{"id":34,"date":"2018-07-22T05:15:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-22T05:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/socp10.epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/?post_type=chapter&p=34"},"modified":"2018-12-28T10:00:56","modified_gmt":"2018-12-28T10:00:56","slug":"transnational-feminism","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/socp10\/chapter\/transnational-feminism\/","title":{"rendered":"Transnational Feminism"},"content":{"raw":"
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\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nIntroduction<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

Transnational feminism is a sub-field within academic feminism, spontaneously connected to current global economic, political, social, cultural and other meaning-making processes. Theoretically, it is sometimes associated with the third wave of feminism in the United States; the third wave is supposed to be informed by pluralistic, postcolonial, postmodern thinking. It is explained and endorsed by trans-migrant anti-racist anti-capitalist anti-colonial feminist scholars such as Chandra Mohanty, Elora Chowdhury, Ella Shohat, Inderpal Grewal, Leelafernandes , Manisha Desai , MinooMoallem, Richa Nagar, Amanda Swarr, and Uma Narayan, to name a few. As you know, globalization transforms economies and cultures, as well as identities and academic fields. New interdisciplinary fields emerge to capture the complexities of a more connected, yet more constrained world where borders are simultaneously porous and tight; there is a rise in the importance of nation states and nationalism simultaneously as the category of nation itself loses some of its relevance and legitimacy. Gender as a category becomes more fluid yet continues to be policed by the state and society. Gender relations change, in response to changing socio-economic formations and norms. You might have seen some of these contradictions inflamed by globalization whereby feminist movements for women\u2019s and LGBTQ rights, and against violence in India are sometimes written off as \u201cwestern\u201d ideas\u2014especially in the face of global media attention\u2014 by the very same people who revere other western ideas of democracy and militarization. These contradictions and confusions also manifest in the way we treat our so-called terrorists and national icons, understand our tradition, and \u201cIndian culture (is there one, just one?),\u201d and comment on our celebrities, politicians, and activists. Transnational feminist theories can help us grapple with these contradictions and complexities.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Transnational Feminism a branch of feminist theory and can also be understood as research methodology. As theory, it represents\u2014as most feminist theories do\u2014a highly diverse body of thought that originated to defend the rights of women and expanded to include movements and practices worldwide that aspire to social justice, i.e. protection of fundamental rights and interests of the weak, the marginalized, and the exploited. Feminist theory is political, and transnational feminist theory embodies the politics of critiquing and opposing androcentric, misogynist, racist, heternormative,\u00a0classist, ableist, and various other exclusionary and exploitative social systems and structures all over the world. What does it mean to create such a critique in a transnational context?<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

To answer this question, let us see if we can separate the terms transnational and global. The latter suggests an adjective for something \u201cof the globe;\u201d \u201cspread across the globe,\u201d or extended, understood, and experienced globally. What things and processes come to mind? For many of my students, the answer would be the Internet, or the Occupy Movement and other similar anti-capitalist movements for economic justice; some would suggest the ease of travel globally, global news, experiencing \u201cother\u201d cultures. Let us stop and think about the implications of these associations. What does global mean to you?<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Transnational on the other hand, signifies something \u201cwithin,\u201d \u201cbetween,\u201d or \u201cacross\u201d nations. That is the significance of the world \u201ctrans,\u201d something that crosses borders and boundaries. So, what then, comes to mind? Colonization? Immigration? Transnational corporations? All of the above processes and their effects are studied by transnational feminists. Within U.S. academia, Transnational feminism remains a way of <\/span>studying<\/em><\/strong> transnational organizing against global capitalism, understanding issues of immigration (to the U.S.), political economies and women\u2019s histories around the world (as compared to the U.S.). It also signifies a way of researching, and that is where our discussion of transnational feminism as research methodology comes in. To understand how transnational feminism claims or chooses to correct methodological and epistemological errors and injustices of the past, let us trace the history and development of the idea.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Section 1: History, Development, and Some Major Theoreticians<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

An anthology titled <\/span>Scattered Hegemonies<\/em><\/strong> published in 1994 marked the beginning of recognition within mainstream U.S. academic feminism of a transnational feminist project. The editors, Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan, stated: \u201cThis project stems from our work on theories of travel and the intersections of feminist, colonial and postcolonial discourses, modernism and postmodern hybridity\u201d (Grewal and Kaplan 1994, 1). This work and others that followed arguably signify an epistemological break\u2014 possibly a conceptual vacuum created at spaces of critical engagement of feminisms of color with mainstream U.S. feminisms\u2014 that necessitated the notion of transnational feminism (Kaplan et al 1999, Shohat 2001, Chowdhury 2009, Mohanty 2003, Moghadam 2005, Feree & Tripp 2006, Swarr& Nagar 2010). This break was also from problematic notions of \u201cinternational\u201d or \u201cmulticultural\u201d or \u201cglobal\u201d feminisms that had, at various points in time gained currency within the field\u00a0<\/span>of academic feminism. These \u201cbreaks\u201d in academic feminism are connected to two other \u201cturns\u201d that happened earlier in feminist theory, following or simultaneous with other fields of study: \u201cthe postmodern turn\u201d and the \u201cpostcolonial turn.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

The connections between the postcolonial and transnational turns in feminist thought are not difficult to trace. Chandra Mohanty\u2019s 1988 article \u201cUnder Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses\u201d is considered a key text in transnational and postcolonial feminisms. In this article Mohanty avers that any discussion of third world women\/feminism must embrace two projects: one of dismantling hegemonic \u201cwestern\u201d feminism, the other of formulating autonomous feminist concerns and strategies that are geographically, historically and culturally grounded. This article is not about transnational feminism, it is about decolonizing western hegemonic academic feminism that constructs the image of the \u201cThird World Woman\u201d as a victim who needs to be saved, as a negative frame of reference within the discourse of development.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Decades have passed after the publication of the article, and this is an an era of robust expansion of transnational feminism within the same U.S. academe that imposed na\u00efve solidarity and homogeneity on all \u201cwomen\u201d and fetishized difference. Transnational feminism is taught and researched often in the way of studying the \u201cother\u201d and gaining global perspectives on gender. Mohanty\u2019s article still remains a foundational caveat about what not to do while representing and researching \u201cthird world\u201d identities.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

In the same year as Mohanty\u2019s article, publication of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak\u2019s \u201cCan the Subaltern Speak (1988)?\u201d marked a new milestone in developing an understanding of the (post) colonial subject and subjectivity. Spivak suggests that the subaltern cannot speak, her speech made impossible by the layers of hegemonic meaning imposed upon her, and in her later works she also suggests that the subaltern might speak and has spoken through postcolonial decipherment of their silences and in various ways that they break their own complicity in being muted (Spivak 1988, 1999). Spivak\u2019s works are crucial in understanding the location and implications of the \u201ctransnational,\u201d in terms of organization, exchange and representation of bodies that labor, and bodies of literature. She repeatedly cautions against that moment when speech-giving and consciousness-raising projects of recognition and identification, of third world women and others, become one with or indistinguishable from imperial subject-creation. Thus, these two 1988 articles, not about transnational feminism but essential to them, could be considered conceptual litmus tests to see whether current transnationalization of feminist knowledge reproduces epistemological structures of imperialism. Some questions to ask at this point\u00a0<\/span>would be: how is the \u201cthird world\u201d being represented? By whom? Who has the power and authority to speak and represent and write? Who doesn\u2019t?<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

\u201cPostcolonial\u201d suggests the formal end of colonial rule beginning in 1940s around the world and a persistence of neo-colonial regimes: established by corporate capitalism, globalization, cultural imperialism, conditional humanitarianism and aid, military intervention and revivalist nationalisms. In presence of these many forms of dependencies and dominations the \u201cpost\u201d in postcolonial has been problematized by many scholars and scholarship. It has been argued that this conceptualization is linear and dually oppositional, seemingly signifying \u201cclean breaks\u201d between colonial and postcolonial (McClintock 1995, Spivak 1999, Frankenberg and Mani 2006).<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Productively acknowledging this problem has allowed feminist theorists to move forward and understand the relationship between \u201cfeminist scholarship and colonial discourses,\u201d issues of representation, subjecthood, and subjectivity formation. Colonialism hegemonizes and homogenizes; feminist and other critical theories unpack and de-center the subject (of enquiry and of ideologies, the actor, and the field) and investigate the production of knowledge. However, there is an understanding that certain kinds of feminisms inadvertently, well-meaningly or even consciously further the colonial project of \u201cothering,\u201d \u201cspeaking for,\u201d or Orientalizing (Said 1978, Spivak 1988, 1999, Mohanty 1988). Such feminism often becomes hegemonic, taking upon itself the task of distorting oppression as well as opposition. Such feminisms have been labeled \u201cglobal\u201d or \u201cinternational\u201d feminism that assume a universal model of western women\u2019s liberation and an ahistorical, homogenizing universal model of third world women\u2019s oppression (Grewal and Kaplan 1994, Spivak 2006, Chowdhury 2009). Mohanty (1988, 81) states:<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

...A comparison between Western feminist self-presentation and Western feminist re-presentation of women in the third world yields significant results. Universal images of \"the third world woman\" (the veiled woman, chaste virgin, etc.), images constructed from adding the \"third world difference\" to \"sexual difference\" are predicated upon (and hence obviously bring into sharper focus) assumptions about Western women as secular, liberated, and having control over their own lives. \u2026\u2026Without the\u00a0<\/span>overdetermined discourse that creates the third world, there would be no (singular and privileged) first world. Without the \"third world woman,\" the particular self-presentation of Western women mentioned above would be problematical. I am suggesting then that the one enables and sustains the other.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

This problem of representation was not simply of the west representing or culturally \u201cconsuming\u201d the east. There emerged issues of hybridity, and un-intelligibility of coherent political, sexual, and epistemological citizenships and subjectivities. Arbitrarily drawn borders, migrating bodies, and peripheral\/marginal positionalities brought to question the coherence of the subject of politics and knowledge. Hybridity and \u201cborderlands\u201d are notions and states of being that can subvert colonialisms and hegemonies, they can resituate and reconstitute identities, resistances and productive ambivalence (Anzaldua 1987, Bhabha 1994). A theorization of in-between spaces and in-between identities forms an indispensable part of postcolonial and transnational feminisms. Identities are composite and shifting, situated and mobile, and therefore always contingent, always in crisis. De-colonizing\/anti-colonial practices such as those claimed by transnational feminisms are always addressing this problem of representing complex, fragmented, hybrid identities as coherent, monolithic and homogeneous. This is where the notion of postmodernity intersects with postcolonial and transnational feminisms.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Postmodernity in feminism represents deconstructive social criticisms aimed at the kind of monolithic modernity that, instead of generating agency and emancipatory politics, demands allegiance. Examples of such monolithic thinking could be nationalist ideologies, or say, in sociology, thinking everything through the Marxist lens of historical materialism. For feminists, such monolithic thinking is decidedly masculinist because it fails to include and integrate <\/span>the woman<\/em><\/strong> as a legitimate subject and creator of knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

The discourse of postmodernism also intersects with transnational feminism to de-emphasize dominant identity-based studies. Instead the emphasis is on \u201copening up\u201d the field of feminist studies for identifying, exploring and theorizing about multiple identities, scattered hegemonies and unprecedented intersectionalities that a deepening global capitalism produces (Grewal and Kaplan 1994, Spivak 1999). Think about women from many developing nations including India traveling to wealthy countries such as those located in the Middle East to be employed as domestic workers, nurses, and nannies. Many women from Asian and Eastern European nations are trafficked as sex slaves and sex workers. The \u201cRussian brides\u201d phenomenon where women travel to the U.S. and UK from the erstwhile Soviet Union to marry men who often insist that feminism has ruined women for domesticity in their own countries is sometimes understood as yet another form of trafficking. The complex identities and experiences of these migrant women can be understood from a perspective of intersectionality: how their race\/ethnicity, gender, class, location, dress size, and other qualifications intersect to create\u00a0<\/span>conditions whereby they can be objectified and exploited in a global economy. This is not to say that all of these immigrants exercise no choice in where they go and what they do. They often go of their own volition, when economic opportunities are lacking in their local economy, and their families are experiencing poverty. It is hard to imagine women preferring to take care of other people\u2019s children while being separated from their own. It is hard to imagine women taking risks to \u201cmarry\u201d a man several thousand miles away who will have absolute economic and social power over the immigrant non-citizen bride\u2014likely poor and ignorant of the customs and dominant language of her destination country. She will do this for the sake of a future that she doesn\u2019t see in her home country\u2014 and she will risk being abused and alienated in the hands of strangers ranging from the immigrations officials to her future husband who\u2019s paid her passage. The legal term for immigrants in the United States is \u201calien.\u201d You can be a legal or an illegal alien, expressions that fit perfectly what most immigrants experience. Choice, therefore, is a problematic term, often used to cover up experiences of disempowerment and desperation.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Forms of analysis that understand identity as intersectional, unstable, fragmented and historical\/local seems conspicuously postmodern. Transnational feminist analyses display these traits. Grewal and Kaplan (1994, 5) state in their germinal work on transnational feminism that, \u201cour discussion of postmodernity does not seek to justify or defend a pure postmodern practice as utopian theoretical methodology. We argue that postmodernity is an immensely powerful and useful conception that gives us an opportunity to analyze the way that a culture of modernity is produced in diverse locations and how these cultural productions are circulated, distributed, received and even commodified.\u201dTransnational feminist analyses often germinate from standpoints of postmodernity and postcoloniality.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Current transnational feminist literature is rife with discussions of feminist epistemology and methodology. How can we produce knowledge while preserving epistemic justice? How can we research global phenomena while being locally situated? How do we collaborate with knowledge producers who are unlike us? The next section presents a survey of the current trends in transnational feminist thought addressing some of these issues.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Section 2: Transnational Feminist Epistemology and Research Methodology<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

To understand the connection between feminist methodology and feminist epistemology, and whether transnational feminism can be categorized as such, it is important to reiterate that conceptual\u00a0<\/span>insurrection and production of new feminist theory occurred simultaneously within the process of organizing women\u2019s studies as a discipline within academe. Philosophy, sociology, history, and comparative literature are some of the sites where feminist\/women\u2019s studies were being done originally. Transnational feminist theoretical strains too are derived from literary and social theories, sociology and anthropology, as well as political science and philosophy.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Feminist epistemology represents a subset of social epistemology which is the study of the social and political dimensions of knowledge \u2013a field that gained currency with the development of sociology of knowledge. Contemporary feminist epistemology, perhaps as a result of the postmodern turn in feminism, is in the process of becoming <\/span>feminist epistemologies<\/em><\/strong> that represent multiple feminist attempts to \u201creconfigure the borders between epistemology, political philosophy, ethics and other areas of philosophy as we come to see the interrelationships and inseparability of heretofore disparate issues (Alcoff& Potter 1993, 3).\u201d From what was a political mission that aimed to include women in the traditional epistemological project a sophisticated critique of the traditional epistemological project has emerged, a critique that deconstructs and reconfigures scientific knowledge, reason and authority. You have learned about feminist epistemology and standpoint theory earlier\u2014do you consider transnational feminist theory to be a branch of feminist epistemology? Does transnational feminism study how knowledge is produced in addition to producing such knowledge that looks at globalization and late capitalism critically? What do you think?<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Transnational feminism represents a movement towards and desire for ethical, accountable, non-hierarchical transnational feminist scholarship that takes one or more nation as a site of feminist research. Women\u2019s issues, movements, and resistances tied deeply to global and local processes are studied by scholars to understand varieties of gender roles and variance of gender performances. The transnational \u201cgender\u201d question is studied vis-\u00e0-vis neoliberalism and neocolonialism. Collaborative and collective knowledge emerges as central to this epistemology, and researchers\u2019 self-reflexivity also emerges as central to transnational feminist writing. If you are a transnational feminist scholar, you are expected to have a deep understanding of processes of global and local identity-based politics, displacement and immigration, states and civil societies. If you are an ethnographer, you are expected to be ethical and sensitive in your treatment of your subjects, and treat them as collaborators rather than \u201cinformants.\u201d Above all, you are expected to interrogate your desire for ethnographic study.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

The question of the fragmented, scattered subject of transnational feminism remains important, too. Who is this subject? The immigrant? The subaltern? The \u201cthird world\u201d woman? Whoever this\u00a0<\/span>subject is\u2014the woman, or the women, or the men, or the transgender, or the intersex\u2014s\/he\/they must be represented on their own terms; their standpoints need to be valued if not valorized, and the relationship between them and the researcher needs to be made transparent. Many transnational feminist authors are U.S. academics belonging to the diaspora, occupying complicated liminal positions that Gloria Anzalduatitles a mestiza experience. She describes it thus: \u201cThe people who inhabit both realities are forced to live in the interface between the two, forced to become adept at switching modes. Such is the case with ... the <\/span>Mestiza<\/em><\/strong> (Anzaldua 1987, 37).\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Some of you might have experienced this dual consciousness or mestiza experience as you have moved to a different region in India from your place of childhood or growing up. This is an experience common in large diverse multi-ethnic multi religious geo-political spaces that might or might not involve international immigration. This dual consciousness is central to transnational feminist epistemology. It is a source of knowledge and activism. Can you identify with this idea as you engage in the study of sociology, in activism, or as you live your daily life as an engaged and conscientious citizen? Do you sometimes question the meaning of citizenship? If you are an aspiring transnational feminist or postcolonial thinker, the following section will be helpful for you; it discusses some terms widely used in transnational feminist theory.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Section 3: Basic Concepts<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

As you go through this section, try to keep in mind the discussion of postcolonial and postmodern thinking earlier in the chapter<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Third World: <\/strong>\u201cThird World,\u201d a term coined by economist Alfred Sauvy in 1952\u2014later usually applied to nations within the Non-aligned Movement (NAM) and nations that are seen as \u201cdeveloping\u201d\u2014is a term that is often under scrutiny by transnational feminist scholars. What does this term mean, and now that the cold war is over, is it relevant? Who belongs in the Third Word and why? Is Third World a space? An idea? How is this world represented? How is this notion connected to colonialism and capitalism? These are some questions that partly form the core of transnational feminist thought. Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1988) in her legendary article \u201cUnder Western Eyes\u201d avers that any discussion of third world women\/feminism must embrace two projects: one of dismantling hegemonic \u201cwestern\u201d feminism, the other of formulating autonomous feminist concerns and strategies that are geographically, historically and culturally grounded. Yet, with the idea of spatially grounded feminisms she also advances the idea\u00a0<\/span>of transnational feminism that must cross borders, complicating questions of home, nation and community.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

According to transnational feminists, the idea of a \u201cwoman\u201d or a \u201cthird world woman\u201d with its attendant commonality of concerns and constituency can be seen as a colonizing move. How so? \u201cThird World Woman\u201d is a category that homogenizes subjects for the sake of effective management of differences and administration of aid. It creates a relationship of dependency between the so called developing countries and those developed through processes of colonization and institutionalized slave labor. In the U.S., women\u2019s rights are often being encroached by means of restricting their reproductive rights; by paying them lower wages as compared to similarly qualified and experienced men; by sexualizing and objectifying them in the media. Yet, for many people including feminists in theU.S., and other first world countries\u2014the notion of disempowerment and oppression is deeply tied to the image of the \u201cthird world woman.\u201d This image is used to justify war and occupation; the Time magazine\u2019s cover from August 9, 2010 showing the disfigured face of Bibi Aisha with the text \u201cWhat Happens if We Leave Afghanistan,\u201d shows media complicity in what Spivak (1988, 297) has described as \u201cWhite men saving brown women from brown men.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Considering the colonizing implications of the term \u201cthird world,\u201d its dichotomizing tendencies are also brought to question in transnational feminism. The third\/first binary does not allow for nuanced investigation into global problems. This binary constructs third world events as traditional\/cultural, which is just another way to perpetuate \u201cculturally chauvinistic\u201d ethnocentric colonialism. It\u2019s important especially for feminists to understand the general structures that mediate border crossings of iconic, \u201crepresentative\u201d issues. Philosopher Uma Narayan discusses \u201cSati\u201d as a representative issue that stirs global imagination. She studies Mary Daly\u2019s work (<\/span>Gyn\/ecology<\/em><\/strong>) where Daly justifies and draws from Katherine Mayo\u2019s racist work (<\/span>Mother India<\/em><\/strong>) as an instance of western feminist scholarship replicating a colonialist stance. Mayo\u2019s as well as Daly\u2019s work is ahistorical, un-nuanced and totalizing with lack of details that leaves out the political purposes of the debates on Sati in the colonial era\u2014debates involving Hindu nationalists, secular social reformers, women active in the public sphere, and British officials. Practices of Sati\u2014not something that happened everywhere in India\u2014 is tied to the economics and politics of Sati (questions of inheritance, for instance, or who pays for the widow\u2019s expenses) and any feminist scholarship needs to recognize such politics before passing well-meaning albeit erroneous judgments on the evils of \u201creligious traditions\u201d \u201cpatriarchal tyranny\u201d or \u201ctraditional practices.\u201d Religion\u00a0<\/span>and Tradition are terms that need to be unpacked from their anthropological\/colonialist frames to reveal the underlying political\/economic desires.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Sati and dowry murders coalesce in the minds of a Western audience (academic or otherwise) as one and the same thing, invoking a notion of death by \u201cthird world\u201d culture. More recently, we have noticed similar discussions about widespread gender violence in India\u2014 something that became globally visible after the horrific 2012 gang rape of <\/span>Nirbhaya<\/em><\/strong> in New Delhi\u2014being attributed to \u201cIndian culture.\u201d Scholars such as Nayaran and Spivak have questioned the implications of understanding national cultures as homogeneous and innate. Constructions such as \u201cthird world\u201d when tied to specific spaces create historical oblivion and disconnections. The U.S. has widespread homelessness, domestic violence and food\/job insecurity. Yet, it is rarely described as the third world.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Collaboration: <\/strong>Transnational feminist methodology claims to embrace the cause of social justice and social transformation. In doing this, collaboration emerges in the scholarship as choicest methodology of fieldwork. \u201cTheory of collaboration is generated as praxis; that is, what matters in this intellectual and political journey is not just theory-as-product but also the activity of knowledge production, especially as a site for negotiating difference and power (Sangtin Writers2006, 154).\u201d Therefore, collaboration between academics and non-academics, activists and other knowledge workers, scholars from the west and the non-west is encouraged as crucial praxis within transnational feminism. Collaboration is meant to democratize knowledge production, displace Eurocentrism and focus on the experience of subjects as a significant component of feminist scholarship. Research collaboration and collaborative writing practices have evolved within transnational feminism as radically coalitional, collective epistemic praxis that acknowledges and annihilates symbolic violence of systematic, colonial knowledge that served to manage and oppress subjects of knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Collaborative knowledge addresses problems with not just western feminist scholarship, but also sociological and anthropological scholarship. First, there seems to be a need to know about \u201cother\u201d cultures, including cultures physically located elsewhere, diasporic cultures, and cultures of minorities which in the American context could be African Americans, and in the Indian context, Christians and Muslims. Second, there is a tendency to never question or investigate the politics of this need to know the \u201cother.\u201d Sometimes, there is a tendency to not involve moral criticism in this interest. These stem from good intentions of trying to correct historical flaws of ideological domination. Refusals to criticize and evaluate silence critical academic engagements and \u201ccause particular difficulties for valuable\u00a0<\/span>discursive exchanges between mainstream Western feminists and third world feminists (Narayan 1997, 151).\u201d Again, uninformed criticism such as Daly\u2019s can be seen as coming from a position of ethnocentrism and colonization. It is a difficult position and a dilemma that transnational feminism grapples with.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Collaborative knowledge-making, between academics and activists (a dichotomy we discuss in the next section), western and non-western scholars, and between scholars of varied standpoints can be a way to create rigorous, community-oriented, useful knowledge. It must be kept in mind however that any collaboration or coalition is a constant process of negotiation, of identities, or resources, of creativity, of authority. This is a dilemma that transnational feminists deal with for the sake of better, just, and transparent knowledge production.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Academic\/Activist Feminism: <\/strong>While transnational feminist theory is an academic phenomenon, it is also informed by global and local grassroots activism. Activism againstbrutal practices of capitalism, bio-piracy, environmental degradation, racism\/genocide, and other widespread ills provide fodder and feedback to transnational feminist theory. Transnational feminist theory developed in the tradition of many Women\u2019s Studies departments globally\u2014springing from idealism and activism connecting feminist theory and its application. Feminist theorists often position themselves on the activism-academia continuum, and transnational feminists are no exception. They attempt to correct the epistemic injustices of previous and prevalent feminist\/women\u2019s studies as well as other academic fields that use ethnography as a methodology, studying topics such as identity, representation, economic development and women\u2019s empowerment.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Activism is understood as direct action or intervention to address or solve a problem. This idea is central to feminism, which is an ideology of activism\u2014activism aiming at gender equity. Feminist theory in general incorporates interdisciplinarity and conceptual unity; teaches critical analysis; assumes a problem solving stance; clarifies the issue of value judgment and epistemological relativism\/justice in knowledge production; and promotes socially useful ends. Transnational feminist theory represents ideas saturated with politics of possibility, a reactive front to the inevitable forces of corporate capitalism and neocolonial globalization that is oblivious of, or purposely de-valuing and exploiting the natural environment, women\u2019s and minorities\u2019 labor, knowledge, and images. Capitalist forces aimed at generating surplus and sticking to the bottom-line do not care for the study of humanities, protecting human rights or advancing social science research missions unless they reveal secrets of expansion of markets to newer territories. Race, gender, class, nationality, age, sexualities become categories of\u00a0<\/span>consumers\u2014not intersecting axes of citizenship. Transnational feminist theory pushes back against these trends.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

To that end, transnational feminist theory and theorists consider activists to be knowledge-makers, research collaborators, experts, and rightfully so. Feminist epistemology considers knowledge production to be plural, collective, community based. Transnational feminist theory attempts to operationalize this principle\u2014upholding the view that solutions to problems within a come from the community and that social movements create not just social change, but new knowledge and scholarship.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Conclusion (Summary): Transnational Feminism in a Postfeminist Age<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

In our discussion so far, transnational feminism has emerged in different forms: as collaboration, as methodology of fieldwork, as a feminist utopia almost. Many of these forms have been necessitated by feminists interfacing, intellectually and in other ways, with current pace and scale of globalization. Today, feminism is often understood as an idea that has outlived its time and use. This sort of thinking is termed post-feminism. Looking at the world around you, do you think feminism is obsolete? Is the struggle for gender equity and justice over? Has globalization worked for everybody?<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

If your answer to the above questions is yes, then perhaps you object to some forms of feminism, and not the idea of gender equity. Transnational feminist thought objects to some forms of feminisms as well, especially those where western feminists assume \u201csolidarity\u201d with women everywhere and speak on their behalf. This in turn creates hegemony, silencing, and mis-representation.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

If your answer to the above questions is yes, then transnational feminist thought has hopefully provided you with some food for thought on how to negotiate gender relations and maximize justice in a rather unjust world. LeelaFernandes (2013, 190) stated:<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

...transnational feminist scholarship has produced rich theoretical and empirical understandings of a wide range of sociocultural, political, and economic phenomena. However, the significance and growing dominance of this body of knowledge also challenge us to examine both the possibilities and the limits that this lens brings to the way in which we learn and teach about the world. If we take interdisciplinary understandings of the relationship between power and knowledge seriously, the stakes of this examination of transnational feminism are high. What is at stake in this consideration is the way in which our knowledge practices ultimately help make the worlds in which we live.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n

To understand new social movements often organized around such fall outs of pervasive capitalist globalization as environmental degradation, bio-piracy, labor exploitation and cultural imperialism\u2014transnational feminism provides theory as well as hope. Transnational feminism teaches us that \u201c... the local and the global are not defined in terms of physical geography or territory but exist simultaneously and constitute each other (Mohanty 2003, 242).\u201d It does not rule out cross border feminist solidarity either, just asks that such solidarity be closely examined. Solidarity across national, racial, linguistic, religious, class etc. boundaries is possible, and indeed essential to create social movements that can fight against large scale injustice, but this solidarity must be heterogeneous and spontaneous, not one where the dominant group takes over and glosses over multiple perspectives, experiences, and worldviews. Is applied well, this can be a powerful strategy for social movements in spaces of deep diversity\u2014and perhaps push you to wonder whether terms such as \u201cIndian Society,\u201d \u201cThird World,\u201d or \u201cFirst World\u201d can capture the complexities that we deal with on a daily basis in this globalized world.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
you can view video on Transnational Feminism<\/strong><\/td>\r\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>\r\n
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