Week 4 - Mohanty

Personally I found the reading on Colonial Discourses by Chandra Mohanty a complicated piece that required close reading but I did my best to pull apart the material to make the most sense and I hope my interpretation is close to what Mohanty had in mind. Mohanty likened the writings of western women feminists on third world women to colonization of the western women on the third world women because their writings create a singular image of third world women that is arbitrary (p. 63). Mohanty is critical of the scholarship of western feminist because they make out third world women to be powerless and ‘victims’ of the socio-economic system (p. 66). Mohanty argues that over generalization is only one of the many flaws in the scholarship.

What I found very interesting is that the ideals of the western women and the literal colonization of Africa by the Europeans affected the marriage system and family structure in the Bemba tribe. Is this what Mohanty is referring to as the colonization by western women…the imposition of culture through literature? Mohanty also mentions that western feminist scholarship does not take into account history and context while writing about certain things like the purdah practice by women in Iran. Does Mohanty suggest that what the western feminists consider oppression in the third world is not perceived the same way by women in the third world, instead it is an acceptable way of life that as arisen from personal choice or circumstances?

I really related to this reading because I have found myself having to defend my heritage as an Indian and a Muslim to people who have very misguided view – once again due to generalization. Like Mohanty states there is often this assumption that people in the third world have not evolved to the extent of those that in the west (p. 80) and this idea can be colonized by misguided scholarship.