The Global Feminist and the Transnational Feminist

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Academic discourse is the means by which new and old theories may be applied to a topic in order to reach a better understanding or challenge a notion raised within the field. It is through discussing and analyzing these concepts that individual voices may be applied to an academic community, allowing for a wider lens of thought to be picked up and further discussed. Grewal participates in this discourse in her article “'Women's Rights as Human Rights': Feminist Practices, Global Feminism, and Human Rights Regimes in Transnationality”. This paper shall analyze and discuss how Grewal applies previous theoretical concepts related to feminist discourse in order to offer a Transnationalist Feminist critique to the Global Feminist notion of Women's Rights as Human Rights.

First and foremost, what are the concepts of Global feminism and Transnational feminism? Charlotte Bunch explains Global Feminism as something which “has...a way of describing the growth of feminism(s) around the world...” (Bunch 129). The core concept of Global Feminism is that women around the world are united amongst the overarching issue of patriarchy. In this view of feminism, it can be argued, such as theorists Mendoza, Said and Spivak do, that global feminism suffers from a Western perspective, or as Mendoza says, it “produces a global feminism whereby First World feminists are positioned as saviors of their poor Third World sisters” (Mendoza 319). Transnational feminism, as described by Mendoza, can be understood as a view where “the term...points to the multiplicity of the world's feminisms and to the increasing tendency of national feminisms to politicize women's issues beyond the borders of the nation state...the position feminists worldwide have taken a...

... middle of paper ...

...Locations; Global and Local, Theory and Practice, edited by Marianne deKoven, pp 129-146. © 2001 New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press

Butler, Judith “Excerpt from Introduction to Bodies that Matter” in The Gender/Sexuality Reader: Culture, History, Political Economy, edited by Roger N. Lancaster; Michaela de Leonardo, pp. 531-542. © 1997 Routledge

Grewal, Inderpal “Women's Rights as Human Rights: Feminist Practices, Global Feminism and Human Rights Regimes in Transnationality” in Citizenship Studies, 3:3, pp 337-354. © 1999 Taylor and Francis Ltd..

Mendoza, Breny “Transnational Feminisms in Question” in Femnist Theory, 3:3, pp. 295-314. © 2002 Sage Publications.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1995. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, edited by B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths and H. Tiffin, pp. 24-28. © 1995 New York: Routledge

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