of groups of women. This results in an assumption of women as an always already constituted group, one which has been labeled"powerless, ""exploited, sexually harassed, "etc. by feminist scientific, economic, legal, and so ciological discourses. (Notice that this is quite similar to sexist discourse
UNDER WESTERN EYES labeling women weak, emotional, having math anxiety, etc. )This focus is not on uncovering the material and ideological specificities that con- stitute a particular group of women as"powerless' in a particular context It is, rather, on finding a variety of cases of"powerless"groups of women to prove the general point that women as a group are powerless In this section I focus on five specific ways in which"women"as a category of analysis is used in Western feminist discourse on women in the third world. Each of these examples illustrates the construction of third world women"as a homogeneous"powerless"group often located as implicit victims of particular socioeconomic systems. I have chosen to deal with a variety of writers-from Fran Hosken, who writes primarily about female genital mutilation, to writers from the women in Interna tional Development school, who write about the effect of development policies on third world women for both Western and third world audi- ences. The similarity of assumptions about"third world women"in all these texts forms the basis of my discussion. This is not to equate all the texts that I analyze, nor is it to equalize their strengths and weaknesses The authors I deal with write with varying degrees of care and complexity however, the effect of their representation of third world women is a coherent one. In these texts women are defined as victims of male violence (Fran Hosken); victims of the colonial process(Maria Cutrufelli); victims of the Arab familial system Juliette Minces); victims of the economic development process( Beverley Lindsay and the [liberal] WID School); and finally, victims of the Islamic code(Patricia Jeffery). This mode of defining women primarily in terms of their object status(the way in which they are affected or not affected by certain institutions and systems)is what characterizes this particular form of the use of"women"as a cat- egory of analysis. In the context of Western women writing/studying omen in the third world, such objectification(however benevolently motivated) needs to be both named and challenged as valerie amos and Pratibha Parmar argue quite eloquently,Feminist theories which ex amine our cultural practices as ' feudal residues or label us traditional also portray us as politically immature women who need to be versed and schooled in the ethos of Western feminism They need to be contin ually challenged.. (1984, 7) Women as Victims of male violence Fran Hosken, in writing about the relationship between human rights and female genital mutilation in Africa and the Middle East, bases her whole discussion/condemnation of genital mutilation on one privileged premise: that the goal of this practice is to mutilate the sexual pleasure and satisfaction of woman"(1981, 11). This, in turn, leads her to claim
Power, Representation and Feminist critique that woman's sexuality is controlled, as is her reproductive potential According to Hosken, male sexual politics"in Africa and around the world "share the same political goal: to assure female dependence and subservience by any and all means"(14). Physical women(rape, sexual assault, excision, infibulation, etc. )is thus carried out with an astonishing consensus among men in the world"(14). Here, women are defined consistently as the victims of male control-the sex ually oppressed. 7 Although it is true that the potential of male violence against women circumscribes and elucidates their social position to a certain extent, defining women as archetypal victims freezes them into objects-who-defend-themselves, men into "subjects-who-perpetrate violence, and (every)society into powerless(read: women) and powerful (read: men) groups of people. Male violence must be theorized and in- terpreted within specific societies, in order both to understand it better and to effectively organize to change it. Sisterhood cannot be assumed on the basis of gender; it must be forged in concrete historical and political practice and analysis Women as universal dependents Beverly Lindsays conclusion to the book Comparative Perspectives of Third World Women: The Impact of race, Sex and Class(1983, 298, 306) states:"dependency relationships, based upon race, sex and class,are being perpetuated through social, educational, and economic institutions These are the linkages among Third World Women. Here, as in other places, Lindsay implies that third world women constitute an identifiable group purely on the basis of shared dependencies. If shared dependencies were all that was needed to bind us together as a group, third world women would always be seen as an apolitical group with no subject status Instead, if anything, it is the common context of political struggle against class, race, gender, and imperialist hierarchies that may constitute third world women as a strategic group at this historical juncture. Lindsay also states that linguistic and cultural differences exist between vietnamese and black American women, but both groups are victims of race, sex and class. Again black and vietnamese women are characterized by their victim status Similarly, examine statements such as "my analysis will start by stat ing that all African women are politically and economically dependent Cutrufelli 1983, 13),Nevertheless, either overtly or covertly, prostitu tion is still the main if not the only source of work for African women Cutrufelli 1983, 33). All African women are dependent Prostitution is the only work option for African women as a group Both statements are illustrative of generalizations sprinkled liberally through a recent Zed
UNDER WESTERN EYES Press publication, Women of Africa: Roots of Oppression, by Maria Rosa Cutrufelli, who is described on the cover as an Italian writer, sociologist, Marxist, and feminist. In the 1980s, is it possible to imagine writing a book entitled Women of Europe: Roots of Oppression? I am not objecting to the use of universal groupings for descriptive purposes. Women from the continent of Africa can be descriptively characterized as"women of Africa. It is when"women of Africa"becomes a homogeneous socio- logical grouping characterized by common dependencies or powerless ness(or even strengths) that problems arise-we say too little and too much at the same time This is because descriptive gender differences are transformed into the division between men and women. Women are constituted as a group via dependency relationships vis-a-vis men, who are implicitly held re sponsible for these relationships. When"women of Africa"as a group (versus"men of Africa"as a group? )are seen as a group precisely because they are generally dependent and oppressed, the analysis of specific his torical differences becomes impossible, because reality is always appar ently structured by divisions-two mutually exclusive and jointly ex- haustive groups, the victims and the oppressors. Here the sociological is substituted for the biological, in order, however to create the same-a unity of women. Thus, it is not the descriptive potential of gender dif ference but the privileged positioning and explanatory potential of gender difference as the origin of oppression that I question In using"women of Africa"(as an already constituted group of oppressed peoples)as a category of analysis, Cutrufelli denies any historical specificity to the location of women as subordinate, powerful, marginal, central, or other wise, vis-a-vis particular social and power networks. Women are taken as a unified"powerless"group prior to the analysis in question Thus, it is then merely a matter of specifying the context after the fact. Women are now placed in the context of the family, or in the workplace, or within religious networks, almost as if these systems existed outside the relations of women with other women and women with men The problem with this analytic strategy, let me repeat, is that it as sumes men and women are already constituted as sexual-political subjects prior to their entry into the arena of social relations. Only if we subscribe to this assumption is it possible to undertake analysis which looks at the 'effects'of kinship structures, colonialism organization of labor, etc,on women,who are defined in advance as a group. The crucial point that is forgotten is that women are produced through these very relations as well as being implicated in forming these relations. As Michelle Rosaldo ar- gues, woman's place in human social life is not in any direct sense a oroduct of the things she does(or even less, a function of what, biolog- ically, she is)but the meaning her activities acquire through concrete social
Power Representation and feminist Critique nteractions"(1980, 400). That women mother in a variety of societies is not as significant as the value attached to mothering in these societies The distinction between the act of mothering and the status attached to it is a very important one-one that needs to be stated and analyzed contextually Married Women as victims of the Colonial process In Levi-Strauss's theory of kinship structure as a system of the change of women, what is significant is that exchange itself is not con stitutive of the subordination of women; women are not subordinate be- cause of the fact of exchange, but because of the modes of exchange instituted, and the values attached to these modes. However, in discussing the marriage ritual of the Bemba, a Zambian matrilocal, matrilineal people, Cutrufelli in Women of africa focuses on the fact of the marital exchange of women before and after Western colonization rather than the value attached to this exchange in this particular context. This leads to her definition of Bemba women as a coherent group affected in a particular way by colonization. Here again, Bemba women are constituted rather unilaterally as victims of the effects of Western colonization. Cutrufelli cites the marriage ritual of the Bemba as a multistage event whereby a young man becomes incorporated into his wife's family group as he takes up residence with them and gives his services in return for food and maintenance"(43). This ritual extends over many years, and the sexual relationship varies according to the degree of the girls physical maturity. It is only after she undergoes an initiation ceremony at puberty that intercourse is sanctioned, and the man acquires legal rights over her This initiation ceremony is the more important act of the consecration of women's reproductive power, so that the abduction of an uninitiated girl is of no consequence, while heavy penalty is levied for the seduction of an initiated girl. Cutrufelli asserts that the effect of european colonization has changed the whole marriage system. Now the young man is entitled to take his wife away from her people in return for money the implication is that Bemba women have now lost the protection of tribal laws. How ever, while it is possible to see how the structure of the traditional mar riage contract(versus the postcolonial marriage contract)offered women a certain amount of control over their marital relations, only an analysis of the political significance of the actual practice which privileges an initiated girl over an uninitiated one, indicating a shift in female power relations as a result of this ceremony, can provide an accurate account of whether Bemba women were indeed protected by tribal laws at all times However, it is not possible to talk about Bemba women as a homo geneous group within the traditional marriage structure. Bemba women
