Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures

Book Overview

Feminist Geneaologies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures provides a feminist anaylsis of the questions of sexual and gender politics, economic and cultural marginality, and anti-racist and anti-colonial practices both in the "West" and in the "Third World." This collection, edited by Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, charts the underlying theoretical perspectives and organization practices of the different varieties of feminism that take on questions of colonialism, imperialism, and the repressive rule of colonial, post-colonial and advanced capitalist nation-states. It provides a comparative, relational, historically grounded conception of feminist praxis that differs markedly from the liberal pluralist, multicultural understanding that sheapes some of the dominant version of Euro-American feminism. As a whole, the collection poses a unique challenge to the naturalization of gender based in the experiences, histories and practices of Euro-American women.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415912121
• ISBN13: 9780415912129
• Release Date: April 1997
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 1.41 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Resourceful and Thought-Provoking

This is a challenging book, but as an edited volume, can be read slowly. A familiarization with writings on the distribution of global capital would be helpful, but if you don't have that background, the introduction to the book outlines some of the major points. As a Ph.D. student, I am constantly citing the articles in this volume: one on sexualized flight attendant uniforms in Singapore, one on tourism being based on heterosexuality, another on mati work (which roughly translates as sex work), one on the role of the cinema in shaping ideas of gender and nationhood, and one on how the concept of "sovereignty" applies to Native American politics in the US.From my own experience as a TA, I agree this volume is very difficult for most undergraduate students, but this is because they lack the vocabulary to understand what they are reading and to discuss it critically. The book would work well in a class that is focused around globalization and transnationalism, or in an honors level seminar.

Alexander is Amazing

By focusing the feminist eye on the transnational and "post-colonial" nations, Alexander offers an opening. . .a way to experience other cultures and transcend our own social locations. Her argument reveals that just because a nation is no longer under direct colonial control, it does not mean that the effects of the colonial mindset have diminshed. We all hold inherited ideologies about what we are. . .but that does not necessarily put us in a victim position. We all have agency, however we exercise this power in different ways. An amazing book that should be read so that the experience of feminism will be seen as what it really is, and not bounded by our ideas of "Women Power" residing in the white, middle-class agenda.