Mick Hartley: Imperialist Feminism

Ophelia Benson at Butterflies and Wheels has unearthed a classic of post-colonialist feminist theory from the University of British Columbia. It was published in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, and is available here (click on the view/open for a pdf file of the whole thing). Start with the abstract:

Canadian women have been at the forefront of the international movement for women’s rights in Afghanistan since the rise of the Taliban in the late 1990s. Focusing on the prominent group Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan (CW4WAfghan), this paper looks at the role its advocacy assumes in the context of the “War on Terror”. In Canada as in the United States, government agencies have justified the military invasion of Afghanistan by revitalizing the oppressed Muslim woman as a medium through which narratives of East versus West are performed. While CW4WAfghan attempt to challenge dominant narratives of Afghan women, they ultimately reinforce and naturalize the Orientalist logic on which the War on Terror operates, even helping to disseminate it through the Canadian school system. Drawing on post-colonial feminist theory, this paper highlights the implications of CW4WAfghan’s Orientalist discourse on women’s rights, and tackles the difficult question of how feminists can show solidarity with Afghan women without adhering to the oppressive narratives that permeate today’s political climate. It is only by employing alternative models that contextualize the situation of Afghan women in relation, rather than in opposition, to our own, that feminists can begin to subvert the mutually reinforcing narratives that sustain imperialist violence and women’s subordination.

So, stories of the Taliban blowing up girls' schools, throwing acid on uncovered women's faces, murdering those who dare to teach in girls' schools....these are all part of the dominant Orientalist narrative which must be resisted. The actions of the Taliban must, rather, be contextualised.

From the piece itself (as quoted by Ophelia):

At the heart of the relationship between feminism and imperialism is an Orientalist logic that posits Western women as exemplary and emancipated in relation to “Other” (Afro-Asian/colonized) women, thereby charging the former with the responsibility of saving the latter from their backwards (i.e. Muslim), uncivilized cultures.

By deliberately attempting to mask the problems that are always associated with representation, and the inconsistencies that inevitably arise within categories of experience, CW4WAfghan’s use of personal anecdotes both confirms and conceals their own ideology. Reproducing the oppressive gesture of imperialist feminism, their homogenous image of Afghan women reduces them to the role of “generalized native informants”, who Spivak asserts, “sometimes appear in the Sunday supplements of national journals, mouthing for us the answers that we want to hear as our confirmation of the world.”

Those attempting to help the women of Afghanistan, then, like CW4WAfghan, are guilty of imperialist feminism. True feminism consists of, um, writing long jargon-ridden articles, and jockeying for position in the rarefied academic world of post-colonial theory.