Edward Said explains knowledge/power to be a productive and
regulatory concept. He has shown us how reality can be produced via discourse.
The two authors I read this week are following along with Said’s concept of
knowledge/power and using it to analyze western feminism in the East and the
Islamists’ response to these ideas.
Lila Abu-Lughod uses the knowledge/power structure to
explain her original concept of selective repudiation. Selective repudiation is
accepting certain ideals and values from a school of thought without
considering the actual school of thought valid. The postcolonialism Arab world
has been struggling with the reality that has been created for them by
knowledge production of the West. In response to pressure to assimilate to
Western norms the Islamists are holding fast to ‘traditional and moral’ values.
Abu-Lughod breaks down the Islamists’ ‘traditional’ perspective as having
inherent western ideals. She uses the example of bourgeois marriage in Egypt as
an example of selective repudiation. Abu-Lughod argues that a marriage based on
common interest, love, and mutual understanding is a western ideal that was
only formed in the last few hundred years, but the Islamists have been using
this type of marriage as a fundamental argument for the return to traditional
Islamic values. Islamists argue that
women need to return to their homes and become good wives and mothers. In this
sense they disagree with western feminism, but when it issues of women’s
education and treatment in marriage come up there is overlap between what the
Islamists and western feminists want.
Abu-Lughod concludes that no one movement can be considered
independent of world events and pressures because of the way societies are
interrelated and connected. Selective repudiation is a way that the Muslim and
Arab communities are trying to take back their knowledge/power. However,
neglecting to acknowledge western ideals in their teachings, Islamists are
trying to use discourse to create a different reality.
Chandra Mohanty’s piece follows Said’s knowledge/power
production structure as well. She discusses how discourse can create a reality,
and she argues that knowledge/power production is a construct holding feminism
back from progressing past certain inherent binaries presented in post-colonial
society. Chandra deconstructs western feminists’ ideas one by one, ranging from
feminists perspective on religion, marriage, dependency, violence, etc… She
proves that women cannot be viewed as a singular sexual-political subject, rather they need to be understood within the context of their lives.
Power/knowledge is a productive concept and if not regulated
results in inaccuracies and misconceptions of entire populations. Using the
example of third-world women, Mohanty is, ‘trying to uncover how ethnocentric
universalism is produced in certain analyses’ (Mohanty). Mohanty breaks down why third world women cannot be a classification in itself; the term neglects all the of the history, culture, and tradition of
each and every single type of women throughout the third world countries. She
deconstructs various binaries, including western women versus women of the
third world; women as oppressed beings versus men as oppressors; and developed
versus undeveloped societies. These binaries limit our understanding of entire cultures
and societies by limiting them to a singular part of a binary instead of
treating them as dynamic societies. Knowledge/power production can be used as a
means of rewriting perspective of the third world and breaking these power
binaries down. Without breaking down these societal binaries we will
continue to function under certain norms, and this will prevent real growth and
productivity because rather than deconstruct the oppressive system we would be
inverting it.
Knowledge/power production is the reality of the world we
are living in today. Without acknowledging who is creating the knowledge/power
and under what assumptions they are doing so, we cannot move breakdown
structures of oppression.
I connected more to “Under Western Eyes”. I think there is no denial that women in the third world are incomparably oppressed than women in the west today, however, when an assumption is universally applied by western feminist in regards to third world women, there is a homogenization produced of a false sense of the commonality of oppression, interest and struggle between and among women globally. When feminist write about the sufferings of women in third world, they have to clearly give the local context of the area they are talking about. Women in India have different background than women in Kenya, but does that mean that these both group of women have same oppression just because these both women are under third world tag? Do western feminist allow themselves to think that they are reproducing homogeneity based on groups and “othering” them? When such singular monothilic assumption of third world women is analyzed, it definitely says too little or too much about women. But I am wondering what if feminists from India, who themselves are working class, write about shared oppression in working class families, would that create gender binary through Indian feminist discourse; men as oppressor and women as oppressed?
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