Week 4 Response

What first intrigued me about Mohanty's piece is that she sets up the paradigm which had been hinted at in our other readings but never stated outright; women are established as an "Other", just as we had previously discussed was the case for much of the "Oriental" population as a whole. Mohanty explains on page 64 that there is an "assumption of women as an already constituted and coherent group with identical interests and desires". This vast over generalization recalls the Orientalist discourse about colonized peoples, lumping them together into a group which behaved in certain ways and had certain desires and goals. With this in mind, I appreciated that Mohanty's article was structured in subsections dealing with each of the identities and goals attached to women -- "third world women" in particular -- such as "Women as victims of male violence", "Women as universal dependents" and so on.

I find it particularly fitting that Mohanty ends on the line "They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented" because it leads perfectly into Abu-Lughod's first piece. While Mohanty discussed the idea of women as an "other" needing to be represented, Abu-Lughod goes into the "rhetoric of salvation" a step beyond plain representation. I have previously read Saba Mahmood's "Politics of Piety", which is referenced in this piece and which we will read from later in the class, and this article reminded me of it, almost like a more straightforward and shorter version with ties to a particular historical event (being the so-called "War on Terrorism" and associated rhetoric). When juxtaposed with Mohanty's article, it is particularly interesting to see the difference between representation, trying to speak for those who supposedly cannot speak for themselves, and salvation, imposing the "norm" on the "other" and believing that by doing so you are saving those others. I am always fascinated by discussion of hijab in this context, of how in the west it is often viewed as the quintessential image of women's oppression, while the meaning of veiling to the women who actually do it can be entirely different and even empowering. It also represents the meeting of representation and salvation rhetoric discussed in the two readings; the west wants to represent the women they believe cannot do so for themselves, and by doing so present themselves as liberators of those women from the repression of the "other".

The "Dangers of Reifying Culture"

With each of these pieces Abu-Lughod urges us to be critical of and to question not only claims already made, but claims that will be made at the intersection of Islam, feminism, and our interpretations of each. Highlighting the importance of complexity and nuanced understanding, she reveals the "dangers of reifying culture, apparent in the tendencies to plaster neat cultural icons like the Muslim woman over messy historical and political dynamics" ("Need Saving?", 783), even if well-intentioned.

In "Feminism and Islam in Egypt," she highlights how the media has contributed reification of such simplified understandings. She points to the paradox created by the promotion of "women"s emancipation": those who reject feminist discourse as a Western import (Islamist conservatives) are equally guilty as the secular liberals of embracing heteronormative ideals of marriage, barely fighting for equal education, amongst other things ("Feminism and Islamism", 243). To support such a claim, it seemed as though Abu-Lughod sees the work of Qasim Amin as contributing to the textual archive of Western cultural forms, one that only solidifies such a heteronormative understanding of culture and the family, stemming from colonial hierarchies.

Although I find the general framing of these critiques to be incredibly poignant - including the influence of Said's Orientalism on the feminist canon - what resonated with me most was her comment on the proliferation of a problematic human rights discourse. Despite "good intentions," the fight for universal human rights and the spreading of Western liberalism does ring true, in many cases, to a secular form of missionary work, as Abu-Lughod suggests. I thought this only emphasized the importance of analyzing specific political and historical contexts, and the benefit of a cultural relativist perspective in battling problematic notions of "the other."

She prompted the following question for me, which I hope we can answer in future discussions: what is the role of feminist discourse in facilitating a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between Islam and the West?

Week 4 Readings

What caught my attention for this weeks reading is the generalized idea of Muslim women in the west. Abu Lughod’s talks about the idea of oppression that is observed on Muslim women is a foreign idea. She talks about how the veil is a misunderstanding to the west and is taken as “oppression” rather than seeing it as protection to the woman herself.

I feel like if the authors took more time to know the culture of the Middle East and the Islamic culture they would have observed the opposite of oppression and “barrier” for Muslim women because they need to realize that the American way of living is not suitable for everyone else in the world. If the authors got deeper into Middle Eastern culture, they would have understood the importance of the veil to women and if they took time to talk to women about the veil they would have proven there theories wrong.

Week 4 Response

Although it took me a while to settle into Mohanty's essay, I eventually came to enjoy it very much. I was thinking about Said's "Orientalism" the entire time I was reading, even though she did not mention him until the very end. The comparison of Western women as "us" and the third-world women as "others" offered a fresh perspective on Orientalism, in contrast to the male-dominated examples we have been used to seeing. It was interesting to consider that even Western women, who have been deemed oppressed throughout history as well, can reposition themselves in positions of power by assuming knowledge over third-world women. I don't think Western women are necessarily on an agenda to gain power over third-world women; they are simply trying to uncover inequalities. However, they may be unintentionally causing more harm than good when they stereotype excessively.

I think the quote that best summarizes Mohanty's argument is that categorizing all third-world women as one group "assumes an ahistorical, universal unity among women based on a generalized notion of their subordination" (72). The most important word that I picked out here was "ahistorical" because it precisely reflects Said's views that Orientalism perceives the Orient as an unchanging, romantic, and backwards place. Mohanty also claims, in this way, that Western feminist discourse traps third-world women in this static environment as well.

This quote also ties in perfectly to the second reading for Monday, in which Abu-Lughod urges us to reconsider how we view the Middle East. We cannot view it as a backwards and unchanging place, nor can we assume complete "cultural relativism" and accept it for what it is (786). We must always consider that the way that the West interacted with the Middle East had a big influence on how it exists today. We cannot simply blame the Taliban's (or al-Qaeda's or Saddam Hussein's) oppressiveness on Islam; we must understand that the West, at one point, encouraged these people and brought them into power.

Therefore, when we go into the Middle East with the mindset that we are saving people "from something," we have to acknowledge that we cannot save them from Islam (788). Instead, we should be saving them from oppressive regimes (their "Muslim-ness" as a coincidence, not a defining factor) that we may have had some part in creating. As soon as we recognize this difference, we will be able to put our resources into real forms of aid, like education and healthcare, and not into the war on Islam.

Week 4 Readings

In "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses," Chandra Mohanty extensively discusses the relationship between western women and third-world women, and I found this new perspective to be very interesting. We've spent a lot of time and read several excerpts that discuss the relationship between colonial men and women or western men with colonial women, but I feel that Mohanty's discussion is more valuable in some ways because it allows us to isolate and examine only the cultural differences by making gender differences irrelevant. I was very interested in the metaphor Mohanty used when she wrote that western women see third world women as "the lesser production of 'raw materials' in contrast to the 'real' productive activity of the first world." While this stark comparison may have been harshly worded, I felt that it appropriately summarized the argument Mohanty was setting out to prove.

That said, I found Mohanty's writing to be dense and difficult to unpack. I much preferred the Lila Abu-Loghud readings for Wednesday. Like Mohanty, Abu-Lughod addressed a perspective we hadn't yet discussed in this class, and I'd been itching to read about the Muslim woman's justification of the hijab because certainly, some do cover themselves by choice. I was glad to finally read the eastern woman's perspective on western feminism, and I felt that her argument was clear and well-supported. Firstly, Abu-Loghud argues against the idea that all Muslim women are oppressed and forced to wear the hijab. She writes that many cover themselves because of a sense of modesty; the culture in the East is simply different. She writes "Why would [women] suddenly throw off the markers of their respectability, markers, whether burqas or other forms of cover, which were supposed to assure their protection in the public sphere from the harassment of strange men by symbolically signaling to all that they were still in the inviolable space of their homes, even though moving the public realm?" (Abu-Lughod, 785). Thus, Abu-Lughod redefines the hijab as a symbol of status rather than of oppression. I also appreciated that Abu-Lughod took on the conversation of "salvation" when she wrote that "when you save someone, you are implying that you are saving her from something," (Abu Lughod, 788), and I thought it was important to identify this rhetoric as discourse of the "superior."

Week 4 Response

Mohanty's article reflected several of the issues we've discussed and read about already but this time she applied it to feminism. Because feminist writings often advocate for equality and justice, it is easy to forget that the same risks of overgeneralization and knowledge production can greatly affect our perception. Just as Orientalists did with claiming to be the authority on colonized populations, these writings often come from someone claiming authority and yet constructing an "Other" - often with the result that the western woman is the desirable model, the "norm," while women in "third-world" countries are backwards and in many ways inferior (even the wording Mohanty uses is quite similar to Said).

As both Mohanty and Abu Lughod demonstrate, this claiming of authority and overgeneralization (e.g. referring to all women in a country as a singular group, despite social status, religion, etc.) can lead to a gross simplification of the issues at hand. Although it is appropriate to explore trends and try to find ways of improving the lives of the oppressed, Western definitions of oppression may differ drastically from standards in other cultures - such as the wearing of hijab as a personal statement of religious beliefs, not just patriarchal standards. I agree with both of these scholars that, although justice is a thing to be desired, any broad claims need to be very carefully examined and one needs to account for cultural differences (within the culture being studied as well as between the writer and her subject) before reaching any conclusions.

Week 4

I thought it was most interesting when Monhanty explains that the status marked on an action, role, or position does not translate easily across cultures.Her use of the housewife ideology, probably the easiest status/action difference for Westerners to grasp because it is so prevalent in South/Central America, Europe and the Middle East.However, I wish Monhanty had extended her explanation by describing how transnationalism has affected binary construction and monolithic perspectives. For example, underground female genital mutation still occurs in the United States and there are wide populations of immigrant women who support female genital circumcision in the West. Many of these women have actually voiced themselves in scholarly articles. So I think its key, as scholars, to know that one does not have to travel to these countries to hear the silenced alternative perspectives to hegemonic discourses and that literature on the subject has changed, I’d argue significantly, from the 1980s. So these alternative perspectives are very much apart of “our” country, but are still suppressed voices from within borders.

From Mohanty’s article, it is clear that the binary/dichotomy, as analytical tools, are created and perpetuated, by the West to further justify the Western “superiority”. Abu-Lughod extend this analysis by framing it in a non-Western context and saying not only is it wrong for the US to simplify a history but it is dangerous because those people in the Middle East who object to the injustices they may face now, are forced to choose within the binary (for/against) context construction. So the binary construction is not only affecting Western interpretations, but as Abu-Lughod points out, they are also affecting internal interpretations.

Finally, Abu-Lughod’s analysis reminds us of how we may interact unknowingly or in ignorance, to repeating histories. For example, Women in Black, the women’s peace group of Israel, and RAWA (the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan), perhaps, are non-profit organizations/efforts that may function the same way that Napoleon’s team of scientists functioned. For this reason, Abu-Lughod warns, “we need to look closely at what we are supporting, and what we are not, and to think carefully about why” (p. 787). This framing makes us, readers, participants in the creation of this “saving Muslim” discourse.