{"id":757,"date":"2014-06-21T17:44:44","date_gmt":"2014-06-21T17:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/?p=757"},"modified":"2017-11-15T03:05:01","modified_gmt":"2017-11-15T03:05:01","slug":"third-world-and-third-world-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/2014\/06\/21\/third-world-and-third-world-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Third World and Third World Women"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/h1>\n

What geographical regions constitute the Third World? Who are Third World women? Who defines and writes about the terms \u201cThird World\u201d and \u201cThird World Women\u201d? The answers to the above questions are important to both postcolonial studies and feminist studies.<\/p>\n

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak\u00a0<\/a>explains that the term \u201cThird World\u201d was initially coined in 1955 by those emerging from the \u201cold\u201d world order:<\/p>\n

The initial attempt in the Bandung Conference (1955) to establish a third way \u2014 neither with the Eastern nor within the Western bloc \u2014 in the world system, in response to the seemingly new world order established after the Second World War, was not accompanied by a commensurate intellectual effort. The only idioms deployed for the nurturing of this nascent Third World in the cultural field belonged then to positions emerging from resistance within the supposedly \u2018old\u2019 world order \u2014 anti-imperialism, and\/or nationalism (270).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kum Kum Sangari argues that the term \u201cThird World\u201d not only designates specific geographical areas, but imaginary spaces. According to Sangari, \u201cThird World\u201d is \u201ca term that both signifies and blurs the functioning of an economic, political, and imaginary geography able to unite vast and vastly differentiated areas of the world into a single \u2018underdeveloped\u2019 terrain\u201d (217). Sangari is critical of the way \u201cThird World\u201d is used by the West to indiscriminately lump together vastly different places (See Orientalism<\/a>, Benedict Anderson<\/a>, Nationalism<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"Third<\/a>
Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, 1991<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chandra Talpade Mohanty defines the Third World geographically:<\/p>\n

The nation-states of Latin America, the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, South and South-east Asia, China, South Africa, and Oceania constitute the parameters of the non-European third world. In addition, black, Latino, Asian, and indigenous peoples in the U.S., Europe, Australia, some of whom have historic links with the geographically defined third worlds, also define themselves as third world peoples (5).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cheryl Johnson-Odim explains that \u201cthe term Third World is frequently applied in two ways: to refer to \u2018underdeveloped\u2019\/over-exploited geopolitical entities, i.e. countries, regions, even continents; and to refer to oppressed nationalities from these world areas who are now resident in \u2018developed\u2019 First World countries.\u201d Johnson-Odim further identifies problems some Third World women have with First World feminism:<\/p>\n

While it may be legitimately argued that there is no one school of thought on feminism among First World feminists \u2014 who are not, after all, monolithic \u2014 there is still, among Third World women, a widely accepted perception that the feminism emerging from white, middle-class Western women narrowly confines itself to a struggle against gender discrimination. (314, 315)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The use of the term \u201cThird World Women\u201d by Western feminists has been widely critiqued. Mohanty uses the term interchangeably with \u201cwomen of color\u201d (7). She argues that \u201cwhat seems to constitute \u2018women of color\u2019 or \u2018third world women\u2019 as a viable oppositional alliance is a common context of struggle rather than color or racial identifications. Similarly, it is third world women\u2019s oppositional political relation to sexist, racist, and imperialistic structures that constitutes our political commonality\u201d (7). Although she uses the term \u201cthird world women,\u201d Mohanty argues that western feminisms appropriate the production of the\u201dthird world woman as a singular monolithic subject,\u201d for a \u201cdiscursive colonization\u201d (51). (See Representation<\/a>) Furthermore, western feminisms articulate a discursive colonization through the production of \u201cthird world difference\u201d: \u201cthat stable, ahistorical something that apparently oppresses most if not all of the women in [third world] countries\u201d (53-54). Western feminisms\u2019 use of the category of \u201cthird world woman\u201d and \u201cthird world difference\u201d ties into a larger, latent cultural and economic colonialism:<\/p>\n

In the context of the\u00a0hegemony<\/a>\u00a0of the Western scholarly establishment in the production and dissemination of texts, and the context of the legitimating imperative of humanistic and scientific discourse, the definition of the \u2018third world woman\u2019 as a monolith might well tie into the larger cultural and economic praxis of \u2018disinterested\u2019 scientific inquiry and pluralism which are the surface manifestations of a latent economic and cultural colonization of the \u2018non-Western\u2019 world (74).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Trinh T. Minh-ha argues that \u201c\u2018difference\u2019 is essentially \u2018division\u2019 in the understanding of many. It is no more than a tool of self-defense and conquest\u201d (14). Trinh\u2019s concern is with the use of the third world woman as the \u201cnative\u201d Other in Western anthropology and feminisms. Answering the question, \u201c\u2018why do we have to be concerned with the question of Third World women? After all, it is only one issue among many others,\u2019\u201d Trinh replies:<\/p>\n

Delete the phrase Third World and the sentence immediately unveils its value-loaded cliches. Generally speaking, a similar result is obtained through the substitution of words like racist for sexist, or vice-versa, and the established image of the Third World Woman in the context of (pseudo)-feminism readily merges with that of the Native in the context of (neo-colonialist) anthropology (17).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Self-defined Third World women who inhabit a place within First World feminist academia are also the subject of critique. Diane Brydon writes, \u201cnow that the marginal is being revalued as the new voice of authority in discourse, it is tempting to accept the imperial definition of the colonized as marginal\u201d(4). In a direct attack on Mohanty and Trinh as well as bell hooks, Sara Suleri argues that:<\/p>\n

Rather than extending an inquiry into the discursive possibilities represented by the intersection of gender and race, feminist intellectuals like hooks misuse their status as minority voices by enacting strategies of belligerence that at this time are more divisive than informative. Such claims to radical revisionism take refuge in the political untouchability that is accorded the category of Third World Woman, and in the process sully the crucial knowledge that such a category has still to offer to the dialogue of feminism today (765).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Suleri also argues:<\/p>\n

[The] claim to authenticity \u2014 only a black can speak for a black; only a postcolonial subcontinental feminist can adequately represent the lived experience of that culture \u2014 points to the great difficulty posited by the \u2018authenticity\u2019 of female racial voices in the great game which claims to be the first narrative of what the ethnically constructed woman is deemed to want (760).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Similarly, Suleri attacks hooks and Trinh for claiming that \u201cpersonal narrative is the only salve to the rude abrasions that Western feminist theory has inflicted on the body of ethnicity\u201d (764). Suleri advocates examining how \u201crealism locates its language within the postcolonial condition,\u201d and suggests that \u201clived experience does not achieve its articulation through autobiography, but through that other third-person narrative known as the law\u201d (766).<\/p>\n

As the above arguments indicate, the terms \u201cThird World\u201d and\u201dThird World Women\u201d are by no means stable categories. Rather, these terms are a locus of contention not only between First World feminisms and Third World women, but also between Third World women themselves within the complex field of postcolonial studies.<\/p>\n

See also:\u00a0Gender and Nation<\/a>,\u00a0Nawal el Saadawi<\/a>,\u00a0Women, Islam, and the Hijab<\/a>,\u00a0Chicana Feminism<\/a>,\u00a0FGM<\/a>,\u00a0Victorian Women Travellers<\/a><\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/h3>\n
    \n
  • Brydon, Diana. \u201cCommonwealth or Common Poverty?\u201d\u00a0Kunapipi: Special Issue on Post-Colonial Criticism<\/em>\u00a011-1 (1989): 1-16.<\/li>\n
  • Johnson-Odim, Cheryl. \u201cCommon Themes, Different Contexts: Third World Women and Feminism.\u201d\u00a0Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism<\/em>.Eds. Mohanty, Russo, Torres. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991.<\/li>\n
  • Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. \u201cIntroduction\u201d and \u201cUnder Western Eyes.\u201d\u00a0Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism<\/em>. Eds. Mohanty, Russo, Torres. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1991.<\/li>\n
  • Sangari, Kumkum. \u201cThe Politics of the Possible.\u201d\u00a0The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse<\/em>. Eds. Abdul Jan Mohamed and David Lloyd. New York: Oxford UP, 1990.<\/li>\n
  • Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty.\u00a0The Spivak Reader<\/em>. Eds. Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean. London: Routledge, 1996.<\/li>\n
  • Suleri, Sara. \u201cWoman Skin Deep: Feminism and the Postcolonial Condition.\u201d\u00a0Critical Inquiry<\/em>\u00a0(Summer 1992): 756-769.<\/li>\n
  • Trinh, Minh-ha. \u201cDifference: \u2018A Special Third World Woman Issue.\u201d\u00a0Discourse<\/em>\u00a08 (Fall-Winter 86-87): 10-37.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Author: Nicola Graves, Spring 1996<\/p>\n

    Last edited: October 2017<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    What geographical regions constitute the Third World? Who are Third World women? Who defines and writes about the terms \u201cThird World\u201d and \u201cThird World Women\u201d? The answers to the above questions are important to both postcolonial studies and feminist studies. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak\u00a0explains that the term \u201cThird World\u201d was initially coined in 1955 by those<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":327,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[12,58,38,41,42,43,60,56],"class_list":{"0":"post-757","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-terms-and-issues","7":"tag-diaspora","8":"tag-ethnicity","9":"tag-gender","10":"tag-identity","11":"tag-race","12":"tag-representation","13":"tag-resistance","14":"tag-sexuality"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paWL6U-cd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/327"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3017,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757\/revisions\/3017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}