A Marxist Approach to Post-Colonial Feminism

Africania- İnonü Üniversitesi Uluslararası Afrika Araştırmaları Dergisi, 2022

Africa, the location of different cultures, different ethnicities, religions, belief systems, stories, ethnic music, dances, local languages, myths and legends, faunas, habitat of living beings, has been the source of sublime beauty and knowledge for the World’s heritage. As being the source of the sublime beauty of knowledge, each culture of the world has different relations with the localities, ethnicities, and people of Africa. While some people of the world regard the lands of Africa as the unique mystic, many appreciated the African lands for their economic sources and slavery. Since most of the African people have experienced colonialism in their histories, they still could not overcome the colonial and neo-colonial effects of the historical events. Many African people have suffered oppression and hardship since the colonialism started. Therefore, the historical context is the reason how African people constructed their own identities, how they stood against the colonial discourses Western or Imperial countries imposed on them and how the African people/ Black people interiorized the color Black as their source of power for their uprising. Thanks to their consciousness, people of color can rise against the capitalist, neo-colonialist, racist practices, policies and the politics of the world. Moreover, after the colonialist policies of the Imperialist Empires, as a result of the process, while the Imperial power got richer and richer, the African economic sources got poorer and poorer. Thus, because of the lack of economic sources, mines, resources or funds, African people had to migrate to the lands of the colonial power. While the colonized localities started to be named as the Third World, the lands of Imperial Powers were named as the First World countries. Especially, after the Second World War, the rich, European countries which represented the Western nations started to be named as the First World, whereas the Soviet nations, represented the communist allies named as the Second World Countries and the local people from the locations of Africa or South Asia who were previously colonized, has poor economies, of whom are in subjection to Europe, represented the Third World (Mcleod 2012, p.198-199). Due to the lack of economic sources, many African people started to migrate to the First World countries to find better jobs, social welfare, education opportunities and they left their homeland. However, when they migrated to the First World countries they had to struggle against racist, segregationist, or denominational classifications. For women, the situation was worse. In this point, feminism and postcolonialism get together and construct postcolonial feminism. Furthermore, Third World feminism emerged as a reaction to the arguments or works of First World feminism. Hereby, feminist apprehensions of the black people engender the sisterhood among the Third World women from Africa, South America, Asia and from other local people, different ethnicities of the world; furthermore, this sisterhood calls for a humanistic understanding among the women of the third world countries and the first world countries. Because the third world feminism addresses the representation of the bodies and experiences of the previously colonized lands, has references for the racism and patriarchy, as a discipline, it is a kind of assertion for double exploitation. To undermine the humanist demands, while Women of Color started to reclaim their experiences of slavery, they also have asked for the examination of the representation of Afro cultures in social contexts or literature, womanliness in literature or in culture. Since there was a rise in solidarity among the women of the world to revolt against the White Western Feminist Criticism, which AFRICANIA 3 | Tuğçe ÖZSOY ignored their problems, identities, sufferings, anxieties, they have founded their own movement, which is called “Women of Color” and they have called for sisterhood in all over the world. According to those Women of Color, if a woman from any part of the world had experienced racist, classist, segregationist problems, no woman should feel herself in peace in all over the world. The concept of “intersectionality” as discussed by Kimberlè Crenshaw, who criticizes the centralization of gender as the interpretive criteria for explaining violence against women, however, disregards or demeans of other interlocking social aspects such as race, nation, ethnicity, class, religion, locality, ability/disability as the elements of gender relations, oppressions on their domestic space, subordination, and their gender inequality, are the central points of this article. Following Crenshaw’s acceptance of patriarchy as an intersecting feature of subordination structure of domination, the movement of “Women of Color” argues that there is an interconnected bond between patriarchy, nation, ethnicity, class, religion, gender inequality, immigration status and locality of Women of Color in the rule of patriarchy. As a result of looking at the marginalized women through the lens through intersectionality, Women of Color would stand for their disadvantaged status in terms of their interactions of race, nation, class, ethnicity, religion, immigration status, locality, and the other social structures. The purpose of this study is to draw attention to articulate how intersectional perspective could be used to understand the marginalization of women. This article will present two parts. The first part is called “Women of Color” and this part will present who the “Women of Color” are, what they stand for, how they have differed from the white feminists, and how they are important to improve feminism for the political actions in the world. The second part is called “Intersectionality” and it has four sections which are called “What is Intersectionality? How is it Connected to Women of Color?”, “The Constituted Identities through Intersectionality”, “Mundialisation as the Basis for having Sympathy For Intersectionality”, “The Purpose of Presenting Intersectionality to Undermine Patriarchy” . Then, there will be a conclusion.

Philosophy Compass, 2014

In feminist theory, intersectionality has become the predominant way of conceptualizing the relation between systems of oppression which construct our multiple identities and our social locations in hierarchies of power and privilege. The aim of this essay is to clarify the origins of intersectionality as a metaphor, and its theorization as a provisional concept in Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw’s work, followed by its uptake and mainstreaming as a paradigm by feminist theorists in a period marked by its widespread and rather unquestioned--if, at times, superficial and inattentive--usage. I adduce four analytic benefits of intersectionality as a research paradigm: simultaneity, complexity, irreducibility and inclusivity. Then, I gesture at, and respond to some critiques of intersectionality advanced in the last few years, during which the concept has increasingly come under scrutiny.

South Asian Journal of Sociual Science and Humanities, 2020

The Civil Rights Movement and Feminist Movement in the 1960's America fought for their basic rights and eventually were successful in achieving them. These two movements promised a new beginning for African-American men and White American women, but ironically these movements were relegating an equally important issue and that was of Black American women. Both the Civil Right and Feminist activists did not fulfill their promise to help Black women of America to come out of their century's old bondage of multi-dimensional oppression. It was high time for black women activists, writers and intellectuals to raise their voice against the injustice they faced in their own homes where they confronted domestic violence in the hands of male family members and in the homes of their white masters and landladies where these black women worked as maids or nannies. Black feminists argued that feminism which was in vogue at the middle of the 20 th century has always been Euro-centric in its approach; they didn't see a promising future for themselves even when Civil rights movement was successful. For them, it was male dominated movement, sexiest and misogynist in its approach. Also, feminism was not giving enough space to black women as it always carried white supremacy at its core. Black women were left out in protest and rallies which were organized by white middle class American women because of the racist attitude. Black women of America started their own campaign against the oppression they faced in the society to make their voices heard and their identities recognized. In this paper, I have tried to present the core issues of Intersectionality (study of multiple oppressions), its inclusive nature, its difference from traditional feminism and the major arguments of Intersectional theorists who have tried to use Intersectionality as a new research paradigm in women studies.

2018

In the context of the second Gulf war and US and the British occupation of Iraq, many 'old' debates about the category 'woman' have assumed a new critical urgency. This paper revisits debates on intersectionality in order to show that they can shed new light on how we might approach some current issues. It first discusses the 19 th century contestations among feminists involved in anti-slavery struggles and campaigns for women's suffrage. The second part of the paper uses autobiography and empirical studies to demonstrate that social class (and its intersections with gender and 'race' or sexuality) are simultaneously subjective, structural and about social positioning and everyday practices. It argues that studying these intersections allows a more complex and dynamic understanding than a focus on social class alone. The conclusion to the paper considers the potential contributions to intersectional analysis of theoretical and political approaches such as those associated with poststructuralism, postcolonial feminist analysis, and diaspora studies.

European Journal of Women's Studies, 2006

This article explores various analytical issues involved in conceptualizing the interrelationships of gender, class, race and ethnicity and other social divisions. It compares the debate on these issues that took place in Britain in the 1980s and around the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism. It examines issues such as the relative helpfulness of additive or mutually constitutive models of intersectional social divisions; the different analytical levels at which social divisions need to be studied, their ontological base and their relations to each other. The final section of the article attempts critically to assess a specific intersectional methodological approach for engaging in aid and human rights work in the South.

European Journal of Women's Studies, 2006

As we were editing this special issue we learned of four international conferences on intersectionality as well as of discussions of it in other national forums and in print. While it would be far fetched to suggest that everyone is talking about intersectionality, it is certainly an idea in the process of burgeoning. Indeed, the idea of focusing a special issue on intersectionality was generated from the European Journal of Women's Studies 10th anniversary conference where Kathy Davis and Pamela Pattynama stimulated a discussion so animated that it seemed obvious that we should open the pages of the journal to debating it with a view to establishing areas of agreement and points of contention in intersectional theory and practice.

The Global Studies Journal, 2009

This paper offers locatedness, contextuality, and interconnectedness as crucial concepts for the analysis of gender and cultural differences in global societies. Taking into account the different voices of feminism, and being aware of the perils of essentialization, the concept of “intersectional gender” is proposed as analytical tool. The adjective “intersectional” expresses the idea that gender is inherently constituted and simultaneously shaped by race/ethnicity, culture/religion, and economic conditions. Intersectional gender, defined not as an additive but rather as a constitutive process, underscores that any form of gender discrimination is originated and interconnected with other factors in inextricable ways. Conceptualizing gender as intersectional means that gender —as a social and contextual category— is meaningless without taking into account all the other factors constituting identity. It also implies that the significance of gender changes as it interfaces with all the other categories. The concept of intersectional gender makes possible the analysis of the inequalities suffered by women within minorities, by taking into account the structures of subordination within subordinate groups along with the inequalities of power among women according to class, race, and culture. An integrated approach is required to understand the intertwined factors of discrimination that —as a network of forces and barriers systematically interconnected— oppress, discriminate, and silence women, particularly those belonging to cultural minorities in the diaspora.

Since its inception, the concept of 'intersectionality' -the interaction of multiple identities and experiences of exclusion and subordination -has been heralded as one of the most important contributions to feminist scholarship. Despite its popularity, there has been considerable confusion concerning what the concept actually means and how it can or should be applied in feminist inquiry. In this article, I look at the phenomenon of intersectionality's spectacular success within contemporary feminist scholarship, as well as the uncertainties and confusion which it has generated. Drawing upon insights from the sociology of science, I shall show how and why intersectionality could become a feminist success story. I shall argue that, paradoxically, it is precisely the concept's alleged weaknesses -its ambiguity and open-endedness -that were the secrets to its success and, more generally, make it a good feminist theory. keywords critical race theory, difference, feminist methodology, postmodern feminist theory, theoretical closure, theory generalists and specialists

The text considers some of the important work in intersectionality that has been done by critical feminist and postcolonial scholars in media and other communication fields since the 1990s, focusing particularly on the kinds of problems they have examined and their contributions to feminist theory building. The discussion also explores some of the challenges and tensions that accompany scholarship conducted from a standpoint of inter-sectionality. Resumo Investigação Feminista Intersecional em Comunicação: Origens, Contributos e Tensões O texto considera alguns dos trabalhos importantes sobre intersecionalidade que foram elaborados por investigadores/as feministas críticos/as e pós-coloniais na área dos media ou em outros campos da comunicação desde a década de 1990, focalizando particu-larmente nos tipos de problemas que levantaram e nas suas contribuições para a construção da teoria feminista. A discussão também explora alguns dos desafios e tensões que acompa-nham a investigação conduzida do ponto de vista da intersecionalidade. Palavras-chave: Intersecionalidade, Estudos feministas críticos dos media Resumen Investigación Feminista Intersecional en Comunicación: Orígenes, Contribuciones y Tensiones El texto considera algunos de los importantes trabajos sobre intersecionalidad elabo-rados por investigadores/as feministas críticos/as y post-coloniales en el área de los media o en otros campos de la comunicación desde la década de 1990, centrándose especialmente en los tipos de problemas que plantearon y en sus contribuciones para la construcción de la teoría feminista. La discusión también explora algunos de los retos y tensiones que acom-pañan la investigación conducida desde el punto de vista de la intersecionalidade. Palabras clave: Intersecionalidad; Estudios feministas críticos de los media