Analysis Text 1. the new work on transnational feminist engagements? Ashfar, Haleh, ed. Claire Chambers and Susan Watkins Leeds Metropolitan University, UK Without doubt, some of the most important work in postcolonial theory and criticism has ... (Mohanty, 1984: 334). Chandra Talpade Mohanty is a Distinguished Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Sociology, and the Cultural Foundations of Education and Dean's Professor of the Humanities at Syracuse University. Postcolonial feminism focuses on individual experiences and struggles instead of looking at ”a universality” (Mohanty 2003:527). In this particular case, the transformation of the movement into a platform (Bekhauf Azaadi) that says NO: THIS IS WHAT FREEDOM REALLY MEANS, to confront patriarchy/the system/gov’t more broadly illustrates that the struggle is not just about rape, or even violence against women, but instead, about re-defining relations between men and women, people and government, freedom and constraint, safety and culture.   While the remarkable mobilization of women and men of all ages, especially the youth around the question of women’s “azaadi” (freedom) and against the death penalty suggests the success of feminist, youth, and left movements, State responses to the protests, indicate the responses of neoliberal, masculinist State managers moving to repress, contain, and rewrite Indian patriarchial practices, completely gutting the recommendations of the path-breaking Justice Verma Commission (JVC) report to pass an ordinance that was in fact a containment and subversion of peoples struggles against the culture and practices of sexual violence.   So the challenge for us is one of building solidarities across social justice movements in India, in South Asia and globally to confront the violences of the masculinist, neoliberal Indian State. This was not always happening (and still isn’t), given that the categories of our identity shift between locations and priorities of struggle can shift as well. TFW: Could you talk a little about your groundbreaking essay, “Under Western Eyes,” that developed a sweeping critique of some of the common errors in the feminist theorizing coming out of the global north that is about women of the global south? Routledge, 1996. Postcolonial feminism is a relatively novel wing of postcolonial feminine scholarship. Her work became internationally known after the publication of her influential essay, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” in 1986. Over the years, and ever since the experience of organizing the Common Differences Conference as a graduate student, my work has been deeply collaborative.   Perhaps this is why I am so drawn to thinking about and enacting solidarity.   I often say that I think best in the company of political comrades—in the academy and in community organizations.  So working for over a decade with organizers at Grassroots Leadership of North Carolina and with the New York women’s collective Center for Immigrant Families taught me concrete lessons about solidarity, political education, and organizing around issues of privatization (of prisons and immigrant detention centers), and segregation of schools and immigrant women’s rights.   And just as Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (1991) grew out of the Common Differences gathering, Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures (1997) had its genesis in the collective space, dialogue, and discomfort that characterized a retreat in the late 1980s at Blue Mountain Lake in the Adirondacks—the retreat, initiated by Barbara Smith, was about strategizing and building ‘The Women of Color Institute for Radical Research and Action.’   The Institute did not materialize but my over two decade collaboration with Jacqui Alexander began there—and Feminist Genealogies was inspired by that gathering in the mid 1980s. Mohanty is a prominent contemporary postcolonial feminist who demands women’s solidarity based on the common context of struggle against the hierarchical powers- colonialism, capitalism, racism and patriarchy. “Now more than ever, the work of groundbreaking feminist and postcolonial theorist Chandra Talpade Mohanty is indispensable. She has degrees from University of Delhi and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. As of 2013, she has served as the women’s studies department chair and professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Sociology, and the Cultural Foundations of Education and Dean’s Professor of the Humanities at Syracuse University. As an avid reader of feminist theory, it was also evident that the “space” for immigrant, third world women (like myself) in western feminist theory was a truncated one.  Pedagogically, “we” were present in courses on development and political economy, and theoretically, “we” often emerged as a foil to hegemonic white/western feminist subjectivities.    As I began developing the arguments in “Under Western Eyes” I presented them in numerous feminist public venues, encountering disbelief and hostility from many of my senior colleagues at Cornell, and relief and recognition from postcolonial and US women of color.   Given that I was in a precarious academic situation as an ABD, part-time lecturer, folks telling me I “should not dabble in feminist theory” had a powerful impact.   Quite honestly, looking back, the experience of writing “Under Western Eyes” is key to the development of my understanding of the racialized politics of knowledge and of institutional power in U.S. feminist academic communities.   This experience clarified my “outsider” status, simultaneously solidifying my commitment to anti-racist, materialist, anti-imperialist feminist theorizing.   If powerful people were telling me to back off, I was of course going to plunge straight in! All Content ©2016 The Feminist Wire 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. Feminism and postcolonialism are allies, and the impressive selection of writings brought together in this volume demonstrate how fruitful that alliance can be. And sometimes women of color in the US aren’t as knowledgeable about the neo-colonial world as we should be. Bibliography. Postcolonial feminism therefore illuminates the vast difference between what we are subliminally taught is universal (read: white) and what are in fact the varied lived realities for the rest of the world’s population. Fire on the Mountain, Clear Light of Day and Fasting, Feasting: An Exploration of Indian Motherhood in the Fiction of Anita Desai, Feminist perspective in Anita Desai's Fasting,Feasting and clear Light of day, INDIAN FEMALE IDENTITIES, BETWEEN HINDU PATRIARCHY AND WESTERN MISSIONARY MODELS IN ANITA DESAI'S FASTING, FEASTING AND CLEAR LIGHT OF DAY, The Representation of Women during the time of Partition in Novels of South Asian Women Writers, [Ketu_H._Katrak]_Politics_of_the_Female_Body_.pdf. Since my entire feminist trajectory has involved building solidarities, alliances, and friendships between U.S. and international women of color perhaps a good place to start would be with a couple of examples of the challenges and opportunities I have encountered. Postcolonial feminism reminds … She has degrees from University of Delhi and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Postcolonial feminism is a relatively new stream of thought, developing primarily out of the work of the postcolonial theorists who concern themselves with evaluating how different colonial and imperial relations throughout the nineteenth century have impacted the way particular cultures view themselves. In liberal feminist writings there is inadequate self-consciousness about the ability of academia to discourage women’s movements in the Third World (Mohanty, 1988, pp. Mohanty, a postcolonial and transnational feminist theorist, has argued for the inclusion of a transnational approach in exploring women’s experiences across the world. Routledge, Jul 29, 2003 - Philosophy - 544 pages. My experience of the Common Differences conference in 1983 was instructive in that as a woman of color from the Global South, it was really important for me to understand the U.S. landscape of feminism from the epistemological standpoint of U.S. women of color.  So while the politics of class/capitalism and decolonization provided a common locus of engagement, developing an anti-racist standpoint was key in forging solidarities with U.S. women of color.   Similarly, my collaborations—scholarly, pedagogical, and activist, have always been with U.S. women of color with actively anti-nationalist, anti-imperialist feminist commitments.   I guess what I am saying here is that there are abundant opportunities for solidarities between U.S. women of color and women of color from the Global South—but the success of these collaborations and alliances depends on a deep commitment to understanding the differences between our histories and experiences.   And, in the current moment I would say challenges to solidarity lie in the way neoliberal economic and ideological practices normalize so-called post-race/post feminist consumer cultures such that there are significant generational differences between feminists who grew up in the cusp of the decolonization of the “third world”—the 1950s/60s and those who grew up in the 1990s/2000s.  The challenges of solidarity work across borders lies in careful ethical engagement in social justice struggles from all of our different, interconnected locations.  Thus, for instance, two of the contemporary struggles I am engaged in, immigrant rights and undocumented student struggles in the USA, and solidarity work on Palestine (the BDS—boycott, divestments, sanctions—movement) both require U.S. and international women of color (and of course antiracist, anti-imperialist white women and men) working across multiple borders analytically, and strategically.  I believe U.S. and International women of color have much to learn from and contribute together to the analysis of immigrant rights/undocumented struggles (after all this is a struggle about citizenship, rights, and belonging and the transnational traffic in labor).  Similarly, the BDS movement requires connecting questions of Islamophobia, military aid, and imperialism in the USA to questions of settler colonialism, occupation and incarceration in Israel/Palestine.   Given the obvious transnational reach of both these struggles, it is the potential solidarity between U.S. and international women of color that is key to the feminist organizing and educational efforts in both contexts. Her new book, Feminism without Borders, is a collection of essays that interrogate notions of home, sisterhood, work, scholarship, and first-world feminism.”   The only intellectual I remember from my childhood is a great-aunt who towered over most men (at 6 feet), and was respected (and feared) because she chose to be single and earn an independent living as a teacher and principal of a high school.  I later learned Lanumavshi was transgender (a well-hidden fact in the family).  But like her, the women in my extended family were/are smart, resilient and independent—my mother, for instance, went to night school and worked during the day to put my uncle through college after her father died.  I believe I absorbed the strength and resilience of the women in my family—it has certainly helped me in the academy! This particular strain of feminism promotes a wider viewpoint of the complex layers of oppression that exist within any given society. TFW: Could you talk a little about the US women of color / international women of color solidarity challenges and opportunities?Â. This study seeks to examine traces of colonialism, capitalism, Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses Chandra Talpade Mohanty It ought to be of some political significance at least that the term "colonization" has come to denote a variety of phenomena in recent feminist and left writings in general. Bringing together classic and new writings of the trailblazing feminist theorist Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism without Borders addresses some of the most pressing and complex issues facing contemporary feminism. TFW: What are the current topics you are thinking about? Feminist scholars and practitioners have challenged—and sought to overcome—gendered forms of inequality, subordination, or oppression within a variety of political, economic, and social contexts. It can be quite heavy in writing, but remains an important work. The conjuncture between postcolonialism and feminism is indeed an emerging scenario in the contemporary critical practice. Even more importantly, Chandra was advancing the view that women from the global south needed to make alliances with US women of color, and vice versa. Chandra Talpade Mohanty observes the function of Western imperialism itself and the feminist regardless enacting the problematic role of the “feminist as White feminism tells us that equality is fixed, and looks the same everywhere. Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures. I am working on two large projects at the moment.   A book entitled Just Feminisms, Radical Knowledges, Insurgent Practices, that draws on my writing since the publication of Feminism Without Borders, (2003), and focuses especially on radical, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist feminist struggles and the politics of knowledge in securitized/militarized, neoliberal, increasingly impoverished communities across national borders.    The second large project is a collaboration with Linda Carty, my sister/colleague at Syracuse University, and draws on survey data from key anti-racist, anti-imperialist feminist scholar/activists from the Global South and North (including yourself Linda!) Her feminism was crystal clear, and clearly radical, and refreshingly rooted in the global south. This book offers a revised version of Under Western Eyes, and discusses the possibilities and limits to solidarity in the current political economy through a postcolonial feminist and anticapitalist lens. Postcolonial feminism is a form of feminism that developed as a response to the fact that feminism seemed to focus solely on the experiences of women in Western cultures.Postcolonial feminism seeks to account for the way that racism and the long-lasting political, economic, and cultural effects of colonialism affect non-white, non-Western women in the postcolonial world. As feminists around the world recognized, the scale of the protests in India were unprecedented globally.  And the fact that the protests morphed into a larger critique of misogyny, rape-culture and institutionalized patriarchy was a major achievement of feminist, left, anti-fascist and peasant grassroots movements in India. Mohanty does observe that “ [c]learly Western feminist discourse and political practice is neither singular nor homogeneous in its goals, interests or analyses” (Mohanty, 1984: 334). 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