I came under Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s influence from the first day I read her work, and then had the chance to see her speak at a women of color conference in the 1980s. TFW: Could you talk a little about your academic journey—how you came to be working in the academy, and why you chose the field you went into? the new work on transnational feminist engagements? TFW: What are the current topics you are thinking about? All Content ©2016 The Feminist Wire Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer. Women and Politics in the Third World. Mohanty does observe that “ [c]learly Western feminist discourse and political practice is neither singular nor homogeneous in its goals, interests or analyses” (Mohanty, 1984: 334). TFW: Could you talk about your feminist commitments, and current projects, e.g. Chandra Talpade Mohanty (born in Mumbai India in 1955) is a postcolonial and transnational feminist theorist. In liberal feminist writings there is inadequate self-consciousness about the ability of academia to discourage women’s movements in the Third World (Mohanty, 1988, pp. to create a collective mapping of transnational feminist engagements on the ground since the 1970s/80s.   We are especially interested in how our respondents crafted and reflected on feminist realities on the ground—basically mapping how feminist knowledge production over the last few decades is connected to the place-based lived realities of feminist praxis. Fire on the Mountain, Clear Light of Day and Fasting, Feasting: An Exploration of Indian Motherhood in the Fiction of Anita Desai, Feminist perspective in Anita Desai's Fasting,Feasting and clear Light of day, INDIAN FEMALE IDENTITIES, BETWEEN HINDU PATRIARCHY AND WESTERN MISSIONARY MODELS IN ANITA DESAI'S FASTING, FEASTING AND CLEAR LIGHT OF DAY, The Representation of Women during the time of Partition in Novels of South Asian Women Writers, [Ketu_H._Katrak]_Politics_of_the_Female_Body_.pdf. As mentioned, postcolonial feminism evolved in reaction to the western feminist centring of the white experience, and its focus on white women’s lives, rights and experiences above all else. Postcolonial feminism focuses on individual experiences and struggles instead of looking at ”a universality” (Mohanty 2003:527). TFW: Could you talk a little about your groundbreaking essay, “Under Western Eyes,” that developed a sweeping critique of some of the common errors in the feminist theorizing coming out of the global north that is about women of the global south? And sometimes women of color in the US aren’t as knowledgeable about the neo-colonial world as we should be.  Questions of intersectionality and relationality of structures of power and women’s place based resistance; the complexities of working across race, class, sexuality, and nationality in the context of multiple colonial legacies and imperial adventures of the USA; the centrality of economic issues, poverty, and class in envisioning and enacting gender justice; the significance of identity and community (who are the “we”? Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses Chandra Talpade Mohanty It ought to be of some political significance at least that the term "colonization" has come to denote a variety of phenomena in recent feminist and left writings in general.   Jacqui and I continue to deepen our friendship and work together—I am hoping we can develop and extend some of the arguments in our recent “Cartographies of Knowledge and Power” (2010) into a book length study on transnational feminist theorizing. My experience of the Common Differences conference in 1983 was instructive in that as a woman of color from the Global South, it was really important for me to understand the U.S. landscape of feminism from the epistemological standpoint of U.S. women of color.  So while the politics of class/capitalism and decolonization provided a common locus of engagement, developing an anti-racist standpoint was key in forging solidarities with U.S. women of color.   Similarly, my collaborations—scholarly, pedagogical, and activist, have always been with U.S. women of color with actively anti-nationalist, anti-imperialist feminist commitments.   I guess what I am saying here is that there are abundant opportunities for solidarities between U.S. women of color and women of color from the Global South—but the success of these collaborations and alliances depends on a deep commitment to understanding the differences between our histories and experiences.   And, in the current moment I would say challenges to solidarity lie in the way neoliberal economic and ideological practices normalize so-called post-race/post feminist consumer cultures such that there are significant generational differences between feminists who grew up in the cusp of the decolonization of the “third world”—the 1950s/60s and those who grew up in the 1990s/2000s.  The challenges of solidarity work across borders lies in careful ethical engagement in social justice struggles from all of our different, interconnected locations.  Thus, for instance, two of the contemporary struggles I am engaged in, immigrant rights and undocumented student struggles in the USA, and solidarity work on Palestine (the BDS—boycott, divestments, sanctions—movement) both require U.S. and international women of color (and of course antiracist, anti-imperialist white women and men) working across multiple borders analytically, and strategically.  I believe U.S. and International women of color have much to learn from and contribute together to the analysis of immigrant rights/undocumented struggles (after all this is a struggle about citizenship, rights, and belonging and the transnational traffic in labor).  Similarly, the BDS movement requires connecting questions of Islamophobia, military aid, and imperialism in the USA to questions of settler colonialism, occupation and incarceration in Israel/Palestine.   Given the obvious transnational reach of both these struggles, it is the potential solidarity between U.S. and international women of color that is key to the feminist organizing and educational efforts in both contexts. Bibliography. These, including Bannerji 23 , hooks 24 , Collins 25 , Spivak 26 , Mohanty 27 , Smith 28 , and Feminism and postcolonialism are allies, and the impressive selection of writings brought together in this volume demonstrate how fruitful that alliance can be. Her new book, Feminism without Borders, is a collection of essays that interrogate notions of home, sisterhood, work, scholarship, and first-world feminism.” As an avid reader of feminist theory, it was also evident that the “space” for immigrant, third world women (like myself) in western feminist theory was a truncated one.  Pedagogically, “we” were present in courses on development and political economy, and theoretically, “we” often emerged as a foil to hegemonic white/western feminist subjectivities.    As I began developing the arguments in “Under Western Eyes” I presented them in numerous feminist public venues, encountering disbelief and hostility from many of my senior colleagues at Cornell, and relief and recognition from postcolonial and US women of color.   Given that I was in a precarious academic situation as an ABD, part-time lecturer, folks telling me I “should not dabble in feminist theory” had a powerful impact.   Quite honestly, looking back, the experience of writing “Under Western Eyes” is key to the development of my understanding of the racialized politics of knowledge and of institutional power in U.S. feminist academic communities.   This experience clarified my “outsider” status, simultaneously solidifying my commitment to anti-racist, materialist, anti-imperialist feminist theorizing.   If powerful people were telling me to back off, I was of course going to plunge straight in!

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