DOROTHY ATUHURA AND PHILIP TSCHIRHART

GLOBAL AND LOCAL FEMINISMS: MOHANTY, MAHMOOD, AND NGUYEN 1

Mohanty, C. T (1986). Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses.

Boundary 2 12(3), 333-358.

“Under Western Eyes” seeks to alert readers to the dangers of assuming that women are a

coherent group acted upon by universal social, economic, and political processes. Mohanty’s

essay argues that many researchers, particularly those trained within Western feminist

scholarship, have tended to produce monolithic, universalizing, and essentializing

constructions of women in the Third World.

Mohanty illuminates two dimensions of the term ‘Women’ as constructed as a category of

analysis:

o As a discursively constructed group, a cultural and ideological composite Other

produced through representational discourses like science, literature, law, etc.

o As material subjects of their own collective histories – this is what the practice of

feminist epistemology seeks to address.

Rejecting a monolithic use of “women” as a category of analysis Mohanty encourages

analysis of “the production of women as socio-economic political groups within particular

local contexts” (p. 344).

Mohanty emphasizes analysis of contradictions in women’s local experiences suggesting that

by understanding women’s location we may better identify structures for effective political

action and social change.

Critiquing the methodology of second wave feminist writings on women in the third world

Mohanty argues that an emphasis on empirical and universalizing data ignored significant

context specific differences. Further she argues that concepts like sexual division of labor are

useful only if conceptualized at the local contextual level of analysis.

Mohanty argues that feminists must resist establishing originary power divisions –

conceptualizing power in a binary where all third world women are a unified and powerless

group.

Moving away from an emphasis on sisterhood (sameness) she moves towards crafting an

argument for feminist solidarity (united in a struggle against sameness). She argues that

Western feminists must be mindful of the hegemonic influence of the Western scholarly

establishment otherwise they produce another discursive form of colonization that dismiss

pluralism and ignores the local and specific realities of women.

Connect Mohanty’s conceptualization of the term women to other feminist readings (in

this class or elsewhere). Who is she in conversation with? What are the implications of

her articulation of women as a category of analysis?

What does an emphasis on contradictions look like in contemporary transnational

feminist scholarship?

How does her call for solidarity resonate with other readings (including the revisited

version of this piece)?

In what ways are you cognizant of your own use of categories of analysis? How do

feminist scholars balance the subject/object distinction?

GLOBAL AND LOCAL FEMINISMS: MOHANTY, MAHMOOD, AND NGUYEN 2

Mohanty, C. T. (2002). “Under Western eyes” revisited: Feminist solidarity through

anticapitalist struggles. Signs, 28(2), 499-535.

Mohanty's revised piece reiterates her previous challenge of the “false universality of

Eurocentric discourse” (p. 504). Whereas she was more focused on differences in the first

version, her revision re-emphasizes and suggests new modes of exploring how the local

differences intersect with universal concerns especially how the politics and economics

of capitalism affects lives in the world today.

Categories for analysis:

o Western/Third World: have ideological and analytical value; also useful in analysis of

transnational difference and multiculturalism on the basis of “commodification and

consumption” (p. 505) but analytically limiting amidst developments of similar and

other categories within 'local'/national borders.

o North/South or Western/non-Western or haves/have-nots: geo-economic value, no

political value. Geographical boundaries are never clear-cut and this is limiting.

o One-Third World/Two-Thirds World: quality of life value in the sense of “social

majorities/minorities” (p. 506) not based on geographical or ideological conditions.

Relevant for analysis of differences and similarities, power and agency, across

different lives and spaces e.g. it has room for native or indigenous struggles that

cannot be mapped on ideological processes. Lacks focus on some ideological

processes e.g. the history of colonization.

Mohanty proposes an “anticapitalist trans-national feminist practice” whose “analytical

framework is attentive to the micro-politics of everyday life as well as to the macro-

politics of global economic and political processes” (p. 509).

Internationalizing pedagogical strategies for crossing borders and building bridges:

o Feminist as tourist: a focus on the Other through a Eurocentric point of view, the

distance and difference between the local and the global/Other is clearly marked out.

The global/Other is appended to the local/national.

o Feminist as explorer: A specific study of the Other. The local and global are at a

distance and are different but an in-depth study of the Other is done.

o Feminist Solidarity model: Mohanty's favorite. The local and global are not geo-

spaces but rather categories for mapping differences and similarities and how they

intersect or co-refer across cultures and borders.

What works have we looked at in this course that could be representative of the three

pedagogical models Mohanty presents?

When solidarity becomes predicated upon anti-globalizing effects, does the local and

specific become secondary to the force of anti-globalization?

In what way is Mahmood's project an anticapitalist transnational feminist project?

In advancing feminist solidarity Mohanty pushes for an analysis of the languages of

imperialism and places heavy emphasis on the analysis of stories, what narrative theories

has your discipline developed? Can we adopt these to study transnational feminism?

What does Mohanty’s term ‘empire’ add to our discussion of neoliberalism? How does it

draw upon an articulation of the One-Third/Two-Thirds World? What differences are

there between post-colonial theory and a critique of US empire?

DOROTHY ATUHURA AND PHILIP TSCHIRHART

GLOBAL AND LOCAL FEMINISMS: MOHANTY, MAHMOOD, AND NGUYEN 3

Mahmood, S. (2005). Politics of piety: The Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton,

NJ: Princeton University Press

The woman's mosque movement negates assumptions that

o “All human beings have an innate desire for freedom”,

o “That we all somehow seek to assert our autonomy when allowed to do so”,

o “That human agency primarily consists of acts that challenge social norms and not

those that uphold them” (p. 5).

According to Mahmood, agency is “the capacity to realize one's own interests against the

weight of custom, tradition, transcendental will, or other obstacles” (p. 8). Individual

autonomy may be secondary to collective interests if we undertake cultural translation and

not relativism.

Agency should not only be restricted to resistance of norms since resistance is not itself a

universal category. “agentival capacity is entailed not only in those acts that resist norms but

also in the multiple ways in which one inhabits norms” (pp. 14-15).

Mahmood problematizes post-structural feminism for conceptualizing agency along “the

binary model of subordination and subversion” arguing that realities that are not reducible to

re-signification, subversion are missed out (p. 14).

“What may be a case of deplorable passivity and docility from a progressivist point of view,

may actually be a form of agency – but one that can be understood only from within the

discourses and structures of subordination that create the conditions of its enactment” (p. 15).

A woman's agency “is a product of the historically contingent discursive traditions” in which

she is located (p. 32). Mahmood's focus is historical specificity and not universalism or

essentialism.

The distinct feminist modalities should not be collapsed into one form.

o Analytical: is for “offering a diagnosis of women's status across cultures” (p. 10.

o Political: is for “changing the situation of women who are understood to be

marginalized, subordinated, or oppressed” (p. 10).

To what extent is Mahmood's project a 'feminist' one? How relevant is it to feminism?

Do you find Mahmood's conceptualization of agency emancipatory or problematic?

Does being anti-secularist make these women feminists? How does religion, anti-

secularism, and feminism intersect?

Is there anything problematic about her ethnographic stance? Does she, for example,

identify these women as feminists or do they self-identify as feminists? How about the

monolith “moslem woman”?

As a Pakistani studying Egyptian women, how might we position Mahmood’s feminism

within Mohanty's explorer, tourist, or solidarity models?

GLOBAL AND LOCAL FEMINISMS: MOHANTY, MAHMOOD, AND NGUYEN 4

Nguyen, M. T. (2011). The biopower of beauty: Humanitarian imperialisms and global

feminisms in an age of terror. Signs, 36(2), 359-383.

Nguyen crafts her argument to inform readers about the values of development and

empowerment programs identifying them as an inseparable part of a neoliberal political

philosophy perpetuating structural dominance.

The authors emphasis is on appeals to beauty as they are linked to feminist and humanitarian

claims to human rights and development. She argues “it is beauty’s entanglement with

humanitarian imperialisms and global feminisms that requires us to expand what it could

mean to foster life in the long shadow of neoliberalism and war” (p. 361).

Articulates three dimensions of beauty

o The promise of beauty – identifying something as beautiful draws it in connection

with the world

o The distribution of beauty – the absences of beauty implies ugliness and informs

lessons about who has access to beauty or ugliness in relation to other politics.

o Beauty as pragmatic – a set of everyday techniques and strategies which are made to

produce selves and present a promise of future beauty.

Beauty as biopower: “Beauty, as a discourse and concern about the vitality of the body

but also of the soul can and does become an important site of signification, power, and

knowledge about how to live…. This is war by other means” (p. 364).

The example of veiling: The construction of veiling as not aesthetically pleasurable allows

for a construction of ugliness which carries a civilizational dimension establishing a binary

where those who desire beauty desire a place where beauty is imagined to live.

Tracing the category beauty through discourses of human rights Nguyen focuses on the NGO

Beauty without Borders as an exemplar.

Nguyen argues that beauty is established as a human right through the unstable concept of

dignity. Dignity rests on notions of self-esteem which operate as a “Foucauldian technology

of the self” to prescribe empowerment and development.

Tracing discourses surrounding beauty Nguyen argues that “The integrity of the feminine

body and psyche becomes the goal of multiple forms of global sisterhood, including its

iteration as global feminism” (p. 370).

Nguyen critiques such global feminisms for ignoring the structural violence of geopolitics

and transnational capital and instead emphasizing the liberal idea of women’s freedom

emphasizing beauty, individuality, and modernity.

“Beauty becomes not only a measure of moral feeling and human being, a signifier for the

choices offered by liberal modernity and a metonym of women’s rights as human rights, but

also the medium through which a woman might access all these and more” (p. 374).

What other values are implicated in Western development and empowerment

programs? How might we tease out their biopolitical implications?

Beauty Without Borders is now defunct, are there other development organizations

which continue to perpetuate similar discourses? How are they similar or different?

Placing Mohanty (1986) and Nguyen (2011) into conversation with one another, what

might we extract about the values of sisterhood and solidarity that undergird global

feminisms?