Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures

Thinking Gender

by M. Jacqui Alexander (Editor), Chandra Talpade Mohanty (Editor)

Feminist Geneaologies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures provides a feminist anaylsis of the questions of sexual and gender politics, economic and cultural marginality, and anti-racist and anti-colonial practices both in the "West" and in the "Third World." This collection, edited by Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, charts the underlying theoretical perspectives and organization practices of the different varieties of feminism that take on questions of colonialism, imperialism, and the repressive rule of colonial, post-colonial and advanced capitalist nation-states. It provides a comparative, relational, historically grounded conception of feminist praxis that differs markedly from the liberal pluralist, multicultural understanding that shapes some of the dominant version of Euro-American feminism. As a whole, the collection poses a unique challenge to the naturalization of gender based in the experiences, histories and practices of Euro-American women.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Gender, Academic, Race, Theory, History

464 pages, Paperback

First published November 20, 1996

Reviews

[Dalia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only read a few essays from the genius of the highly academic and DEEP AS HELL Alexander & Mohanty:

on claims within ‘international feminism’: “Drawing from an often unspecified liberal episteme, they tend to invoke a difference-as-pluralism model in which women in the Third World bear the disproportionate burden of difference… calls for ‘global sisterhood’ are often premised on a center/periphery model where women of color or Third World women constitute the periphery. Race is invariably erased from any conception of the international based on nation…To a large extent, underlying the conception of the international is a notion of universal patriarchy operating in a transhistorical way to subordinate all women. ‘International’ moreover, has come to be collapsed into the culture and values of capitalism.” (498)

neo-colonial state and advanced capitalist/colonial state shared characteristics: “own the means of organized violence which most often get deployed in the service of ‘national security,’ they are both militarized—in other words, masculinized, discipline and mobilize the bodies of women—in particular Third-World women—in order to consolidate patriarchal and colonizing processes.”

“these states conflate heterosexuality with citizenship and organize a ‘citizenship machinery’ in order to produce a class of loyal heterosexual citizens and a subordinated class of sexualized, nonprocreative, noncitizens, disloyal to the nation, and, therefore, suspect.” (501)

[Milo · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75

[Nessette Falu]

for my feminist debates class

[Samaa Ahmed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dense at times, but really good.