Static Feminism

Chandra Mohanty’s critique on Feminist scholarship of the First world is continuous with a recurring theme in the history of colonization- the endeavors of the colonizing first world to identify and define itself as more progressive, superior and simply better than the colonized, without which the colonizer’s identity would be insignificant and incomplete. Feminist scholarship of the First World turns women into a “category of analysis”, assumes them as a monolithic whole in the third world, and then adjudicates these very self-created categories, crafting a specific position for the first world woman in the process. Mohanty’s work illustrates a tug of war between feminist concerns serving as a just cause- a cause that could push the colonizers and the colonized in the right direction- and the concealed parallelism of this scholarship with colonialist and imperialist elements, pulling them backwards. The work that could help understand the different women of the world and their circumstances is countered by the scholarship falling into the traps of incorrect “representation” and “self-representation”. In essence, this tug of war produces a feminism that is static- never really moving forward and yet neither backward, but allowing a third way to be engendered between it, that would scream itself of its heterogeneity, diversity and social contexts. It is the stagnancy of the feminist scholarship that allows for the creation of movement, of a voice that tells the world what the right direction might be.

Mohanty’s explanation of the treatment of third world women and men as binaries also helps understand how this feminism is static. Men and women are understood as distinct populations rather than parts of one- as “wholes coming into exploitative relations”, where simply men possess power and women don’t. This undermines the local social and cultural contexts of different areas, cementing the concept of binaries that are based upon assumptions that almost become real for the First World Feminists- it creates the “western eyes” that Mohanty explores. Binaries, by virtue of acting as wholes and monolithic forces, cannot produce an energy that could lead to a nuanced understanding of the conditions of the women of the world. Instead, the only power that binaries possess is to make one imagine the need of women to “move from powerless to powerful”, and therefore an “inversion” of the status quo, keeping just this one goal in mind. In essence, the inversion does not allow for any actual movement towards understanding of forces outside binaries- of degrees of power, of various cultural, economic and social factors and the shades of their impact. It is just one move that occurs in the same place, allowing feminist scholarship to stay static.

Mohanty’s description of the creation of the category of the “Third world woman” is one similar to a process, like the creation of an artwork or a sculpture. Western standards craft molds of “underdeveloped” and “developing” places in the Third world and then place women within these molds. Out then, come chiseled figurines of the third world women, with the “third world difference.” It is precisely here that the First World scholarship ceases to be a global feminist struggle, but one where it becomes a means of First World women defining themselves, also as a monolithic entity-only a more progressive one- in relation to those of the third world. Monolithic entities that keep alive the basic and essential difference of master and subject created by colonisation and imperialistic tendencies. What is still alive is the difference between these two entities, rather than the countless differences between individuals across the global community. In essence, this feminism is static because its very starting point is a flawed assumption, a mold that has a fixed shape, that will churn out the same sculptures to understand the countless women of the Third world.

 In essence, without any real territorial control and extraction of resources, First world feminist discourse keeps the colonialist tendency alive, which in turn keeps the discourse from truly understanding all women and how they fare in the world of colonization and decolonization. This is where the discourse becomes motionless, giving way to the Third world voices to grow louder and point towards the third way- which is not just a third woman, but a reference to numerous women and their conditions. As Mohanty shows, First World Feminist discourses, which assume third world women as a homogenous group, do no service to them but certainly one to themselves. Yet, even this service, of defining themselves, is frozen at a particular point in time. It does not have the power to make the contextual differences of the third world to disappear. The stagnancy of the First world thought is precisely what reveals the impairment of its “eyes”.