Postcolonial Feminist Criticism

This paper mainly seeks to explore the dynamic relation between post-colonialism and

feminism. It will approach to both of them as fields in which there is not only a production of

intellectual knowledge but also critical positioning toward the hegemonic structure. By

considering both fields as products based on a historical line, this paper aims to discover the

ground on which they came side by side. Another aim of this study will be to recognize the

features of the ground which is characterized by several critics and contributions.

Within the context of this paper, of course there will be references to colonialism, which

ensured the emergence of post-colonialism as a result of historical changes and discussions

realized especially within the academic field, and to feminism as a field in which the activism,

the politics and the knowledge concerning the women emancipation are produced.

Nevertheless, it is quite evident that this paper does not have the capacity to deal with the

whole historical background of feminist and postcolonial studies, but rather it mostly focuses

on the intersectionality between them by tracing important rupture moments.

Postcolonial studies is mostly a critical theory but at the same time it is a debate

concerning the identity politics surrounded with questions such as: “Who speaks?”, “Who

speak for whom?”, “What is being said?” and maybe the most important one “Whose voices

are heard?” These questions occur as an evident result of the representation problem that not

only the process of colonization but also that of the decolonization includes. In this context

the debate of representation will occupy an important point in the way of relating feminism

with postcolonial studies.

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 The Naming Activity and the Epistemological Approach

Before thinking about the postcolonial feminism as a production of the coming together

of the field of post-colonialism and feminism, it will be useful to think them as separate terms

occurred as the result of a naming activity. Micheal Foucault says: “… [I]t is by nomination

that representations are enabled to enter as figures into a proposition. It is therefore also

through nomination that discourse is articulated upon knowledge. (Foucault, 1994: 116).

Thus while one says feminist or postcolonial, there is a reference to a discourse.

What do we refer with using these two terms? Which kind of subjectification process

the actors enter within the content of a discourse? This kind of questions are quite important

within the extent of the issue because of the fact that using these terms by actors cause a set of

changes in the theory. It is evident that feminism and post-colonialism are both fields in

which a set of debates is realized in a critical approach. The subjects that these fields refer as

feminist and post-colonial are also important as much as the field. It is obvious that they are

not only the adjectives adhered to some person, but the same time they involve entire senses,

discussions, attributions, critics, and also the position-taking while we think about the process

of academic knowledge.

Feminist and postcolonial as terms not only refer to an entire debate coming from their

historicity but also refer the subject’s current situation within a theoretical field. At this point,

it is convenient to make reference to Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of fields, because both fields

are places in which not only a set of politics but also academic knowledge is produced. In

order to grasp the theory of field better, firstly it is important to see Bourdieu’s purpose in the

usage of the concept of habitus as a base of field. Bourdieu defines habitus as a “…system of

durable, transposable dispositions, structures predisposed to function as structuring

structures.” (Bourdieu 1977:72). In this sense, habitus is a way in order to organize the world

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depending to the social atmosphere and status. Bourdieu claims that habitus occurs as the

result of past practices and determines the practice of future. It presents certain schemes of

action to individuals according to theirs position in the social and cultural field. These

schemes are embodied within various fields such as linguistic, intellectual and cultural.

According to Bourdieu, it is the field which determines the structure in which the

habitus functions. Bourdieu mentions that there is an “intellectual field” as matrix of

institutions, markets and organizations in which the symbolic producers such as writers,

artists, and academicians compete for the symbolic capital (Swartz 2011:167-168). If we

conceptualize the intellectual field over the academic activity as the production of knowledge,

we may say that there is a sort of theoretical investment surrounded with academic habitus

which proposes schemes of acting and thinking. From this point of view, both feminism and

post-colonial studies should be thought as theoretical and intellectual fields in which a set of

habitus functions. Besides, feminist and postcolonial fields should be thought as the producers

of a set of symbolic capital.

Suki Ali mentions that in feminist and post-colonial studies the subject of knowledge is

quite important, as we mentioned above, as the actors in the process of subjectification. Ali

argues that the importance of the subject of knowledge mainly stems from two main

problematics: on one hand there is “the emergence of a named field of study and a linked

series of theoretical debates that help construct and contest it” and on the other hand there is

“the changing object of study” around the subject of knowledge. Ali says “Subjects reference

not only the fields of enquiries themselves, but the individuals and groups who are constituted

by and resist such knowledge practices” (Ali 2007: 193). Thus both feminist and postcolonial

theory should be thought over the subjects of knowledge who take positions within them,

criticize and shape them, and resist to the given habitus of field as well.

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 A glance to Feminism

Feminism is a field of study mainly emerging from political activism. The knowledge

that feminism accumulates inherits many examples of struggle such as the movement for

equal citizenship, vote, and abortion. The circumstance that made the women’s struggle a

feminist theory is mainly the production and accumulation of knowledge of Western women.

However, of course, there is no reason to think that there was no struggle of women in the

places beyond the West. The being center stage of Western feminism should be approached as

result of the relation between hegemony and power-knowledge structure.

As a starting point, it is generally considered that the feminist theory was concerning

with mainly the western privileged middle class women until it began to be shaped by

interventions of women coming from different life experiences. Especially the interventions

of the women of color and the women from decolonized countries caused the change of

content in feminism and that they caused the extension of the object of study as well. By

referring to the famous motto of “the personal is political”, it might be suggested that these

women brought several different political aspects depending on their experience. While white

western women were defining their experience in their own terms, the women- coming from

different womanhood experiences depending on their class, race, and ethnicity- put their own

life experience to the existed terminology and began to make rooms for themselves within the

historiography that until then seemed as homogenous. However it should be noted that the

extension of the object of study was not realized easily. Suki Ali claims that: “…the writings

of women of color who may or may not have been calling themselves feminist, but are part of

(gendered) emancipatory or liberatory strategies are erased entirely or reduced to the role of

critiquing the central emergent field.” (2007:194). Thus it might be said that the becoming

visible of non-western and non-white women’s voices does not only correspond to struggles

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of taking part but also correspond to a rupture within both the feminist practice and theory

which became more or less a hegemonic discourse. Hence, this is an onset to change the

habitus of the field by the new participants who dared to alter the existing order by offering

new forms of symbolic capital (Swartz 2011: 315).

The Debate around the Postcolonial Feminism

Even if we said that it was an important moment when the voices apart from the white

western woman began to be heard, it was not enough to solve the problem arising from the

hegemonic position of the Western knowledge. There had to be a set of ruptures in order to

cover a ground. Laetitia Dechaufour mentions that two major ruptures came especially with

postcolonial feminism: the first was to deconstruct the figure of "the woman of the third

world" as it existed in the dominant feminist theory and the second to put the question of who

speaks for whom (Laetitia Dechaufour 2008: 105). These two points correspond to significant

cornerstones of the debate over the relation between feminism and postcolonial studies.

There is an important emphasis concerning the situation of the Third World women

especially within the content of postcolonial feminism. This is based on the affirmation that

the Third World woman is exposed to a double colonization due to both her gender and

ethnic/race situation. Thus, it might be said that there are two problematized aspects: on one

hand the Western hegemony and on the other hand a gender blindness regarding non-Western

women within academic fields including the postcolonial studies as well as the Western

feminist discourse.

Chandra Mohanty makes an important contribution to the debate concerning western

feminism and the situation of non-western woman with her article titled “Under Western

Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses”. She claims that “the Western feminist

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writing 'discursively colonize[s] the material and historical heterogeneities of the lives of

women in the third world, thereby producing/re-presenting a composite, singular "third world

woman"-an image which appears arbitrarily constructed, but nevertheless carries with it the

authorizing signature of Western humanist discourse' (Mohanty 1991: 334-335). Thus, she

argues that the colonialist discourse continues with the regard of the Western feminism vis a

vis the third world woman. She notices a tendency of presenting and coding the third world

women as the absolute victims of male domination and traditional cultural practices. In this

case, Western feminism functions as a norm concerning the judgment of the Third World.

Edward Said (1979) argues that while the West interacts with the Orient, a process of

recognition and creation of a discourse around the representation of the Orient occurs. The

West occupies the determinative position in relation to the Orient and the representation of the

Orient by the West works as a confirmation of the exceptional existence of the West.

According to Said there exists a dichotomy underlying the western rationality according to

which the subject needs to define the other in order to constitute its selfness. To some extent

this is an activity of reduction targeting the other. By naming the Orient as other, the West at

the same time constructs its self. This process causes a power relation between the defined

and the definer. Said mentions that the orient is not only marked as a space but also as a

knowledge. This is an example of Foucault’s concept of power-knowledge at work. This

situation is a reflection of power-knowledge which tries to determine those pertaining to be

rational and irrational, developed and undeveloped, reasonable and emotional etc. Within

Orientalism the West is subject, definer and knowing whereas the Orient is an object, defined

and known. The West becomes competent in face of the passive Orient. Orientalism makes

the West speak on behalf of the Orient.

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 The discourses that the West constructed toward the Orient continues in some way in

Western feminism as Mohanty argues. The hegemonic structure of Western feminism pushes

the Third World women to an atemporality by putting them to a permanent victim position, a

homogeneous and monolithic category, by overlooking the ways of producing their

subjectivities. The main criticism of Mohanty is concerned with the archetypical victimization

of Third World women as the victims of male control. Even if the assumption that these

women are generally sufferers of the male domination is true, Mohanty defines the problem as

putting the Third World woman into a frozen category without any reference to their

subjectivities. Thus, it might be argued that Western feminism puts the Third World women

into silence like the West did toward the Orient. Likewise the West provides its selfness by

creating the Orient as the other, Western feminism also confirms its exceptional existence by

creating representations of Third World women around a type of otherness.

The position of Western feminist women corresponds to a complicated one because of

the fact that she is dominated in relation to western man, but at the same time she has a master

identity vis a vis the Third World. Hence, Western women are at the same time in both the

dominant and oppressed sides. Due to this complication, the attitude of Western feminism vis

a vis non-Western women involves a problematic aspect. Even if there is an intention to make

a connection on the base of sisterhood within Western feminism, Mohanty argues that the

master identity surrounding with Western logocentrism does not stop following Western

women. Mohanty claims: “Western feminist writing on women in the Third world must be

considered in the context of the global hegemony of Western scholarship, the production,

publication, distribution and consumption of information and ideas.” (1991:336). Thus, the act

of the production of knowledge by Western feminist writers always hang by the thread to turn

out to a “colonialist move” as a part of Western imperialism. In such a situation, "Western

feminists alone become the true 'subjects' of this counterhistory. Third World women, on the

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other hand, never rise above the debilitating generality of their 'object' status." (1991: 351).

The Third World woman becomes a category of analysis due to the being trapped under her

object status.

Mohanty’s critical position toward the Western feminist writings brings us directly to

think about the question of representation. If we assume that there is a mispresentation of

Third World women by Western women similar with Edward Said’s argument concerning the

mispresentation of the Orient by the West, then we are faced with questions such as: “What

could be the true presentation of non-Western women?” and if the representation created by

Western women is not an adequate one “Who have the capacity of represent non-Western

women?” Let’s give the most plausible and convenient answer to this question: The

representative person should be the “native” woman as the only possible source of the lived

experience. Nevertheless, such an answer is also not quite adequate to solve the problem as

was the fake transparency within the voice of Western women.

There is the necessity to look the particularities of Third World women in order to cover

a distance on the representation problem. There are two significant components of Third

World women: the gender issue and the race/ethnicity issue which combine with each other

and make a more complicated the situation. On one hand, the gender issue seems the most

important aspect when talking about the situation of being woman under a specific gender

structure. On the other hand, the race/ethnicity issue becomes quite important while we think

about the situation of these women in relation to the colonized or ex-colonized society in

which she lives. Thus it could be said that both gender and race ethnicity affect and

sometimes determine the position of women within the hegemonic structure, therefore her

experience of womanhood is shaped in relation to both of them. Mohanty’s criticism

orientates us to think that Third World women is inserted to an atemporality as being woman

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-gender- due to her race/ethnicity situation vis a vis the West and Western feminism. Hence,

the approaching to Third World women involves a hierarchal consideration between these two

components. Besides, the experiences of Third World women stay behind the eyes which are

mainly focused on the determination of the gender situation vis a vis the racial/ethnical

situation.

Sara Suleri befittingly asks in her article “Woman Skin Deep: Feminism and the

Postcolonial Condition”: “Which comes first, gender or race?” (Suleri 1995: 273). This is a

quite important question that we should face with. If there is a hierarchal consideration

between gender and race/ethnicity or, with the most convenient expression, if these two

components create different influence areas over women: which one should be firstly

considered to better understand the lived experience? If Western feminists become the true

subjects and Third World woman sticks with the object status, then how can the Third World

woman construct her own subjectivity within the equation of race and gender vis a vis the

West?

The Third World women’s subject status as Mohanty consequently orients us, is

inevitably based on a subjectification process vis a vis the other “subjects”. If we accept that

there is the necessity of speaking of subjects on behalf of their subjectivities, it corresponds to

the ethnic voice of womanhood which contains both components at the same time. Besides it

will be the amalgamation of two kinds of engagement: the feminist and the postcolonial.

Thus, it may be argued that the combination of these two terms struggles with two strata of

hegemony at the same time which interpenetrate each other: the hegemonic Western feminist

discourse and the invisible Orientalism within academic production of knowledge named as

the latent Orientalism by Edward Said.

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 Suleri argues that the problem still could not easily be solved even if the necessity is

revealed as the ethnic voice of womanhood and the existence of postcolonial feminist. She

asks another considerable question at this point: “How will the ethnic voice of womanhood

counteract the cultural articulation that Mohanty too easily dubs as the exegesis of Western

feminism? (1995:275). This question brings us to think about the feature of ethnic voice. If it

is assumed that the lived experience is quite significant, there is the need of an

essential/authentic voice which is really a part of this experience. From this point of view, it is

the authentic voice which reveals the very authenticity of womanhood. However, Suleri

claims that the aim of the finding the authentic voice opens a new discussion. “The claim to

authenticity-only a black can speak for a black; only a postcolonial subcontinental feminist

can adequately represent the lived experience of that culture-points to the great difficulty

posited by the "authenticity" of female racial voices in the great game that claims to be the

first narrative of what the ethnically constructed woman is deemed to want.” (1995: 275).

Hence, the concern of the authenticity emerges as another problem since the source of

narrative is asserted as an important aspect of the experience of the woman who is ethnically

constructed.

There is another question that the non-Western women seeking to problematize the

mispresentation – the lack of subjectivities- created by the West, are forced to be faced with:

“Who is the most authentic person to narrate this lived experience?” If the West still seems as

the decision maker concerning the personal authenticity as a result of the continuing power

relations, the authenticity also becomes another rupture point in the way of expressing the

ethnic voice of womanhood. Trinh T. Minh-ha points to this situation in her article “Writing

Postcoloniality and Feminism” and seeks to unveil the situation in which she is encouraged to

express her difference –the Third World difference- , to the First World – the West. She

reveals the authenticity as something subjected by hegemonic power relations and blames the

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West by using the authenticity as a challenge. She conspicuously claims: “They -the Western-

, like their anthropologists whose specialty is to detect all the layers of my falseness and

truthfulness, are in a position to decide what/who is ‘authentic’ and what/who is not.” (Trinh

T. Minh-ha 1995: 266). Thus, even if it seems that the problem could be solved with a

solidarity with Third World women and encouragement of “authentic” women, the situation

always requires a perspective that seeks to uncover the habitus encircling the given power

relations. Besides, in this context, the authenticity is not just a concern but rather it is a means

which reproduces the unequal relation. If we refer again to Trinh T. Minh-ha: “Today,

planned authenticity is rife; as a product of hegemony and a remarkable counterpart of

universal standardization, it constitutes an efficacious means of silencing the cry of racial

oppression.” (1995: 268). The authenticity creates a space in which the difference is recalled

again and again rather than a space in which the difference is ruled out in order to enable

different subjectivities.

Gayatri Spivak also indicates that there is a delusion in the First world. She argues that

the encouragement or the giving to the subaltern a chance to speak - we may consider it as a

Third World woman in this context- does not mean to the making the subaltern speak. She

defines the process of making the subaltern speak as an area knitted with the “epistemic

violence”. She receives positively the emergence of the information remains in the silence

within the fields such as anthropology, sociology etc. Nevertheless she claims: “Yet the

assumption and the construction of a consciousness or subject sustains such work and will, in

long run, cohere with the work of imperialist subject-constitution, mingling epistemic

violence with the advancement of learning and civilization. And the subaltern woman will be

as mute as ever.” (Spivak, 1988:295). Thus the epistemic violence might be considered as the

result of the colonialist move as Mohanty indicated.

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 It should be noted that there are several problems that the attempts from outside to make

the subaltern speak bring. There is on one hand a logocentric assumption of solidarity

stemming from the epistemic violence and on the other hand the dependence upon the

Western women to speak for the subaltern condition. As for subaltern women, she argues:

“between patriarchy and imperialism, subject-construction and object-formation, the figure of

the woman disappears, not into a pristine nothingness, but into a violent shuttling which is the

displaced figuration of the ‘third world woman’ caught between tradition and modernization,

culturalism and development” (Spivak, 1999: 304). This is the reason why the subaltern

cannot speak. The representative practice of Western intellectuals – white feminist women or

white men- assigns a centrality to the western subject even when there is an intention to create

a space for the voice of the subaltern.

To conclude, on one hand the debates that post-colonial feminism brought should be

considered as the production of new symbolic capitals within the intellectual field. On the

other hand, within the context of these debates hand the representation issue will always

occupy an important space by its very nature. However it could be argued that both these two

aspect enable to emergence of new possibilities within both the academic field and the politics

concerning the woman struggle with the criticism that they led.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ali, Suki. 2007. Feminism and Postcolonial: Knowledge / Politics, Ethnic and Racial Studies,
30:2, 191-212

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge

University Press.

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial
Discourses,” boundary 2, Vol. 12/13 (Spring – Autumn 1984): p. 333 – 358

Dechaufour, Laetitia. 2008. Introduction au féminisme postcolonial. Nouvelles Questions

Féministes, Vol. 27, No. 2, L'ambivalence du travail: entre exploitation et émancipation
(2008), pp. 99-110

Foucault, Michel. 1994. The order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences.

VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION

Minh-ha Trinh T. 1995. Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. In (Eds.) Ashcroft, B. Gareth
G. and Helen T., The post-colonial studies reader. London: Routledge. (pp: 264-269)

Said, Edward W. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.

Spivak, Gayatri. 1988. ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds)
Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Spivak, Gayatri. 1999. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing
Present. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Suleri, Sara. 1995. Woman Skin Deep: Feminism and the Postcolonial Condition. In (Eds.)
Ashcroft, B. Gareth G. and Helen T., The post-colonial studies reader. London: Routledge.
(pp:273-288)
Swartz, David. 2011. Kültür ve İktidar Pierre Bourdieu’nün Sosyolojisi. İletişim yayınları

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