Postcolonial Feminism Flashcards
Why is there no coherent narrative between Feminism and Postcolonialism?
- Re-males and recentres resistant discourses by women
- Must be historicized and placed in context of a variety of historical resistance to colonialism
What fundamental aspect do Postcolonial and Feminist theory share?
Both stand for a transformational politics, for a politics dedicated to the remove of inequality
Young, 2016
How is the nation state often imagined in colonial theory?
- As a woman; resistance itself is feminised
- Women are cast as wives and mothers and are literally and figuratively reproduce the nation
Loomba (1998)
9What is the association of the nation with family translated to the colonial situation?
- Colonial state as the parens patriae, controlling but also supposedly providing for its children
- Way of expressing racial or cultural relations:
- White man’s burden constructed as a parental one – looking after and disciplining children into obedience
Loomba (1998)
How does the Image of nation or culture as woman marshal and undercut female power?
Nation as a mother protected her son from colonial ravages but also herself ravage by colonialism and in need of her son’s protection
Loomba (1998)
What does postcolonialism try to address in the hegemony of western feminism?
Look to re-orient western feminisms to produce a plurality of feminisms, each with a specific history and set of political objectives
McEwan (2001)
What is trap is it important not to fall into when postcolonialism tries to destabilize the hegemony of western feminism?
Trap of cultural relativism though, which places all geographies of feminism equally, which does not disrupt colonial power relations in terms of gender inequality and patriarchal power
McEwan (2001)
How does McEwan (2001) reconceptualise the role of women in public and private sphere?
Reconceptualise motherhood being a private occupation forced on women as a chosen political occupation with important social and economic repercussions
McEwan (2001)
How does western feminism reinforce universalism and difference that is similar to the colonial project?
- Western feminists criticized for universalizing their own particular perspectives as normative
- Creates stereotype of ‘Third World Woman’ that ignores diversity of women’s lives in the South across boundaries of class and ethnicity
- A form of ‘othering’ that reprivelages western values, knowledge and power
McEwan (2001)
What does Spivak (1990) call for so that Western Feminists can address their shortcomings?
- Hyper self-reflexivity
- That their knowledges are situated, i.e. cultural specificity and therefore their partiality
- ‘Unlearn’ their privilege as loss –> working back critically through one’s history, prejudices and learned responses
Spivak (1990)
What does the coupling of postcolonialism and feminism call for?
- Allow for competing and disparate voices among women rather reproducing colonialist power relations where white, middle class women have power to speak for their ‘silenced sisters’ in the South
McEwan (2001)
How has a discursive space not yet be created for postcolonial and feminist theory to be combined?
- Women can be integrated into discursive spaces of geographical traditions but gender differences are erased
- Or women can be located outside the territory of tradition and their difference celebrated but it is notcritical
McEwan (1998)
What is the trouble with uncovering the way in which British women travellers contributed to geographical knowledge production within Imperial culture?
- Runs the risk of reprivileging former imperial powers (the ‘West’) as the producer of this knowledge
- Colonial representations by white women may be read critically but the imperial gaze is still privileged with a silencing of the colonized ‘other’
McEwan (1998)
What are the problems of contact zones?
Problem with contact zones is that the interactions with and responses to Europeans are not articulated in the imperial archives
McEwan (1998)
How can Spivak’s framework be used in uncovering agency of the colonized in the imperial archives?
- Although impossible to avoid privileging colonizers voice in exploring white women’s representations of colonized people and landscapes
- Can explore resistance to their presence or subaltern agency within their narratives
McEwan (1998)
How Feminists propose moving beyond essentialism?
- Do not contrast a singular, essential ‘feminine’ experience that can be contrasted with an equivalent masculine one –> apply this to a reading of the ‘Other’ as well [Idea of essentialism]
- Produce a more nuanced reading of gendered imperial knowledge by acknowledging class, ethnicity, sexuality etc
- A geographical approach here shifts away from emphasis from women travellers as a category to specific regions in their imperial setting and activities of these women in these contexts
McEwan (1998)
Why does a discussion of ethnicity assume an implication with gender?
- Discussion of ethnicity also by implication a discussion of gender and sexuality as women are the biological ‘carriers’ of the ‘race’ (Davin, 1978)
- Freedom that British women experienced in West Africa were without doubt related to ethnicity –> narratives must be read with critical eye
McEwan (1998)
What are some documentated accounts of resistance to the colonzied by the Other?
Accounts of sensational cannibalism in Kingsley’s (1897) narratives but few writers have analysed the possibility that West Africans themselves may spread rumours of own cannibalism to main social order, prevent attacks of other villages or discourage European powers progressing further inland
Examples of postcolonial and feminism theory in Jane Eyre?
- Jane as both coloniser (British) and the colonised (woman)
- All women are enslaved by male despotism but British woman claims moral and spiritual superiority over her Eastern sisters
- Bertha represents British fears of both foreigners and women – “blood-red” moon, a symbol of women’s menstrual cycles, is reflected in her eyes, suggesting her feminine, sexual potency
Bronte (1847)
How does Smith’s capitalist ruling appartus link to the colonial state?
- Smith’s capitalist ruling apparatus is premised upon abstracting places, people and events into generalized categories
- This very process of abstract that the colonial state establishes racial, sexual and class ideologies
- Helped to reinforce the creation of difference
Mohanty (1991)
What were the characteristics of the English gentlemen?
- Natural and legitimate ruler
- Drew on social Darwinism, chivalry myths, scientific discourses and literary tradition of Empire
Mohanty (1991)
How were the physical details of race and sexual seperation converted to?
- Converted to a moral plane: ideal imperial agent as authority and fidelity
- White men as “naturally” born to rule is grounded in discourse that colonized people are incapable of self-government
Mohanty (1991)
How was there a dynamic relationship between class and the patriachy under British rule?
Evident in agrarian regulations –> granting property rights to men, exclusion of women from ownership
Mohanty (1991)
What was the sexualisation of the Indian middle class in 19th Century?
- Bhadralok = Bengali new class of ‘gentlefolk’
- Bhadralok notion of middle class Indian womanhood draws on Victorian ideas of purity and home-bound nature of women
- Creation of this class of women led to middle-class Indian feminist struggles: nationalist struggles against an Imperial state
Mohanty (1991)
What question about bringing a women-centered approach to colonialism is Haggis (1990) asking?
Whether it is gendering colonialism or colonising gender?
Haggis (1990)
What are Haggis’ (1990) to main critiques of applying a women centered approach to postcolonialism?
- Fails to locate class divisions between both colonial and colonised groups of women
- Serves to undergender the colonised people and contribute to silencing colonised women
How are white women visible in the colonial project?
As memsahibs
- Neurotically possessive of their women
- Concerned with maintaining racial superiority through segregation and petty distinctions
Haggis (1990)
What did Knapman argue that white women arriving in large numbers in Fiji cause and why?
- Arrival of white women in large numbers has been blamed for disturbing racially harmonious frontier between white men and Fijian women
- Intervening in the making of society on their insistence of racial segregation and purity
Haggis (1990)
What myth is obscured in the ‘harminous frontier’?
- Myth obscured of the reality of racial conflict and dis-harmony between Fijians and white men in their colonial conquest
- White men imported Europeanness traits, which imposed racial segregation and exclusivity but in the name of the white women
Haggis (1990)
What dualistic distinction does Haggis (1990) use in identifying the ideological construction of black men and white women?
- Similar dualism around Mind/Body distinction
- Mind, rationality and intellect attributed to white men
- In opposition, both blacks and women become mindless, emotional creatures, rendered dependent to white men
- Note this is achieved through different images
Haggis (1990)
