Making sense of some readings, Part II: U.S. Third World and Postcolonial Feminist Theory

From the Introduction to Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practice, by Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan:

Our reading of postmodernity displaces Western mystification of non-Western cultures...What does not get recognized in this form of neocolonial discourse is that Western culture is itself, as is every cultural formation, a hybrid of something. Yet the dominant Western attitude toward hybridity is that it is always elsewhere or it is infiltrating an identity or location that is assumed to be, to always have been, pure and unchanging (p. 7-8).

The term "global feminism" has elided the diversity of women's agency in favor of a universalized Western model of women's liberation that celebrates individuality ad modernity (p. 17).

The question becomes how to link diverse feminisms without requiring either equivalence or a master theory. How to make these links without replicating cultural and economic hegemony? For white, Western feminists or elite women in other world locations, such questions demand an examination of the links between daily life and academic work and an acknowledgment that one's privileges in the world-system are always linked to another woman's oppression or exploitation (p. 19).

This reading is for the exam question that I am writing "in dialogue" with my committee member. I don't know exactly what that means, but I sent her a list of questions I see emanating from these readings. I've focused on this book today, but it seems to summarize much of what I'm reading for this exam. It also prompted me to make a connection- well, I'll get to that.

Here's the background:

The feminist movement in the U.S., or in the West, I suppose, is said to have three "waves": the First Wave was largely in the 19th and early 20th Century, as women agitated for the right to vote. In 1919, we got it. By around the 1950s, though, a woman named Betty Friedan was cooking up a book that you may have heard of: The Feminine Mystique. The Feminine Mystique, or, the problem that has no name, has actually been portrayed beautifully in the television show Mad Men. It's the malaise and depression shared by housewives confined to the home, unhappy with their limited choices in life. In one scene in Mad Men, Don asks his wife Betty what she has to be unhappy about- she has the "perfect" suburban life with two kids, a beautiful house and even a dog. She answers, nothing.

Perhaps you've picked up on it already, but this rendition of the "feminine mystique" has a major shortcoming. Betty and Don are white, upper middle-class, as was Betty Friedan and the other leaders of the Second Wave. And as women like Alice Walker, author of the Color Purple, and Audre Lorde pointed out, they and their mothers never had the problem of being bored at home; they were working, cleaning the houses for women like Friedan.

What evolved into the Third Wave is the work by women of color, writers such as Angela Davis, Gloria Anzaldua, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and Cherrie Moraga, who highlight the class and race-blindness of the Second Wave. In other words, the women who created the National Organization for Women in many ways were/are blind to the different experiences women who are not white or who are and come from difference classes. The oppressions a black woman, or, a Latina, or particularly a lesbian who is black or Latina multiply on the basis of the combination of their identities. And, as one theorist points out, it is not simply a matter of being a woman or being black, these aspects of anyone's identity work in relation and in context with one another. They cannot be separated from the other- I cannot be just a woman or just white, I am a white woman- and that means different things depending on the situation I am in. So, in relation to white men, for instance, I may be one step down the ladder. But a black woman is always already positioned lower in relation to me; a black man may hold power in relation to black women, but they will be positioned below me, who is positioned below a white guy.

This was a major blindspot for the Second Wave white women. It caused a lot of dissension and hostility as women tried to forge a unified "feminist movement." But these issues of power, just like they position women differently in regards to the outside world, positioned and shaped their relationships to one another. This is also when we begin to see "whiteness studies," what is basically the outing of white as a race and culture in it's own right, just like "Blacks" or "Latinos." In other words, whites often fail to see themselves as "raced" individuals; we tend to think only others have a "race." An example would be when you describe two people, and you say something like, "you know, that woman and that black guy." Whiteness tends to go unmarked, unnoticed, and hence, unchallenged. Critical scholars are engaging with this, as are many feminists.

And that brings us to postcolonial theory. The idea here is to deconstruct, to critically engage with and analyze, as well as to recognize the continuing prevalence of colonial modes of thought which oppressed then, and oppress now. The goal is to construct subjectivities that do not rely upon Western knowledges, or Western constructions of the subject, namely because the Western subject cannot be anything but white or Western to be "valued," but doing so without reifying authenticity or primordialism. Part of the project of colonialism was to convert the colonized to the ways of life and thinking of the colonizer, in the name of modernity but also as an effort to pacify the subjugated populations. Conversion took place through schooling, health reforms and other medical means, and largely through religious conversion. Brute force was not necessary, although not ruled out, either. Over time, then, the ways of thinking of the West colonized not just the lifestyle but also the ways of thinking of non-Western societies, continuing colonization post-independence.

White, U.S. feminists, despite their efforts to liberate, were no different. As postcolonial feminist theorists argue, Western feminists have erected the figure of the liberated "Oriental" woman in their own image; Chandra Mohanty in particular demonstrates the neocolonial tendencies of Western feminists and urges instead that feminists from the West learn the situation of the non-Western woman on her own terms, and then prescribe a remedy. Poor wording on my part, but hopefully it still makes sense.

Now this brings me to my main concern here, the "problem," if you will, of relativism. I believe Pope Benedict said something about it, and I have a former professor at OU who, in my mind, hates postmodernism because of it's relativism, among other things. He's a positivist, through and through; the truth must be out there and it MUST be observable...

Anyways, in my mind, I see myself presenting my research at the j-school at OU. It won't ever happen, but this goes back to a rather traumatic research presentation I had there the first year of my master's. It's an imaginary quest for intellectual redemption, I suppose.

So I see myself discussing my as-yet-to-be-exactly-decided dissertation in front of the faculty at OU's j-school, and the issue of relativism comes up. I've been wondering how I would answer. At first, I thought I'd just stumble and look stupid, like a total rookie. And then, I dug deep and found my answer.

My response would be:
Relativism is only a problem when in search of the universal. Universalizing was a key tactic of modernity, in that it was used to cordone off and identify those who fell outside of the norm. Postmodernism, however, and postcolonial theory emphasize and reclaim the value in multiplicity, rather than singularity, and the particular, rather than the universal; in this way, we do not do violence upon those who are different, but instead recognize and respect those who are not like us, on their own terms, rather than ours- "ours," of course, being the patriarchal white, Western world.