Postcolonial Feminism Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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The term postcolonial feminism references a field of study and activism by and for women that challenges dominant patriarchal ideologies and practices of postcolonial societies. The term is rooted in oppositional consciousness to the dominant social order as a form of transformative politics. Tied closely to nationhood, its strategies are marked by political activism of women concerned with gaining rights. It challenges gendered state biases that disable empowerment and equal rights and views women’s political struggle as essential to deconstructing patriarchal power. Postcolonial feminists have therefore challenged state power structures for access to political equality and participation, opposed discriminatory legislation that oppresses women, and championed women’s empowerment. The beginnings of postcolonial feminism tend to be associated largely with colonies and former colonies of Western powers in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. As a field of activism, it can be dated to the decolonization period (from the 1950s and 1960s) in former colonial countries, and as a field of study, it is often associated with the rise of postcolonial and feminist writings of the mid-1970s.

History

Postcolonial feminism is a subset of both postcolonial and feminist studies. A history of the term suggests it is has been framed by active legacies of colonialism and postcolonial movements. Feminists were concerned that the transfer of power at independence to many former colonial states was in fact the transfer of national sovereignty to a masculine power structure. Although independence offered the promise of new beginnings, for women it signaled the transfer of power to local elites, who inherited dominant patriarchal colonial systems of administration with embedded values relating to the diminished place of women in nationhood. Women activists saw the need for political struggle, which was influenced by the larger feminist movement of the 1960s, civil rights in the United States, growing black power movements in former colonized states in the 1970s, and a rising postcolonial consciousness worldwide. Hence, an association of postcolonial issues with feminist thought brought together discourses of power and domination and challenged institutional and ideological structures that oppressed women.

Variations

Postcolonial feminism draws attention to varying conditions of women that are contextual, geographical, and temporal. Hence, there is no single form of postcolonial feminism. Geographical examples include dowry deaths in India; state-legislated discriminatory laws that demean and punish women in Pakistan; access to clean water and housing in Africa, Central America, and Southeast Asia; and challenging practices of dislocating women as subjects of history in the Caribbean. Representations in the media that objectify and circulate stereotypes about postcolonial women is another major concern of the field. Postcolonial feminists have drawn attention to the need to replace disparaging images of these women with images defined by the women themselves.

Defining The Field

There has been a tendency to conflate postcolonial feminism with third world feminism. Although both feminisms sometimes overlap, Robert Young suggests postcolonial feminism’s particular politics are framed by gendered power relations that allow postcolonial state structures to enforce a neocolonial status on women. Third world feminism on the other hand is less focused on nationhood but functions as an umbrella term for a range of feminist contestations and voices that focus on women’s marginality, exclusion, racism, sexuality and sexual expressions, and global capitalism, among others.

Major international proponents of the postcolonial feminist ideology include feminist critics Hazel Carby (1987), Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1991), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1988), Sara Suleri (1992), Anne McClintock (1995), Ania Loombia (1998), and Uma Narayan (1997). Some authors tend also to associate the term mainly with third world or developing countries; however, many feminists from developed countries identify their struggle against marginalization as postcolonial. Indigenous feminists in Canada, Australia, and the United States suggest they live in both a colonial and a postcolonial moment simultaneously (a fourth world) and therefore suffer various levels of oppression shaped by legacies of dispossession, racism, and sexism. Hence, fourth world feminists bring to postcolonial feminism a focus on indigenous women’s rights and struggles for status, legal rights, citizenship, and social justice.

Contestations

Contestations within the field are marked by tensions within feminism itself. Postcolonial feminists argue against Western liberal feminism’s tendency to universalize and speak for all women. Liberal feminists are also accused of stereotyping postcolonial women by focusing on their difference and distance against a Western norm. Chandra Mohanty draws attention to the continuous discursive production of “difference” about these women as distant, muted subjects.

Contestations relating to voice also resonate within postcolonial feminism itself. Gayatri Spivak suggests that many (elite) theorists and writers in postcolonial societies are often unaware of the true conditions of marginalized and subaltern women and are therefore unable to speak for these postcolonial subjects. Hence, the continuous production of texts about these women renders the subaltern voiceless and incapable of speaking. The field is therefore challenged to reconfigure its continuous production of postcolonial women as voiceless subjects and instead provide them with agency by highlighting their experiences as authors and speakers.

Bibliography:

Carby Hazel. Reconstructing Womanhood. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Loombia, Ania. Colonialism Post Colonialism. London: Routledge, 1998.
McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” In Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, edited by Chandra Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
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