Western Feminism is Promoting Colonialism in the Third World

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Chandra Mohanty argues in her essay “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” that many Western feminists write about women in the Third World as if they were a homogenous mass. She argues in her essay that the Western feminists need to see the variety among women in the Third World. While at times she falls into the same generalization trap that she accuses the Western women of making, she ultimately proves that the feminist believe that Third World societies oppress all women elevates the Western world view as the superior one again and is similar to the colonialism of previous times.
Mohanty writes that feminists in the US and western Europe act similarly towards women in the Third World. She asserts, “The definition of colonization…is…focusing on certain mode of appropriation and codification of ‘scholarship’ and ‘knowledge’ about women in the third world…as they have been articulated in the US and western Europe” (Mohanty 694). Invoking the word colonization connects everybody in the US and western Europe with the historical and still prevalent belief that Eurocentrism is the predominantly superior culture. She makes the claim saying that colonization still interests the West. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, colonization’s definition is, “The action of colonizing or fact of being colonized; establishment of a colony or colonies”; or “To settle (a country) with colonists; to plant or establish a colony in” (“colonization”). Feminism seeks “Advocacy of equality of the sexes and the establishment of the political, social, and economic rights of the female sex” (“feminism”). Mohanty’s statement that the Western feminists seek to settle their perceived knowledge over women in the Third Worl...

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...ed plenty of times in history before.

Works Cited

"ahistorical, adj." OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2014. Web. 13 March 2014.
Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus (Notes Towards An Investigation).” Critical Theory: A Reader for Literary and Cultural Studies. Parker, Robert Dale. New York: Oxford UP, 2012.450-461. Print.
"colonization, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2014. Web. 13 March 2014.
"feminism, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2014. Web. 13 March 2014.
Martin, Douglas. n.d., n. pag. .
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses." Critical Theory: A Reader for Literary and Cultural Studies. Parker, Robert Dale. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. 694-715. Print.

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