While we have talked about the blurry lines between postcolonial, transnational, Third World Feminisms, there are some differences that are important to understand. Below is a link that clarifies Transnational Feminisms. There are some great links to theorists and organizations that practice this feminisms theories.
Transnational Feminisms
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3 comments:
"Transnational feminism marks an active refusal to involve feminist discourse in the construction of a universal notion of patriarchy against which a global sisterhood could emerge, as well as a refusal to speak for or to offer solutions for women of the Global South."
Yet it seems that "commitment to activism" or "borderless feminism" very much implies that solutions are being sought.
I'm a little confused as to how an transnational feminism is primarily defined as an "academic tradition," yet a a critique of academic feminism, and foremost formed through "affinity groups" (operating outside of statist and capitalistic institutions-- which I assume includes the Academy).
I'm also not sure how the attempted "shifting of borders" erases them. I am not comfortable with the equation of "transnational" and borderless... for part of the importance of these disciplines, I though I understood, is the common understanding of the import of a multiplicity of experiences. Moreso a common understanding of individual stories of difference, experience, struggle, and success; and NOT the synthesis of a singular Other through erasure. Rather than erasure, where's the challenge, critique and understanding what, why, and how these borders are-- which can then lead to their restructuring?
I may have this all wrong, but for some reason the more times over I read this article, the more confused I become. I thought it would make better sense when I came back to it in the morning, but this is not the case.
Jessica
This selection is taken from Robert JC Young's "Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, imagined and real" which was "written for 'Dispersed Trajectories: Feminism, Postcolonialism, and the Way Ahead', a conference held in Oxford 19 June 2006, in honour of Rajeswari Sunder Rajan."
It can be found, in full, at http://robertjcyoung.com/nypoco.html
This passage helped me clarify the relationship of transnational feminism and postcolonialism:
"It was Raji who made me see the central importanc of feminism to postcolonialism, that in some sense the values of postcolonialism really are those of a transnational feminism. That's why it is in many ways, as Guyatri Spivak's work also demonstrates very importantly, it it feminism that has really kept pushing postcolonialism, transforming it beyond its initioal theoretical moment of 'colonial discourse analysis', turining it into a theoretical and political practice in which the interests of women, certain sorts od subaltern women in particular, come first. This makes sense of why it tends to be noticeably only certain white men of the left who attack postcolonialism. What they don't like about it is that in many ways the postcolonial is a women's discourse, for women, about women, and above all that it prioritises women and their concerns. Raji also pushed me towards seeing that the postcolonial is indeed that, that is, that it is the post-colonial, shifting the emphasis from colonialism to post-colonialism, from the experience of the past towards contemporary issues of gender and development. That it is really about the struggles that continue after the moment of decolonization, among those, women again, for whome the capture of the state apparatus did not bring about a dramatic transformation od the quality of their lives. Raji has always made it clear that postcolonialism is about real rather than imagined women, women who make the impossible demand for difference and equality, and that what postcolonialism seeks above all is real andsubstantial justice, justice for ordinary people in the everyday world."
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