Women's Studies Essay

Post-Colonial Feminism
Tuesday, February 28, 12

Colonialism
-Settlement in a new country, forming a new community while still being subject to parent state
-Original concept does not refer to the encounter or conquering of peoples, and does not necessarily involve domination
-LATIN colonus = farmer
-Tends to involve the conquest and control of other peoples lands and goods
-“a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another”
-European countries controlled more than 85% of the rest of the globe by the time of the First World War
-Long list of former colonies of European powers with widely divergent experiences
-Settler countries (Australia, Canada)
-Non-settler countries (India, Jamaica, Nigeria, Senegal, Sri Lanka)
-Partially settled countries (South Africa)

Imperialism
-Also involves political and economic control over a dependent territory
-Highlighting one countries power over another through settlement, sovereignty, economics, or indirect mechanisms of control
-In modern colonialism capitalism ties colonialism to imperialism in new ways
-European colonization did more than extract goods and wealth from colonized countries
-Restructured their economies, drawing them into complex ongoing relationship with their own economies – in an imbalance that fed the growth of European capitalism and industry
-LATIN imperium = command

Neo-Imperialism and Neo-Colonialism
-Neo-colonialism, meaning ‘new’ colonialism was first used by Kwame Nkrumah (first president of Ghana)
-Drew on Lenin’s definition of Global Imperialism, as the highest stage of capitalism

Post Colonialism
-It is the study of interactions between European nations and the societies they colonized in the modern period (postcolonial has various meanings)
-Originally used by historians after WWII to designate the post-independence period
-Post refers to the period no longer being a part of England
-Or power of colonial discourse

Post Colonial Feminism
-Lorber defines postcolonial feminism as the application of “socialist feminist analysis of gender, class, and racial ethnic inequality to what has been variously called the third world, the global south, postcolonial and nonindustrial societies, and developing countries… These countries are linked to countries with developed industrial economies through globalization and transnational trade”
-Main problem, immediately suggesting that postcolonial feminism is Western feminists doing an analysis of the other

Sources of Gender Inequality
-Undercutting women’s traditional economic base by restructuring and modernization
-Exploitation of women workers in a global economy
-Lack of education for girls
-Inadequate maternal and child health care
-Sexual exploitation
-Patriarchal family structures and cultural practices that are harmful to women and girls
(Lorber “Postcolonial and Asian Feminism”)

Chandra Mohanty: “Under Western Eyes”
-Analyses the production of the ‘Third World Woman’ as a “singular monolithic subject”
-She charges that even though feminism is diverse it implicitly takes the west as its referent for what is normal and for what kind of world we want to create
-This has particular effects, one of which is the production of the ‘third world woman’

The Malleus Malleficarum:

-“Witches” were healers,
-Sociobiology
-Natural selection
-“Those people who are most fit, will survive” and those genes will eventually die off.
-Women have only a certain number of eggs to produce while men always have sperm. Eggs are larger than sperm

The Yellow Wallpaper:

-John opposes superstition
-John represents medical authority
-Repetition of difference→she’s taking what he needs to see. She’s

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