In her work called “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses”, Mohanty sets the stage by the various ways in which colonialism, as a discourse, is repeatedly employed by the West, be it about cultural appropriation, economic and political hierarchies, domination or understanding of the third world.

Particularly, understanding of ‘women’ of the third world. By Western Feminism.

Mohanty’s concern is with the creation, production and reference to the “third world women” as a singular, monolithic subject in recent Western feminist texts. The idea is to investigate the specific, methodological manner in which knowledge regarding the third world women is articulated, presented, and made popular. How and why a particular view or image of the third world women has increasingly become common, or convenient, is in question. While the author carefully points out the fact that Western feminist discourse is not homogeneous or unified, yet there exists certain points of coherence and convergence. Such areas are visible in the in the overarching and unsophisticated assumption(s) of the West regarding the third world women.

Western feminism defines itself via creating the ‘other’ as non-Western. Thus, Feminist scholarship is not just concerned with ‘producing’ knowledge regarding a subject, instead, it is to be understood as a political and discursive ‘practice’. An ideologically motivated practice, which intervenes into certain hegemonic discourses. It is, therefore, no surprise that feminist scholarship puts its entire emphasis on power-dynamics, which scholarly practices deal with in a number of ways. The author does, however, make it known that apolitical scholarship does not exist. She speaks of Western feminism in terms of colonialism and its attempt to ‘colonize’, to dominate and ignore, the differences and heterogeneity that exist in the lives of women in the third world, and convert this heterogeneity into a singular image, as reflection of the ‘Third World Woman’. Crucial to note here is the distinction made between woman and women. While ‘woman’ refers to a compound, unified identity based on certain ‘universal’ social and anthropological relations, ‘women’ is used for actual, historical subjects, with collective pasts and presents. Needless to say, this label of the ‘Third World Woman’ is approved by the Western humanist discourse, and carries with itself certain implicit assumptions convenient to the ideas, frameworks and perceptions of the West. In addition to deciding what ‘should’ be understood of the third world woman, confined to patriarchy and oppression, what exists within this label is a reductive notion which does not appreciate or recognize the existing complexities, differences and heterogeneous elements in what is known of women in the third world.

 The West comes from a hegemonic position, which consequently leads to the systematization of the women’s oppression in the third world, and it is through this homogenization that power relations are created. Thus the author makes the reader understand Western Feminist scholarship as a combination of two relating concepts: power and struggle. It seems, therefore, that a feminist eye coming from a Western setting cannot, or does not want to, understand the third world women as individuals with agency and independence. Rather the popular practice is to examine these women in dependency of someone else, either the men or the colonizer. Doing this, women are robbed of their individual identities and the very recognition of their agency, in whatever shape and form they have it. Evidently, this is problematic because the idea of the third world women then suggests women as dependent, struggling beings, oppressed, seen through their relations with X, as opposed to their existence as independent, individual identities. In other words, women are seen as functions of either patriarchy or colonialism, or both. This binary analytic is what the author is uncovering and challenging. While the author uses the works of many scholars on the subject, yet the defining characteristic remains the same; the effect(s) of representing third world women as a homogeneous category. What coheres the Western Feminist scholarship is defining women with an ‘object status’, a norm problematic, and a norm that needs to be challenged, for this ‘common’ understanding suggests being comfortable with keeping a certain category of women “outside history”.

Because women, particularly third world women, are constantly objectified, the immediate consequence this objectification and reductionist portrayal has is the image of women as immature and deprived of the very ethos of feminism. Or ‘Western’ feminism, in particular.  Owing to this system of establishing a universality when it comes to the third world women, the voices of women are affected despite class, cultural and regional differences. This universality has many a strand attached to it. These include constructing women in terms of religion, economic dependence, familial systems, patriarchy, violence and colonial processes. To narrow these strands down, what the author highlights is the cross cultural existence of “male domination and female exploitation”, as the crux of Western feminist writings on the third world women. Interestingly, the use of numbers and arithmetic methods comes into play too in aiding the idea of universality. Here becomes relevant the example of the veil, suggesting that the greater the number of women wearing the veil, the more widespread is the sexual control and domination over women. An overly simplistic and problematic method, but that is frequently employed in Western feminist works.

This method or popular discourse portraying women as powerless against possessing power undermines a very important badge that the third world women pride themselves in. This is the badge of revolutionary struggles, which must not be looked upon in binary terms. It is here, in the creation of ‘perpetually’ oppressed women that the role of colonial tendencies becomes clear. In other words, confining third world women into a unified, homogeneous category of oppressed, powerless women makes the first world women the uncontested and only ‘subjects’. The independent. The deciders. Consequently, it becomes impossible for third world women to rise above their object status in Western Feminist understanding. It is as if to say a particular category of women can not represent themselves, while the other can. The identified tension is, therefore, between self-presentation of Western feminists, and the ‘representation’ of the third world women by the same Western feminists.

The point to take away, therefore, is that such a framework only reflects a theoretical self portrayal of Western women and a flawed understanding of third world women, not a material reality. If that were the material reality, history would not be witnessing socio-political movements in the West, and challenging debates facing the West. If that were the material reality, there would be no struggles, no victories won by the third world women.

It is insufficient to state that third world women need to be versed and schooled in the ethos of Western Feminism, because it risks the likelihood of solidifying a limiting perception of their experience.  Even the use of the term ‘third world’ woman functions to restrain the possibility of imagining a woman from a post colonial context as anything but. Instead, there remains attached to it a conception of lack, whereby the subject is not evolved enough and so the danger of this association is that it authorizes Western notions of Feminism to voice their experiences.

Mohanty speaks precisely of this overpowering effect of the White voice within the archive of women’s experiences and expresses the danger of clustering women of the ‘third world’ under broadly stereotyped characterizations. She accurately points out that such efforts are reminiscent of imperialist traditions, except in only a more contemporary period. Therefore, now, to blindly attribute such an enfeebling attitude of Western Feminism to a higher mission of empowerment is only to accommodate a new version of imperial conquest, an attempt to control the heart and mind. 

However, it is also crucial to note that these are not isolated instances. Mohanty emphasizes how Western Feminism has developed a very binary understanding of women which is attached to the compartmentalization of the post colonial world into very limited frames of being. It is in fact through a very deliberate act of power and rooted in a unique political context, that this happening. In most cases, women in the post colonial world are seen as extensions of men or religion. That is to say, never as in or of themselves. They are the other and not complete in their own. The effect of this can be traced along a very deep tradition of Sati where Lata Mani talks about how these women were remembered as only either ‘heroines’ or ‘victims’. So as the fate of a Sati is limited to an either/or conception, therefore,  all possibility of recognizing or expressing each woman’s individual experience is foreclosed.

In much the same way, White feminism operates to foreclose any nuanced understanding of the complexity of women in the post colonial world. It functions as a part of the wider power structure that dictates the placement of individuals into groups and groups into nations, all as part of one collective whole with a single identity. As Mohanty explains, “third world women as a group or category are automatically and necessarily defined as: religious (read “not progressive”), family-oriented (read “traditional”), legal minors (read “they-are-still-not-conscious-of their-rights”),illiterate (read “ignorant”), domestic (read “backward”) and sometimes revolutionary (read “their-country-is-in-a-state-of-war-they-must-fight!”).”  What is associated with the the third world woman is a sense of regression, or a state of immobility which is the exact opposite of the White woman. What then conflicts with the supposed aim of White Feminism, to cast all women under the universal umbrella of the female experience of a ‘shared oppression‘, is exactly how divided their experiences are. There is no sisterhood, or at least not an equally accessible one. White Feminism, by its very existence argues against it.

On this premise of sisterhood thus, Mohanty sums up quite clearly the discrepancy in White feminism. First world woman, third world woman; its not so much a matter of both surviving together, fighting against the same oppression. Rather, its more that one enables and sustains the other. They exist on different planes, coming together as a whole ever so rarely; the first world woman thrives on the third world woman, she derives her strength from otherising her. She is doubly marginalized, cast on the outer folds of history and left to fight on her own.

 

 

The mere absence of the female narrative in de-colonial and post-colonial studies can be regarded as one of the most important shortcomings of history. Buried beneath a layer that was twofold, the woman seems to be missing from the struggles for independence. The first layer being the narrative of the colonizer and secondly, the narrative of the patriarchal native.

The very foundation of Orientalism, Colonialism and Imperialism was grounded upon communal lumping. The problem lies in not just viewing a diverse group of people with their own conceptions of native history and culture as homogeneous, but also how this view informs colonial policy. First world feminism seems to echo this same issue. They firstly create a binary in terms of the all powerful man and the powerless woman and impose this across the third world. Local structures of power, traditions and religion is not taken into account and it is assumed that issues faced by all women across the e.g: the Arab world, South Asia, Africa are symmetric. The terminology that follows serves as evidence to First World Feminists engaging in communal lumping. Phrases such as “Women of Africa/Middle Eastern Women” are casually thrown around not just online but even in academic papers. Phrases as such completely ignore local level differences by grouping them under one banner.

“To treat them as a unified group characterized by the fact of their “exchange” between male kin, is to deny the socio-historical and cultural specificities of their existence.” – Mohanty

First World Feminism’s failure to understand women outside their relation to the patriarch freezes them in a timeless past. In an attempt to prevent “Western influence” the local patriarchs evoke religious tradition and authority, and in some cases even appeal to anthropology and science. Taking the example of Africa for example, Kenyatta in Facing Mount Kenya mentions the practice of female circumcision among the Giyuku people in Kenya and how the entire tribal system revolves around that practice as it serves as a rite of passage. The author closes by saying:

“The African is in the best position properly to discuss and disclose the psychological background of tribal customs, such as irua, etc., and he should be given the opportunity to acquire the scientific training which will enable him to do so. This is a point which should be appreciated by well-meaning anthropologists who have had experience of the difficulties of field-work in various parts of the world.” – Kenyatta

One can observe here how British attempts to directly attack a religious ritual without developing a micro level understanding of local culture infact has solidified tradition even further in the eyes of Kenyatta. Patriarchal relationships are hence reforged in the struggle to prevent foreign influence.

First world feminism attacking issues of patriarchy at a macro level not only bears similar results but also causes a major setback to local modes of female resistance who understand their native culture much better than someone addressing their issues in the “West”. Statistically even one may find local institutions of empowerment gaining much more traction than feminist institutions based on “western” scholarship. In our own local context in Pakistan, Al-Huda with around 200 branches dominates the Women’s Action Forum with its 3-4 branches as Al-Huda operates at a more grass root level, and also because the latter is seen as “liberal” and “corrupting” due to the states constant evocation of religious authority post-1947.

Chandra Mohanty talks about how First World Feminists sometimes equate the Veil with rape and prostitution. In doing so, they deny the Veil of its historical/cultural significance in terms of how it links to female dignity in Muslim societies. In some cases it has even been revolutionized to some extent for instance Fanon in “Algeria Unveiled” talks about how the Veil itself became a tool for combat which in return places women at equal footing as males:

“The Algerian woman rises directly to the level of tragedy.” – Fanon

So the same veil that was seen as oppressive by First World Feminists and Colonialists became a source of empowerment for Women in Algeria, which according to Fanon places the “Algerian Women at the heart of combat”. Hence one can observe that the gaps that both First World Feminism and Imperialism create are immediately filled by timeless religion and culture.

In conclusion, the hegemony of Western scholarship plays a role in why First World Feminism spread rapidly and became the dominant discourse for feminism, while its ignorance of local contexts, cross border homogenization, cultural reductionism and marginalization of local feminist movements or modes of resistance has caused it to be heavily laden with imperialist undertones.

It is without any doubt that Western scholarship holds a monopoly over the production, publication and distribution of information and ideas, in addition to harboring the power to influence modes of thought and to bring about institutional changes within society by means of ideas alone. This is one of the facts that Mohanty introduces her analysis of Western feminist scholarship with, in an article titled Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. The piece rests on the assumption that feminist scholarly practices are inscribed in relations of power, which is to say that these practices are inherently political; beset in forwarding, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the agenda of the group at the center. In the writings that Mohanty chooses to analyze, it is first-world women who constitute this center, with third-world women being at the periphery of the debate. First world feminism needs this third world woman subject- this figure of the oppressed third world woman- whose struggles it can appropriate in aiding the forwarding of its own agenda. The problem arises when these Western scholars view and attempt to speak for third-world women with an unchecked degree of ethnocentric universality, which not only misrepresents entire cultures and peoples, but undermines the individual struggles of the women in these societies. Through this biased lens, colonial mindsets are reified, calling then for a ‘white savior’- in this case the first-world feminist- to ‘represent’ the struggles of third-world women who cannot represent themselves. This appropriation of their individual struggles and the suppression of their heterogeneity by hegemonic white women’s movements is what feminist women of color in the U.S. describe as ‘colonization’; a label which begs the question- to what extent is first-world feminism imperialist?

Western or first-world feminist scholars make frequent use of binary analytics in their work, dividing and categorizing people into 2 vastly opposing groups: the powerless and the powerful, victims and oppressors, women and men. What this does, in effect, is group together all women into a single homogenous collective on the basis of shared dependencies or shared oppression. Adding the term ‘third-world’ as a prefix still ignores the fact that experiences, struggles and values differ across the various groups of third-world women. An example given by Mohanty of Western scholars choosing the fact of an institution over the value attached to that institution is that of the marriage ritual of Bemba women. The author in question, Cutrufelli, suggests that Bemba women, as a constituted group, are victims of the institution of marriage. This is an assumption made at face value, but a closer study of Bemba society reveals that the marriage ritual grants the Bemba woman greater rights and privileges than she had before marriage, with the initiation ceremony being ‘the most important act of a woman’s reproductive power.’ Similarly, the American writer and social activist, Fran Hosken, in her writings, equated the purdah with vices such as rape, domestic violence and prostitution, with zero regard for the varying cultural and ideological contexts within which women wore the purdah. Citing the example of Iran in 1979 when the purdah was worn as a symbol of solidarity with the working class, compared to modern day Iran where the purdah is a mandatory Islamic law, Mohanty explains that Western scholars need to exercise care in analyzing the ideological contexts of institutions, rather than jump to conclusions inspired by biased and ethnocentric views of the third world. This phenomenon of defining a single universal direction of progress and advancement, centered around the West, is an example of the colonial impact. What this does is, it invalidates the cultural values of non-Western societies, as well as their individual experiences and struggles. Societies which do not conform to the Western ideal are seen as ‘backward’ and ‘frozen in time’. It is in response to this colonial mindset that national liberation figures advocate for a ‘third way,’ and harbor a desire to redefine what progress means.

The American psychologist and anthropologist, Michelle Zimbalist, casually refers to third-world women in her feminist writings as “ourselves undressed”. By assuming that women in third-world countries share virtually the same difficulties and aspirations that women in first-world countries do, Western feminist scholarship makes the mistake of assuming that it can represent women of all races, classes, religions and castes. This limits the definition of women to gender identity alone, bypassing social class and ethnic identities, and only reinforces the binary of men and women; powerful and powerless subjects. On the other hand, when scholars write about third-world women, there is an even greater sense of ambiguity in the generalized terms that are used to identify the women. The terms ‘Arab women’ and ‘Muslim women’, are used interchangeably as though they denote the same thing, Similarly, the term ‘African women’ has been used by some scholars who are in fact writing about a very specific minority tribe from a country within Africa, inadvertently suggesting that all African women can be summarized and grouped together by a single term. Yet again, the stripping away of the individualities of the non-Western others, seeing them as merely belonging to a greater and generalizable collective, grouping them together by a single descriptive term such as ‘African’, is another example of colonialism at play.

What then is the point of referring to all women as a single homogenous group, and as having an equal share in the struggle of victimhood? As mentioned earlier, the struggles of third-world women, after they are appropriated by feminist scholars, serve as the legitimizers of the universal female struggle, and particularly that of first-world women. Mohanty, however, points out another agenda at play. She writes, ‘it seems evident that Western feminists alone become the true “subjects” of this counter-history. Third world women, on the other hand, never rise above their generality and their “object” status.’ This is the difference between Western feminist ‘self-presentation’ and the ‘re-presentation’ of women in the third world.

Thus, first-world feminist scholarship, through its ethnocentric universality, through its establishment of a homogenous unity among women centered around the West, through its generalizations and through its clouded lens of bias and ignorance towards non-Western cultures, is an imperialist practice. By maintaining, as Mohanty calls it ‘the third-world difference’ and the existing first/third world connections, such writings reinforce the assumption that ‘people in the third world just have not evolved to the extent that the West has.’

How important is culture to national liberation?

According to Cabral, the colonizer is able to oppress the colonized because of the negation of the culture of the colonized. Cabral keeps on arguing that the culture of the colonized is dynamic and a product of the history of the natives and hence is an expression of the continuity of history. The advent of the colonizer “paralyses” the culture of the colonized; makes it static because, essentially colonization ruptures time itself, for the colonized people are trapped in stale ideas of superiority and inferiority introduced by the colonizer.

Therefore, Cabral argues that the rediscovery and reinvention of African culture is pivotal to national liberation. Cabral, however, is clearly cognizant of the fault lines in this thesis. He argues that there is no uniform culture of the colonized people and culture varies across different social divisions within a society. He further claims that the process of cultural alienation deployed by the colonizer successfully creates an indigenous elite which either despises or is ignorant of the cultural values held by the masses. This is problematic because in absence of clear-cut objectives of the national liberation, these individuals adhering to the colonized mindset can become leaders of the national liberation and thereby they will reproduce the same social structures that the colonizer brought.

Cabral essentially talks about the “culture of the peoples of Africa”, which preserved despite massive repression by colonization, as the principle weapon in the struggle for selfhood. However, Cabral again is very conscious of the fact that national culture must not be glorified without keeping in view its shortcomings and that there is a need of a discourse with regards to culture itself and what it means for varying sections of the society from the peasants to the townsmen to the intelligentsia. He is arguing against viewing culture as a static entity, which is first and foremost a colonial legacy. He argues for the transformation and transcendence of various “cultures” into the nationalist culture through the principle of discourse. The discourse must also not be limited to varying sections within society but also needs to consider what the new, evolving culture can learn from other cultures, including the culture of the colonizer as an acknowledgement of what has happened and what needs to be done.

The objective of the nationalist struggle is that it should be free of all prejudice and exploitation and that is why it is necessary to examine what exactly the indigenous elite is fighting for within the struggle for national liberation. Is it the liberation of Africa or a selfish struggle to safeguard their individual interests? Cabral argues that armed nationalist struggle must be very cognizant of all these factors and must constantly try to create engagement within its ranks. He argues that the armed struggle is created by culture, but it is also creating culture. Cabral is talking about the restoration of the dynamism of Africa’s culture, and that is precisely how the nationalist struggle will heal the rupture in time caused by colonization.

For Cabral, there exists a striking commonality between foreign domination and its antithesis, national liberation, that of their understanding of, and engagement with, culture.

Calling culture, a vigorous manifestation of the materialist and historical reality of society, Cabral develops this notion further by analogizing it with a plant. The roots of which plunge into the material reality of the soil but, nevertheless, whose growth and vitality depends on factors beyond just its foundation based in forces of production. He uses this analogy to highlight just how dynamic the manifestation of culture is, and this analogy is always at the background of his speech, sometimes represented by an influenced flower, sometimes as the very seed of popular, mass indigenous resistance.

To describe culture in these terms allows for an understanding of the organic nature of the entire enterprise. Culture to Cabral is not static, in fact, he believes that culture untainted by foreign domination and intervention is on a trajectory guided by an organic process, like a plant that takes sustenance from its roots and grows if the external conditions are conducive. Imperialist domination, however, is the negation of, what he describes as, the true historical process of the oppressed people.

The Imperialist domination is only exacted by, and maintained, Cabral argues, by the harnessing, and subsequent creation of, particular manifestations of culture. Cabral’s notion of culture, and how it can be manipulated, is inextricably linked with class. He illustrates this relationship fully when he speaks of two broad categories of colonized peoples, the indigenous elite and the rural leaders.

The former is assimilated into the oppressor’s culture to such an extent that their own culture, their roots if one is to follow the analogy, becomes alienating for them. Strangers in their own land, they adopt the habits, sophistication, and tastes of the oppressors to the extent that they may even simply become unaware of the existence of a people, just like them, whom they share roots with. These assimilated elite, ones who Fanon would say to possess Black Skins but White Masks, are able to rise up the ranks and often take up the leadership of the national liberation struggle itself, something Cabral emphatically cautions against, in that their cultural alienation remains consistent long after foreign powers are cast off and this proves damning for all national liberation movements. The second category is that of the privileged groups in rural areas, they are similarly co-opted by the oppressive foreign regime but an emphasis in class is paramount in understanding their importance. Their cultural assimilation may be close to nil, but colonial administrations are able to harness, and sometimes create, their cultural authority over popular masses. Knowing full well of the dangers of the popular masses if they manifest anything culturally significant, colonial administrations support and protect the prestige of cultural influence of the indigenous ruling classes by granting them material privileges.

It is not to say that the groups discussed above are not interested in national liberation, given the material privileges that they exact via the oppressive regime, but, in fact, are almost always at the forefront of the struggle. Cabral is deeply suspicious of this and argues that their cultural assimilation, alienation, and supported cultural authority, allows for them to hijack the resistance and maintain the very structures that informed colonial oppression in the first place. This analysis is prophetic, in that it cuts across almost all instances of colonial administration and the subsequent national liberation movements they give rise to, consequences of which we see in almost all “independent” colonial states to this day.

Cabral makes a case that dominated peoples can only be culturally free when i) they understand the positive contributions of the oppressor’s culture, ii) of other cultures, iii) recapture the commanding heights of their own culture, and iv) equally reject the harmful influences of foreign culture. In this way, the dynamic nature of culture is revealed. He is simultaneously able to make an argument for the manifestation of a universal culture of resistance, one that does not necessarily rely on its roots alone, but also communicates with the sentiments of other liberation struggles, but, nevertheless, has it its own distinct character due to its distinct historical backdrop.

Cabral’s diagnosis of the problem is extremely sound, but his prescription is suspect of utopianism. The solution, Cabral thinks, is to, in a sense, cast away the very phenomenon that worsened and tightened colonial grip on the minds of the indigenous peoples. To meet this end, the national liberation struggle, one of a mass, popular kind, is indispensable and becomes a cultural phenomenon in itself.

The resistance, for Cabral, can bring together various social categories of people, including the two groups described above, into the fold of a single converging, popular, indigenous and mass national cultural force in the mold of an armed struggle. Through this armed resistance, itself, the indigenous ruling elite will become aware of the existence of their brethren, ones they could not even identify before, and the laboring masses will be able to cross the boundary of their village when they will see their indispensable role in the national liberation movement.

To Cabral, the national liberation will become a cultural reality in itself, clinging to which the identity of the entire indigenous populace, irrespective of their historical background, or if the analogy still flows, their roots, will take shape, and in doing so oppressed peoples will be liberated from their oppressor’s grip.