Prakash, G. (1990). Writing post-orientalist histories of the Third World: Perspectives on Indian historiography. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 32, 383-408.
Mohanty, C. (1998) Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. Boundary, 2, 12, 333-358.
Burawoy, M. (2000). Introduction: Reaching for the global. In M. Burawoy et al. (Eds.), Global ethnography: Forces, connections and imaginations in a postmodern world (pp. 1-40). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Thayer, M. (2000). Travelling feminisms: From embodied women to gendered citizenship. In M. Burawoy et al. (Eds.), Global ethnography: Forces, connections and imaginations in a postmodern world (pp. 1-40). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Although each of this week’s readings take a divergent approach to transnational methodology, central themes of the construction of time and space, the production of knowledge, and the deconstruction of foundationalist approaches run throughout. In dealing with the global, the construction of time and space are central sites of struggle that form representational identities through scholarship and research that, dialectically, construct our understanding of time and space and the people who occupy these positions. Both Prakash and Mohanty focus on the politics of knowledge production and how representations in discourses (through the project of modernity, colonialism, and neoliberal globalization) act as technologies of power. Their goal is to challenge these essentializing and foundationalist approaches. While Burawoy, and Thayer also engage in these theoretical debates, their work is an example of how transnational scholarship can be put into methodological practice.
In his work, Prakash is advocating post-Orientalist historiographies that recognize the contingency and relationality of identities. By tracing the hegemony of power relations he argues that the production of knowledge regarding the East-West / Orient-Occident occurring in various discursive epochal approaches (from colonialism, through nationalist historiographies, anthropologies, Marxist critiques, and historical sociology), may have had different political projects but remain essentializing, foundationalist, and teleological. The representations of “the Other” change, but the structure of knowledge remains similar. Whereas Orientalist discourses constructed the “Third World” as an object of knowledge, creating it in opposition to the Occident and thus justifying the colonial project of modernity, Nationalist narratives established India as an active subject that challenged colonial rule. However, according to Prakash, these discourses shared common elements that construct the Orient/India as an undivided entity that is given ontological presences and mobilizes teleological approaches, framing modernity and Reasons as the goal. Ultimately, Prakash is arguing that global scholarship must move beyond these essentializing, foundationalist approaches towards post-Orientalist historiographies. Mobilizing the work of Edward Said, Prakash argues that such approaches cannot merely subscribe to reverse-Orientalism, in which the “real” Orient is substituted for the myth of the Orientalist (p.399). The goal, instead, is to deconstruct identities as relational rather than essential (e.g. in the work of Haraway and Butler). He argues that this project resonates with subaltern studies which claims autonomy and voice for the subordinated subject, and post-structuralist theories that recognize power relations inherent within cultural forms and historic events. In what ways is Prakash’s concept of “post-Orientalist” problematic in that it may essentialize Orientalism from which it departs? Perhaps this debate is similar to the questions posed in our debates of modernism and post-modernism.
Although Mohanty doesn’t explicitly call her work post-Orientalist, her ideas resonate with this deconstructive approach. Mohanty argues that Western feminist scholars who write of the Third World are discursively colonizing women in the global South through the construction of the “Third World Woman”: a monolothic singular category that is an a priori foundational identity before it enters social structures and relations. This category is subject to an ahistorical construction of oppression and patriarchy that does not account for agency or the heterogeneity of experience. Through the construction of the singular “Third World Woman” as not-progressive, traditional, ignorant, backward, un-developed, the First World Woman is implicitly constructed as appositionally rational, knowledgeable: the true active subject. This is consistent with Prakash’s discussion of Said’s Orientalism and the construction of the Occident through opposition to the Orient. In this arguably post-Orientalist approach, Woman as an identity is constituted through experiences that cannot merely be reduced to actions and processes. Indeed, we must incorporate the contextually specific values of, and meanings attached to, these processes, representation, actions. How is Mohanty’s argument against foundational categories (of women specifically) similar to or different from Prakash’s call for Post-Orientalist historiographies? Are Mohanty’s First World feminists who discursively colonize the Third World akin to Prakash’s anthropologists or social historians, for instance? Many of us attended the Queen’s 2010 Vagina Monologues production. How can we understand the VagMons as a Western feminist interpretation of women’s shared subordination? How do the VagMons construct the Third World Woman, and what does Mohanty argue are the ramifications of such discursive colonization?
Given the foreground of theoretical understandings of global spaces as sites of contestation and struggle, we are better equipped to critically analyze putting transnational approaches into practice--as Burawoy and Thayer seek to do. Tracing the historical conditions and events that mark the emergence of global scholarship as a field of study, Burawoy takes up a similarly anti-essentialist approach. In outlining the works of globalization theorists being produced throughout the globe, Burawoy identifies the commonality and centrality of globalization as the “recomposition of time and space”. Here, Burawoy argues, “lies the connection to the ethnographers, whose occupation is after all, to study others in ‘their space and time’” (p. 4). Similar to the Post-Orientalist approach that challenges reductionist and essentialist understandings, Burawoy argues that global ethnography, and by extension global scholarship in general, cannot simply be the identification and application of external forces (discourses, people, capital, ideas) to a global level, but must problematize the foundation of the very concept of these forces. Informed by the anti-colonialist climate of the post-war period, Burawoy argues that global ethnography can be a site in which subject and subaltern positions are challenged. The focus of ethnography, Burawoy writes, “is on the way global domination is resisted, avoided, and negotiated” (p. 29).
Thayer’s article is an account of her ethnographic research attempting to elucidate the globalization of feminist health organizing as it was manifested in the SOS Corpo(SOS Body) NGO in Recife, Brazil. She argues that as ideas, concepts and discourses are appropriated from specific localities to be used by others, meanings take distinctive forms. In Recife, for instance, SOS Corpo utilized the women and body discourse popularized by the Boston organization that published Our Bodies, Ourselves. However, due to different local conditions and practices, these discourses were necessarily changed (consciously and strategically) to be more relevant and politically mobilizing. As a result, the concepts of women and body were replaced by discourses of gender and citizenship. Thayer’s methodology may be consistent with a post-colonial or Post-Orientalist approach in that she engages the subordinated subject, but is the approach of SOS Corpo undermined or challenged by the globalized positionality of the organization’s founders as Western-educated white women? How might this practice enforce or produce Mohanty’s Third World Women, or Said’s Orient? How ere these effects mitigated or enforced through the strategies utilized by SOS Corpo? In what ways does Thayer’s “ethnographic” research relate to Burawoy’s understanding of the political possibilities/implications of global ethnography? Finally, mobilizing the arguments presented in this week’s readings, how can you mitigate against discursive colonization in your own work that may or may not be transnational it its scope?
Mohanty begins by stating that, “colonization almost invariably implies a relation of structural domination, and a suppression –often violent- of the heterogeneity of the subject(s) in question” (333). Colonization typically suggests the appropriation and supremacy over of a nation or culture, such as the Orienting of India as the subordinate other, as described by Prakash. He states that India was constructed as a homogenized subject, Indian people as unified and essentialized subjects, subordinate to the British. Mohanty argues that women deemed ‘third world’ by Western feminists are also colonized subjects. Third world women are subject to being categorized based on the assumption that these women have all shared in the experience of oppression not only because of their subordinate status as being part of the third world but also because of their inferior status as women. Women are then not only subject to the ethnic othering that Parakash describes, but this experience is further compounded by an assumed shared experience of womanhood involving a unified supposition of immaturity, inferiority, ignorance, and powerlessness (to name a few).
ReplyDeleteI am going to take a stab and Carolyn and Robbie’s question, how is Mohanty’s argument against foundational categories (of women specifically) similar to or different from Prakash’s call for Post-Orientalist historiographies? Both authors seem to argue that in order to challenge the essentializing categories of being othered or deemed Oriental, one must contextualize that notion of otherness. This involves challenging the limited categories of ethnicity, gender, and class that pigeonhole large populations by explaining the historical, social, and personal contexts of individuals within an essentialized group. It also involves identifying and contesting the power relations that facilitate this categorization. This process is explained by Prakash as subaltern studies. While both Mohanty and Prakash employ subaltern practices, their methods of deconstructing their respected essentialized experiences vary slightly.
Mohanty states that, “western feminist writing on women in the third world must be considered in the context of global hegemony of Western scholarship” (336). Unlike Prakash who argues that subjugated histories must be reclaimed and rewritten to disrupt the power relations rooted in history, Mohanty argues that women must identify and place these assumptions within a larger global context. By considering how and why women are constructed in certain ways, they are able to identify the functional purpose behind their oppression to then challenge that oppression. Mohanty explains that third world women are deemed virginal and backward because, by comparison, it enables women in the first world to construct themselves as, “secular, liberated, and having control of their lives” (353). Understanding the meanings and purpose behind the relational definitions imposed on third world women is the first step in resisting those definitions. While Prakash agrees that issues of such subjugation should be put into historical and cultural contexts, he argues that in doing so, it is important for the othered to identify the underlying power relation in order to challenge it.
How could have the members of SOS, as described by Thayer, benefited from Mohanty’s notion that one must consider the function and purpose of their constructed identities in relation to hegemonic identities? It seemed as if external, mostly American, scholarly as well as financial influence significantly contributed to the modification and eventual implosion of the program. Would (or did) a critical awareness of American assumptions and positionalities have affected the ways in which the Brazilian women incorporated external influence?
In response to Carolyn and Robbie’s question regarding the VagMons’ construction of the “Third World Woman”: the VagMons is a popular example that elucidates Mohanty’s critique of “third world” women’s representation by feminists of the global North. The VagMons depiction of “third world” women does exactly what Mohanty (1998) criticizes Western feminist scholars of doing: it portrays all women of the global South as being oppressed and victims, thereby, essentializing them into the single category of “Third World Woman”. Mohanty (1998) might call the VagMons’ representation of women of the global South “a colonialist move” (p.351). While the stories of women of the global North are varied and often depictions of being more in control of their sexuality, the stories of the “Third World Woman” are consistently about being sexually oppressed victims. The VagMons is, thereby, precipitating the colonization and objectification of women of the global South, while privileging the women of the global North, exactly what Mohanty is trying to change.
ReplyDeleteMohanty (1998), Prakash (1990) and Burawoy (2000), emphasize the importance of addressing history, social, economic and political contexts, geography (including local on global contexts) and time, in order to avoid a reductionist or essentializing representation of “the Other”. As Carolyn and Robbie state, Thayer takes into consideration these post-colonial methodologies in her analysis of SOS Corpo, however, some aspects of the movement would fall prey to Mohanty’s critique. In the initial stages of SOS Corpo, the activists considered women as a homogeneous group with similar needs and interests. Mohanty accurately describes the ramifications of this universality when she addresses the development process on “third world women”: “this move [creating a single category of analysis] limits the definition of the female subject to gender identity, completely bypassing the social class and ethnic identities” (p. 344). The result of the SOS Campo activists ignoring the heterogeneity of the female population and specifically class was the failure of their program when they approached the low-income populations to encourage gynecological self-exams. Despite the projects post-colonial methodologies of considering historical and contextual influences and by adopting the categories of “gender” and “citizenship”, the group was criticized for not being inclusive of race and sexual orientation. This makes me question how I am going to represent the variety of historical and contextual experiences of my participants without excluding certain perspectives or essentializing the data into a single experience. I also question the use of the category “citizenship”: although it is meant to be inclusive of men and women and is political in that it aims to ensure equal rights for everyone, the goal is to ensure rights for women and “particularly poor women” (p. 227). I question how terms such as “citizenship” and “subaltern”, which really refer to marginalized groups, are not essentializing? Although the aim of these post-colonial categories is to acknowledge the political status of the subjects, is the essence of their meaning not of an oppressed group - “the Other”?
I am intrigued by the question that Carolyn and Robbie pose about the possible pitfall of Prakash’s proposition: they write, “In what ways is Prakash’s concept of ‘post-Orientalist’ problematic in that it may essentialize Orientalism from which it departs?” Robbie and Carolyn, you suggest that any debate we have over this issue may mirror the debates around modernity and postmodernity; ideas have been circling without resolution in my mind about how the discourse around these two sets of “isms” and their “posts” might work in parallel ways.
ReplyDeleteIn our earlier readings, the weakness that some scholars see with poststructuralism (thus the charge to which the “postmoderns” respond) is that by denying an a priori existence of subjectivity, these theories of contingency forestall political action. If there is no subject, in other words, how is there to be a movement that fights for a given (subordinated) subject’s rights? However, in opposition to such a question is Mohanty’s argument that ostensibly libratory movements themselves can colonize subjects. Therefore, locating a subject not only is unnecessary for political action (as Butler elucidates), but also is counterproductive. In this sense, I definitely see a parallel between post-Orientalist and poststructuralist methodologies. This recognition, however, doesn’t get at your question about post-Orientalist’s/poststructuralist’s possible essentializing tendencies, so I keep circling.
Finally, then, I reach what I think you might be getting at: namely, the “new post-Orientalist historiography” that “analyzes power relations in the context of academic disciplines and institutions” (p. 402). If I wanted to be able to argue that these emerging historiographies can escape a charge of replicating the problems of Orientalism, I’d have to be able to say that they recognize that an authentic Orientalism cannot be known prior to its representation in knowledge—that the historiography itself accounts for how Orientalism as an object of knowledge is being constructed through the very process of writing histories. While Prakash indicates that the new post-Orientalist scholarship admits its role in constructing itself in opposition to previous concepts (p. 403), perhaps there is not enough evidence in this article to say conclusively that this new scholarship recognizes how it is also creating the previous concepts.
But since Orientalism is discursive, are we really worried about attributing an essence to it? First, discourse is necessarily constructed. Second, claiming some prior origin to discourse is maybe not as violent as it would be if we were talking about people? I would love to talk about this further.
I thank you all for your indulgence as I struggle with this question of essentializing academic disciplines and institutions. Carolyn and Robbie ask us how we can mitigate against discursive colonization in our own work, and I am suddenly hyperaware of the scope of this danger. Perhaps it is not only human bodies we must consider, but “bodies of knowledge,” too?
Prakash (1990) problematizes the foundational construct of India’s history by Orientalists and then nationalists in 1920-30s, who, in wrongfully assuming that the country was an “undivided entity” (390), essentially “reaffirmed ... the projects of modernity, making India ideologically incapable of transcending the Orientalist problematic” (391). By the 1950-60s, however, with anthropologists and social historians increasingly turning to human subjects and their experiences (as opposed to texts, etc.) as the topics of their research, the caste system came to be known as “the centerpiece of Indian society” (392). In deconstructing the caste system then, researchers were able to “show its links to economy and polity, and trace patterns of social mobility” and challenge the traditional discourse that someone’s caste is unchangeable (393). This is something that Robbie and Carolyn draw our attention to: identities need to be “relational rather than essential,” Prakash writes (399). Much like the post-/modern question, I do think a discussion of post-/Orientalism would generate similar debates. In turn, do we interpret post-Orientalism as a methodology, a movement, or just a part-truth (as examples)?
ReplyDeleteMohanty argues “first” world feminists discursively colonize and, for this reason, I do think they would be comparable to the anthropologists or social historians discussed in the Prakash piece. Throughout the article, Mohanty suggests it important to consider the context, “at familial, local, regional, state-wide and international levels” (345), that is, the specification of a local cultural and historical context. In so doing, research subjects are engaged in the process, “this mode of local, political analysis which generates theoretical categories from within the situation and context being analyzed, also suggests corresponding effective strategies for organizing against the exploitations faced by the” research subjects (Ibid), thereby enabling the “colonized,” themselves, to define the forces restricting them. Uncritically, Third World people are often interpreted to be “ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, domestic, family-oriented, victimized, etc.” (337). How can such pre-conceived notions be overcome? Similarly, Mohanty asks, “What is it about cultural Others that make it so easy to analytically formulate them into homogenous groupings with little regard for historical specificities (340)? On the topic of the sex identity, is Mohanty on p.350 and p.353 suggesting we do-away with the “male”/“female” divide?
I’d like to pick up exactly where Max left off “What is it about cultural Others that make it so easy to analytically formulate them into homogenous groupings with little regard for historical specificities?” (Mohanty 340) and how can the preconceived notion of Third World women being “ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, domestic, family-oriented, victimized, etc” (337) be overcome (Max)?
ReplyDeleteAt the beginning of the semester we talked about what it means to study the “other.” We pondered the possibility of creating conclusions about the “other” without being subjective, biased, or judgemental. As I recall, we concluded that it is nearly impossible to avoid subjectivity when studying an “other,” and I believe that the definition of the Third World Women (other) created by Westerners, is no exception to that practice.
Mohanty spoke about the way in which Third World Women are categorized as a powerless group through Western analysis. She mentions how Western women are considered educated, modern, in control and free to make their own decisions. As a result of this self-constructed definition of Western Women (which, in my opinion is false. Western Women do not only have positive attributes), Westerners place Third World Women in a category beneath their own, likely because they are visually and culturally different. I believe that the Western definition of the Third World Woman is biased, subjective, and judgemental like many of the other definitions created by the Western World. Basing the definition on generalizations about the negative experiences Third World Women share (ie: violence, victims, subordination...) is not enough. With this practice, the picture of the ignorant, uneducated, and victimized woman will never disappear. I worry that this image will never be abolished.
Western women are also victims of abuse, low-wages, and unequal political participation. These negative experiences are shared amongst women all over the world. These experiences cannot be the types of characteristics used to classify groups as they are not unique or belong only to one group. What is it that Western Women, and Third World Women don’t share, that can rightfully be used to classify them as different from each other? I would hypothesize elements like geography (climate, location...), religion (secular vs. Religious state), and culture (values, traditions, beliefs, and customs); all being experiences which stem from one’s history.
So why can’t we overcome the image of the Third World Woman which pays little attention to the true differences that actually separate her from the rest of the world? She is not less evolved than the Western Woman. She is just like any other women with her own history and story. Prakash tells us that what we know about the Third World is based on the history that they themselves write about and share. Maybe we should all stick to the source. By creating its own definitions of women, the Western World is acting too authoritarian, and only contributing further to the oppression that women experience on a day to day basis.