Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic

by Serene J. Khader

Decolonizing Universalism argues that feminism can respect cultural and religious differences and acknowledge the legacy of imperialism without surrendering its core ethical commitments. Transcending relativism/ universalism debates that reduce feminism to a Western notion, Serene J. Khader proposes a feminist vision that is sensitive to postcolonial and antiracist concerns. Khader criticizes the false universalism of what she calls 'Enlightenment liberalism,' a worldview according to which the West is the one true exemplar of gender justice and moral progress is best achieved through economic independence and the abandonment of tradition. She argues that anti-imperialist feminists must rediscover the normative core of feminism and rethink the role of moral ideals in transnational feminist praxis. What emerges is a nonideal universalism that rejects missionary feminisms that treat Western intervention and the spread of Enlightenment liberalism as the path to global gender
injustice.

The book draws on evidence from transnational women's movements and development practice in addition to arguments from political philosophy and postcolonial and decolonial theory, offering a rich moral vision for twenty-first century feminism.

Genres: Philosophy, Feminism, Womens, Gender Studies

198 pages, Hardcover

Published December 4, 2018

Reviews

[Gretel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Partially read for the course Decolonizing Gender. Read Intro, Chapter 1 and Chapter 5.

This is a very dense, very complex little book that tackles decolonial, postcolonial and transnational feminism. Khader has certainly delivered an interesting perspective and useful tools for transnational feminist ethics and activism but the text is very hard to get into. It took me about 30 to 40 pages to finally get into her convoluted and abstract writing style. Until then I was only getting parts of what she was trying to say. Even then, I think that some of her arguments or statements need more "proof" because she sometimes tends to drop finalised opinions with little examples of how she comes to that conclusion.

This is definitely something for people who have read a couple of feminist works and have some basic idea of academic theory because this is otherwise too complicated, both contentwise and how Khader writes. Definitely nothing for beginners.

[Madeleine Gale · Rating 4 out of 5]

an interesting, dense look at feminist philosophy. This book has truly and deeply impacted how I think and talk about women and feminism.
Only thing keeping it from 5 stars for me is Khader’s writing which, more often than not, is extremely difficult to decipher.

[A YOGAM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Khader plädiert für einen Feminismus, der universelle Gerechtigkeit einfordert, ohne westliche Werte als alleinigen Maßstab aufzuzwingen. Sie kritisiert einen „Missionars-Feminismus“, der Fortschritt ausschließlich in der Abkehr von Tradition und in ökonomischer Unabhängigkeit erkennt. Ihr „nicht-idealer Universalismus“ macht deutlich, dass Widerstand gegen patriarchale Strukturen auch innerhalb religiöser und traditioneller Kontexte möglich ist. Das Buch entlarvt den „Aufklärungs-Liberalismus“ als potenziell imperial wirkendes Instrument und sucht eine tragfähige ethische Basis transnationaler Solidarität.

Intertextuelle Verankerung im Bibliotheksbestand
Khaders Kritik am westlichen „Aufklärungs-Liberalismus“ liefert ein theoretisches Korrektiv zu Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defense of the Marriage-Free State. Während Chambers die Ehe aus liberaler Perspektive abschaffen möchte, warnt Khader davor, dass solche Forderungen in postkolonialen Kontexten als westliche Arroganz erscheinen können – insbesondere dann, wenn lokale Schutz- und Bedeutungsräume übergangen werden. Diese Spannung spiegelt sich in Mother Mary Comes to Me: A Memoir, wo Mary Roy innerhalb der indischen Tradition für Reformen kämpft, statt sie schlicht zu verwerfen.
Zugleich vertieft Khader das Konzept der „Dehumanisierung“ aus The Wrong of Injustice: Dehumanization and Its Role in Feminist Philosophy. Die Weigerung, nicht-westliche Frauen als autonom handelnde Subjekte anzuerkennen, erscheint hier selbst als Form der Entmenschlichung. Ihr „transnationaler Universalismus“ stützt zudem die Forderung nach einer „Socially Responsible Science“ in Philosophy of Science after Feminism, indem er eine Wissenschaft verlangt, die ihre eigenen kolonialen Prämissen kritisch reflektiert.
Schließlich korrespondiert Khaders Ansatz mit der Suche nach „Demokratischer Weisheit“ in Sagesse du politique: Le devenir des démocraties. Beide Positionen betonen, dass Demokratie nicht in der Einebnung von Differenz besteht, sondern in der Schaffung von Räumen, in denen Verschiedenheit anerkannt wird, während ein gemeinsamer moralischer Kern – der Schutz vor Gewalt und Unterdrückung – gewahrt bleibt.

[Amalauna Brock · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book could have been summed up in one non-academic bullshit sentence. Feminists should not pretend they have all the answers to every situation and let the people who live in the culture make decisions about what is most just for themselves. I hate when books try to be so academic that they are ducking unreadable. If smart people can’t read your goddamn book then your message is lost.

[alyvia cantrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is essentially just “let me talk about all of these super interesting and important points that are pertinent to establishing effective intersectional feminism across women in different cultures” but all while making it the most confusing, hard to read piece of feminist philosophy works ever

[Diego · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only read a portion of it but the arguments were interesting

[Saad Hassan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommended by a colleague who works on action research as part of a reading list on decolonizing methods for marginalized perspectives. I understood the broader question to be: whether discussions on feminism in the Global South devolves into a debate on the necessity of universal values. Anti-imperialist feminism is possible but complicated. Existing debates often present a choice between imperialist and universalist perspectives, with unjustified powers from the North over the South. The alternative is not to be a feminist at all, and accept that what people think is right in context is always right, which is also unsatisfying. The positive argument is that a moral or other type of position can posit something is wrong without adhering to Western values. Universalist claims are possible without imperialism by changing normative feminism (aka missionary feminism) and returning to the old idea from hooks et al. that feminism opposes sexist oppression. Normative approaches tend to reduce injustice rather than improve justice towards a better goal. Another idea that comes up often is that individualism and economic self-sufficiency is not as conceptually related to feminism as often thought. I thought book is dense and references a lot of Narayan, Saba Mehmood, Sen but uses real-world recent problems rather than just scholarly literature, with few exceptions.