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