Chandra mohanty under western eyes summary. Women and Gender Studies Midterm Flashcards 2019-01-11
Chandra mohanty under western eyes summary Rating:
4,8/10
1215
reviews
Review of the Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial
Projects of saving other women depend on and reinforce a sense of superiority by Westerners, a form of arrogance that deserves to be challenged. There does indeed exist several differences in culture and ideology between the west and the third world, but that does not inherently signify that women in the third world are worse off than their western counterparts. This book is a must-read for all feminist theorists wanting to reorient feminism towards the abolition of transnational capitalism, and to dismantle the regime of profit and wage-labour, supplanting it with the material conditions to emancipate all people from exploitation. Razumov succeeds, but because Ziemianitch is drunk and unable to do anything, Razumov beats him and goes to the authorities to turn him in. Overall, this book is an excellent addition to the repository on feminist pedagogy and research on Third World women. Because women are subsumed under religion presented in fundamental terms, they are inevitably seen as evolving in nonhistorical time they have virtually no history.
In adhering to the generalization that all Third-World women are the same, one would miss the huge economic differences that make the lives of the women in Indian very diverse. Major themes addressed include the politics of difference, transnational solidarity building, and anticapitalist struggle against globalization. In doing so, this inevitably deepens the implicit separation, or distinction, among Western women and the Third World women. The choosing to partake in the practice of veiling contradicts the western feminist belief that all women in the third world share the same set of cultural and religious values, and are in need of saving. How does Mohanty's article achieve effectiveness for the point she is trying to prove? Unfortunately, despite considerable achievements by Western feminists, there is still a range of social ills that are directly gender related.
In this respect, Feminism Without Borders represents a lost opportunity to incorporate the insights of more recent feminist work and to more fully acknowledge that we are in a vastly different theoretical space today, thanks in part to the pioneering work done by postcolonial feminists such as Mohanty herself. Interpretation is thus a mental process of acceptance and rejection of the meanings and associations that adhere to a given image through the force of dominant ideologies. She categorizes them as a group characterized by gender, and fails to take local history and political contexts, as well as social class and ethnic identities into consideration. Cradled in one culture, sandwiched between two clutures, straddling all three cultures and their value systems, la mestizo undergoes a struggle of flesh, a struggle of borders, an inner war. In other words, the western world uses the third world for their own economic and political development purposes. The specific reasons for wearing the veils are lost in the process of categorizing all Muslim women as oppressed by a male dominated culture.
Mohanty also develops a powerful methodology for analyzing late-modern capitalism, which takes seriously the idea that 'our minds must be ready to move as capital is, to trace its paths and to imagine alternative destinations' p. Furthermore, irrespective of the good intentions of Western feminist, Mohanty argues that there is more harm done than good and that strong aspects of colonialism exist and drive common discourse. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. As for Muslim women being forced to wear a veil, many do not mind and even support the veil. It is often said that she thinks with her glands. At the same time, being sexual, is stigmatized in women but encouraged in men. While Mohanty is not unaware that certain contradictions inherent to capitalism lead to the creation of opportunities as well as constraints, and though she continues to view the academy as an important site of political struggle and change, she is nevertheless highly critical of the commoditization of higher education.
Over the years, and ever since the experience of organizing the Common Differences Conference as a graduate student, my work has been deeply collaborative. This notion presented by Mohanty brings to mind the image of a group of popular girls who think of themselves as on top of the high school social hierarchy such as in the movie Mean Girls. Then, to further Razumov's downfall, he is hit and severely injured by a tramcar. She is additionally the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate, Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University Sweden, presented in 2008, and an Honorary Doctorate in humanities from the , Ohio, awarded in 2012. In my opinion, I think Mohanty did a wonderful job of organizing her argument into coherent sections that strengthened her assertions. The Good: --Useful roadmap examining the pitfalls of Western Liberal feminism, i. Secondly, the model of men as oppressors is not a universal model, she is against the over simplification of the complexities across culture and gender to a binary division.
This example shows a much deeper meaning for the veil than Islamic repression on women, which is an image portrayed by Western Feminists. Mohanty is worried about imperialism — however one could argue that colonization and imperialism are at an end — drawn to a forcible close by independence movements in Africa, India etc. When I read this article many different emotions surfaced. It brings into play our own memories, knowledge, and cultural frameworks, as well as the image itself and the dominant meanings that cling to it. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. In addition to important analyses of the practices of solidarity and of feminism across borders, it offers pedagogical models for teaching women's studies and feminist theory in a globalized context while avoiding the 'Western feminist as tourist' approach.
Instead, she argues forcefully that feminist struggles are fought on both an ideological, representational level and an experiential, everyday level; thus she reminds us that the value of theory resides finally in its political effectiveness. Someone who has worked in Muslim regions must ask why this is so surprising. Mohanty recognizes that in the time period between her first writing 1986 and the present her work has been appropriated by the sort of surface-level postmodernism concerned with fragmentation and difference over commonality and specificity or specificity within commonality. Mohanty uses this notion of universalism in order to exemplify an inconsistency with this widely regarded argument, as the universalist approach to veiling reduces the cultural practice to the sexual control and oppression of all women who take partake. To do this, we need to acknowledge differences between women and avoid universalizing narratives while building coalitions and solidarities. What other arguments is this article responding to? According to Mohanty, Cutrufelli also repeats similar claims by Lindsay and Hosken and writes that since all African women are economically dependent, their main source of income is prostitution. Her new book, Feminism without Borders, is a collection of essays that interrogate notions of home, sisterhood, work, scholarship, and first-world feminism.
Review of the Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial
Western peoples must not think of themselves as being saviors but rather as brothers and sisters of the people of the Third World created in imago dei or in the image and likeness of God. Another of Mohanty's prime aims has been to make explicit and effective the links between scholarship and activism. From where does her concern stem? Any analysis of change is therefore foreclosed. There is no one way to describe the women in India, and it is important to acknowledge that and take the time to get to know the historical and cultural backgrounds of the women. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Female Genital Mutilation and Human Rights.
