Week 4 Readings

The first reading by Chardra Mohanty, Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Disclosures, Mohanty is establishing the line between Western feminism and Third World feminism and why we need to stop grouping feminists as one. Feminists come from different classes, locations and races so she is saying that it is important to draw separations between all the groups that come with feminism. Mohanty goes on to list the contrasts between Western Feminists and Third World feminists by saying Western feminists generally are educated, have freedom and control over their own bodies. While Third World feminists are sexually constrained, poor, religious and uneducated. So to say all women who are feminists have the same problems at hand, is not doing the problem justice. 

Mohanty emphasizes the importance of specification of who is being talked about in conversations, primarily because the intensity of the situation may change according to which group is being discussed. Mohanty also brings up why even if it is established that women of the third world are the topic, it still needs to go even further than that. She brings up two groups who go through relatively the same things being third world women, black women and Vietnamese women. They are still victims of race, sex, and known as women as universal dependents, but they still come from different locations. One example of the differences between these two groups is Vietnamese women are still a victim of the colonial process and even before what we know as the  "courtship" the women are still viewed as sexual objects. She ends this chapter with a quote from Marx, "they cannot represent themselves, they must be represented."

The second reading tied very well with Mohanty and what she had to say about specification of groups and what kind of affect their can be if these groups are not established. In the reading, Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?, Lila Abu-Lughod starts off with the previous first lady and her comments shortly after 9/11 and how she was contacted to answer questions about Muslim women on a show. Lughod was dissatisfied of what those questions were and put them into the perspectives of what if you replace the religion with Christians. She did this to emphasize the ridiculousness of how some people assume and approach Islam. She continues throughout the excerpt to separate groups based on how they interpret Islam. Lughod, thinks that there needs to be another route that is taken rather than trying to “save” these women. One suggestion is to work side by side with these women in situations that are seen to “historically transform” and also to step up more often and take action when there is an injustice taking place, regardless of what it may be.

Mohanty wants us to focus on how we speak about Third World feminists and Western feminists and how they are categorized. She is dedicated to group specification and noting how important the differences may be. Lughod wants to take action and stand with the feminists of the Third World and to speak out when an injustice occurs.