Transnacional Feminisms in Question ( Breny Mendoza)

7/30/2019 Transnacional Feminisms in Question ( Breny Mendoza)

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Transnational feminisms in question

Abstract The article interrogates transnational feminisms as a conceptand as a practice. It frames its analysis using contemporary theories of

globalization and the older concept of global sisterhood as a backdrop to

the concept of transnational feminism. To assess the practical

dimension of transnational feminisms, the analysis focusses on womensrights as a human rights movement and the transnationalization of Latin

American feminisms. The article suggests that, although transnational

feminisms (particularly feminist postcolonial theories) envision

themselves in a new frame and see themselves as committed to

intersectional analysis and transversal politics, there are important gaps

between the intentions (theory, tactics) and outcomes of their theory and

practice.

Keywords femi ni st m ovements, globalization , hum an r ights, Latin

America, postcolonial ism

Introduction

In this article, I interrogate the meaning of transnational feminisms in two

ways: first, I ask about their theoretical soundness; and, second, I examinetheir political effectiveness at the practical level. I propose to do so because

I remain preoccupied with deterministic claims of transnational solidarity

between women without clarifying the grounds and conditions on which

such transnational solidarity stands and occurs. Assuredly, the claim that

many feminists make of the existence of an organic transnational solidarity

between women underlying diverse systems of power circulates among

different thematic and disciplinary domains. Similarly, the concrete

struggle of women for a transnational solidarity occurs in different planes

and settings, and their outcomes are of a variegated nature which makesmy endeavor the more complicated.

My own inquiry on the subject matter will focus mainly on determin-

ing the distinction between the new buzzword oft ransnat ional femi ni sm

and the old notion ofglobal sisterhood. Thus, I will concentrate on the

most recent theoretical strategies deployed within feminist postcolonial

313

TF

Breny Mendoza California State University

Feminist Theory

Copyright 2002SAGE Publications

(London,

Thousand Oaks, CA

and New Delhi)

vol. 3(3): 313332.

[1464-7001

(200212) 3:3;

313332; 029162]


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criticisms in western academia, as it is within these debates that trans-

national feminism has emerged as a differentiated notion from global sister-

hood. I will also limit my analysis of transnational feminist practices to the

debates of womens rights as human rights and to the experience of trans-nationalization of the feminist movements in Latin America, as they are the

ones that are closer to my own transnational experience. Having said this,allow me to set the terms of this interrogation of transnational feminisms

by first laying out its points of departure and theoretical backgrounds.Implicated in the novel notion oftransnational femi ni smis the desirabil-

ity and possibility of a political solidarity of feminists across the globe that

transcends class, race, sexuality and national boundaries. So far, the term

transnational feminism would not differ much from its predecessor, global

sisterhood, which First World, white, middle-class feminists used in the

1970s and 1980s. However, as we know, enough has been said about the deep

divisions that class, race, sexual orientation and nationality produce amongwomen, such that the notion of global sisterhood has been widely abandoned

today. So what can the term transnational feminism mean at the beginning

of the 21st century? Is transnational feminism a clarified notion of globalsisterhood? Does the transnationalin transnational feminism signify a

political form of consciousness and organization more fit to negotiate thedifferent positions and interests of women in an era of globalization?

In a strictly literal and indexical sense, the term transnational feminism

points to the multiplicity of the worlds feminisms and to the increasing

tendency of national feminisms to politicize womens issues beyond theborders of the nation state, for instance, in United Nations (UN) womensworld conferences or on the Internet. The term points simultaneously to

the position feminists worldwide have taken against the processes of

globalization of the economy, the demise of the nation state and the

development of a global mass culture as well as pointing to the nascent

global womens studies research into the ways in which globalizationaffects women around the globe. In this sense, transnational feminism takes

its meaning from the discussions about globalization that have dominated

intellectual work since the 1990s. But, foremost, it takes its meaning from

Third and First World feminist theorizations on race, class and sexuality,

and feminist postcolonial studies that make us aware of the artificiality ofthe idea of nation and of its patriarchal nature. Yet again, transnational

feminism also contains a more literal meaning based on the concrete

experiences of transnational organizing of women across the globe.

Such diverse connotations of the notion of transnational feminism make

its meaning unclear to an important degree. For instance, is the trans-

national of transnational feminism what feminists do in global conferences

and in cyberspace? Or should we call this global feminism to differentiate

it from transnational feminism? Is it perhaps a shared context of exploi-tation and domination across the North/South divide that allows for a

transnational solidarity? Or is the transnational in transnational feminism

pointing to a potential solidarity of women in the North and South that can

negotiate class, race, nationality and sexual identities due to specific, butstill to be clarified, circumstances put forward by the conditions of

314 Feminist Theory3(3)


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transnational capitalism? For instance, the juxtaposition of interests of

women workers in the Third World and women consumers in the First

World can be understood as a transversal point for transnational feminist

politics. Or is the term transnational in transnational feminism again simply

a code word for western feminist dominance in a worldwide feminist

movement that is entangled in global networks? Or perhaps even a codeword to refer to Third World feminisms? On what terms has the notion of

transnational feminism come to replace the concept of global sisterhood and

to differentiate itself from, say, global feminism? Does transnational feminist

thinking analytically and politically resolve the tensions and contradictions

that arise out of the recolonization effects of transnational capitalism? Or

does it ignore and displace them or reconstitute them in its own field ofthought and action? Or are feminist transnational practices, as Grewal and

Kaplan (1994) prefer to call transnational feminism, forms of alliance,

subversion and complicity operating in a privileged inbetween space whereasymmetries and inequalities between women can be acknowledged,

sustained nevertheless to be critically deconstructed? How are we (Latin

American feminists and our all ies) to begin unraveling this complex notion

of transnational feminism? Can we benefit from its subversive potentialfrom our specific locations in spite of its apparent potential to install repe-tition in rupture, as in previous forms of feminist ethnocentrism?

As Edward W. Said has said, every idea or system of ideas exists some-

whereand is mixed with historical circumstances. It is part of what one

calls reality to the extent that not only do ideas describe a perceivedreality, but they also constitute that reality materially (Said, 1997: 15). Ifwe see things this way, we could say that the prefix trans- of the trans-national, used to denote current forms of feminist thinking and practice,

corresponds to the system of ideas that invokes our sense of the contem-

porary which is embedded in todays globalization theories. In so being, itis pertinent to elucidate the idea of transnational feminism and to examine

its political effectiveness by considering its provenance, descent and affili -ation with ideas of globalization and transnationalism. Of course, at the

same time, it is of utmost importance to examine its particular affiliationsand departures from previous feminist ideas such as that of global sister-

hood and the related idea of global feminism. On the other hand, it seems

relevant also to examine feminist transnationalism in its practical dimen-

sions. This would further our understanding of its subversive potential, its

effects of power and ideological legitimacy, and allow us to determine the

displacements it produces in relationship to other ideas, forms of organiz-

ation and prior legitimacies (Said, 1997: 16). Let me begin by looking into

the meanings of the global and transnational within globalization discus-

sions in the West and later see to what extent they have informed the idea

of transnational feminism.

The global, the transnational

Ideas of the transnational and the global abound in western depictions and

explanations of the contemporary world, but also increasingly outside the

Mendoza: Transnational feminism in question 315


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West. Most seem to be expressing an unprecedented interconnectedness

between countries and peoples that has grown out of the spread of capi-

talism, the fall of socialism, the existence of the Internet and the new infor-

mation and communications technologies. A set of terms has been created

to refer to this so-called new global reality. Thus, people speak of globaliz-

ation, transnationalism, multiculturalism, neocolonialism, neoimperialismand, most recently, simply empire (Hardt and Negri, 2000). Some of these

terms can be viewed as successors of previous totalizing concepts such as

that of the world system of Wallerstein, and others can be associated with

old theories of imperialism such as those of Lenin and Luxemburg. Butmost contemporary global theorists would argue that there is a paradigmatic

shift between these previous analyses of capitalism and imperialism and

todays global and transnational thinking. In fact, some would affirm thatwhat global thinkers mean today is a perfecting of imperialism (Hardt and

Negri, 2000). Imperialism relied in the past on existing configurations ofnation states and sovereign entities and on several competing capitalist

powers. In todays conditions of globalization, the operations of capitalthrough transnational corporations have unsettled national boundaries to

such an extent that capital has transcended the authority of sovereign nation

states and reconfigured their functions. Under the regime of globalization,transnational capital is creating a properly capitalist order whereby a single

unitary supranational political power can gain sovereignty over the worldsnations and overdetermine the distinct centers of power of capitalism in a

way it could not do previously. Hardt and Negri (2000) refer to this asimperial sovereignty, a form of sovereignty that functions not by force, but

by the capacity to present itself as representative of right and order and of

superior ethical principles that can be applied to all societies. This new form

of sovereignty constitutes its own norms and legal instruments as well as an

administrative apparatus and new hierarchies that prefigure an imperialcommand over the entire world space. In Hardt and Negris view, the UNand its affiliate organizations, but also certain transnational organizations ofwestern civil societies, can be seen as the building blocks of this new supra-

national jurisdiction. For these reasons alone, they say, it would be most

appropriate to think of globalization as a new form of empire instead of a

continuation of imperialism. Others refer to this process as a form of recol-

onization or neocolonialism (see Jameson and Miyoshi, 1998).

The talk of globalization, transnationalism and empire is not applied

solely to the global reach of transnational capital; transnationalism is also

used by many authors to refer to the new flows of culture (in all directions)that result from the current intensified mobility of people and ideas acrossnational boundaries (Appadurai, 1996). In particular, postmodern and post-

colonial thinkers base their analyses on diasporic populations that destabil-

ize traditional notions of national identity and nationalism (Bhabha, 1994).Marxists using aspects of poststructuralism also believe that the deterri-

torialization of surplus value extraction in the industrial sector and the

centrality that immaterial labor (communicative, intellectual) in the service

sector has gained over material labor render traditional forms of inter-

nationalism and identities tied to a national territory obsolete (for example,



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Hardt and Negri, 2000). Thus, according to them, the growing miscegena-

tion of individuals and populations and the social metamorphoses that

increased migration and the Internet allow in cyberspace have created

hybrid cultural fields that call into question dominant models of sex, raceand gender. Although it is generally admitted that all these processes have

complicated class structures and have intensified racism and heterosexism,many poststructuralists and Marxists alike believe that these global

processes have also created the basis of a transnational solidarity that is

unprecedented in the history of modernity and, as such, has a potential to

undermine not only capitalism, but also racism and (hetero)sexism.

In effect, globalization talk denotes as well the new forms of resistance

that spring from the conditions of the globalization of capital and labor,

such that it is inferred that aglobalization from below is also taking place.Terms such as global civil society, transnational social movements, cosmo-

politan democracy and global citizenship serve to emphasize the notion ofoverlapping, shared economic and political interests across national

boundaries that have the potential to undo the asymmetries and contra-

dictions that were previously insurmountable. These neologisms imply the

need to create transnational forms of politicization from below to counter

transnational capitals new forms of surplus extraction and supranationalgovernance.3 The objective of constructing a virtual, imagined trans-

national community of diverse social movements is indicative of this sort

of utopia of a globalized unified world of resistance where nations and

national identities lose their symbolic and material force, and multiplehybrid identities prefigure the postglobalization era of the future (Escobar,1999).

With the destabilization of the nation state as a fixed territory of capitalaccumulation, of identity formation and as a place of struggle of peoples,

an opposition between the local and the global is constituted whereby the

global (or transnational) appears to gain precedence over the local.4The

global or transnational (these terms are used interchangeably here) becomes

a privileged space to inflect political meanings and strategies. Locationsand places evaporate as inessential contexts of political struggle and

economic surplus production. In this sense, only territorial points that are

saturated by global forces such as zones with intense traffic of migrants,global assembly lines, finance capital flows, global media production,cyberspace, global institutions, conferences and so forth acquire a real

social, political and economic significance.5 Global cities like Los Angelesand New York or border spaces such as the border between Mexico and US

could be seen as such territorial points and, of course, the Internet thatplace which is, par excellence, the non-place of all.

In this form, politics becomes evanescent, dense and often a virtual

activity. It appears to occur through flows, linkages, scapes and circuits andless through vertical lines. UN world conferences can be seen as prototypes

of these global political interactions as well as the political networks on the

Internet. Only when indigenous peoples or Third World women and

feminists take their struggles to the Internet or the UN do they become

politically significant, but not in their local political manifestations of



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resistance. When the Zapatistas in Chiapas make their demands in cyber-

space, their cause becomes transnational. What happens at the local level

lacks in substance unless it hits cyberia or is hypermediatized and becomes

a global spectacle. Consequently, it is not place per se, but the non-place of

networks, flows, circuits the transcendence of geographical, social,

economic, cultural and political locations that builds transnationalpolitics and history.

In this view, inevitably, those who operate at the global level must consti-

tute the historical subjects of transnationalism or the process of globaliz-

ation from below. The Third World immigrant in global cities, the global

worker in free trade zones, the global activist, cyborg, queer migrant, trans-

national environmentalist or feminist represents the revolutionary and

subversive agent of the era of globalization.

Transnational feminisms

Although many feminists adhere to what is postulated in contemporary

globalization theories and transnationalism, as described above, some

would see this overarching way of understanding globalization as a

masculinist recuperation of Marxism and poststructuralism (Kaplan and

Grewal, 1999: 352). Foremost, what this male transnational thinking leaves

out, postcolonial feminists would say, is the gendered and patriarchal

nature of the moribund nation state and nationalist politics and the reliance

on the exploitation of Third World female labor of the global economy. Andstill others would add that the masculinist nature of the technoculture of

the Internet is also overlooked. If globalizationist male thinkers obliterate

the gendered nature of globalization, then feminists need to develop their

own transnational theories tofill in the gaps that their thinking leaves open.However, feminists have always given their own coinage and history to

terms such as globalism and transnationalism. Robin Morgans concept ofglobal sisterhood, as we know, is frequently seen as a founding element of

global feminism (Morgan, 1984; for a critique, see Mohanty, 1992).

Assuming a universal patriarchy and a common experience of oppression

of women around the globe, early feminists of the second wave believed

that women could build a unified front against patriarchy by disregardingdivisions of class, race, sexuality and national origin between women. And,

more recently, Charlotte Bunch has reconstituted the notion of global

feminism in an add and stir formula whereby diverse, local, and partic-ularized womens movements (2001: 132) conglomerate into a globalrainbow coalition against male discrimination and violence. But older

concepts such as the housewifization of work, developed by Germansocialist feminists (see Mies et al., 1988), also articulated a certain kind of

feminist globalism. For instance, the idea that the conditions of womenshousework were becoming a generalized form of labor exploitation under

late capitalism and that this created a common context of exploitation and

domination among women of the First and Third Worlds (and Third World

peasants subsistence producers as well as marginalized urban dwellers)

implicated a nexus that in many ways transcended national boundaries and



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even gender and class standpoints. Nevertheless, this nexus was encoded

in an internationalist and Marxist framework rather than a global feminist

one, and the context of imperialism was taken into consideration and not

fully ignored as in a global feminism. Other Marxist feminist concepts such

as capitalist patriarchy and dual system theories are also remnants of an

imagined unified context of domination and exploitation of First and ThirdWorld women. These concepts presumably also build upon the potential

of a political solidarity among women across the First/Third World divide

because of the assumed universality of patriarchy and the gendered inter-

national division of labor as well as the salience given to the value of

womens housework in the process of capitalist accumulation.Western feminist approaches to development present us with an inter-

esting case of global feminism.6 Operating within the developmentparadigm that irrefutably attributes economic, cultural and political superi-

ority to the West, development global feminists are not misled by illusorynotions of equality, sameness and automatic solidarity between women of

the First and Third Worlds based on a presumably shared gender oppres-

sion. On the contrary, western feminist development approaches rely on

the notion ofinherent inequality between women of the First and ThirdWorlds which produces a global feminism whereby First World feminists

are positioned as saviors of their poor Third World sisters. To secure this

position, they must rely, according to Mohanty (1991), on a homogenized

version of women wherein no distinctions of class, race, ethnicity or sexu-

ality exist on either side of the divide. So, in the end, what we have is abinary distinction between First and Third World women. Interestingly

enough, global feminist solidarity becomes here an orchestrated process of

gender planning conceived, directed (and even funded) by First World

women in which Third World women learn to develop the capabilities they

are missing to lead less oppressive and exploited lives. Thus, development

becomes the grand equalizer between women in a world divided into

developed, developing and less developed nations. In this manner,

development becomes the substance of global feminist solidarity. It is

important to note that this form of global feminist politics also shapes

middle-class Third World feminisms that condone gender development

approaches. Instead of resisting the imperializing effects of the develop-

ment paradigm, Third World feminist developmentalists also repeat them

in their own planning and mobilizing interventions in their respective

countries.

More recently, transnational feminist theorists who work within a post-

colonial theoretical framework have rejected both the universalizing

tendencies of these earlier feminist formulations of globalism and the

reliance on binary myths such as the strict division of Third and First

Worlds, the global and the local. Many also distance themselves from aMarxist analysis that grants capitalism an overdetermining role in the

structuring of social reality and emphasize instead the cultural formations

that underlie the global economy. According to them, the essentialism,

Eurocentrism and exclusion of histories outside of capitalism as well as the

discursive and cultural dimensions of power make many of these earlier



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theories inadequate to understand the historical and political configur-ations of the colonial and postcolonial worlds. On the other hand, they hold

that the gender monotony, particularly of globalist feminist theories,

constrains the analysis to power relationships between men and women

and pre-empts a fuller understanding of the relationships between women

from different races, classes, cultures and nations. These theorists tend tofocus less on political economic issues and more on issues related to travel,

immigration, forced removals, diasporas and asylum as well as travel for

educational needs which then become privileged sites from which to

analyze the encounters between women that were ignored in previous

feminist global theories. To be sure, this revision of global sisterhood has

produced a vast and rich literature that allows an intersectional analysis

and a transversal politics not possible within a global sisterhood framework

(see Basu, 1995; Grewal and Kaplan, 1994; Kaplan et al., 1999; Narayan,

1997).The major contributions that transnationalist postcolonial feminists have

made to both masculinist versions of transnationalism and previous

feminist globalism can be seen in their unveiling of the gendered, patriar-

chal, racialized and (hetero)sexualized character of nationalism. The use of

the iconography of the family and blood ties to construct the national

imaginary and the metaphoric use ofwoman as nation (Grewal andKaplan, 1994: 22) stands in the middle of this feminist transnational post-

colonial critique which demystifies and dismantles anti-colonial and

nationalist liberation struggles as male heterosexist constructs and asreconstitutions of male national power in the aftermath of colonialism.

Interestingly, what this kind of analysis has enabled, at the same time, is

the uncovering of the complicity of white women in the history of colonial-

ism and imperialism.7 In sum, feminist transnational postcolonial studies

have been able to call into question and destabilize the boundaries of

nation, race, gender and sexuality that were built into earlier feminist inter-

nationalist and globalist theories and have revealed the complex relation-

ship of national feminisms. They have made possible the analysis of

gender, race and sexuality beyond the confinement of national borders andgenerated the necessary spaces to establish the connections between

women of different nations and cultures, but also of different feminisms.

Moreover, they have enabled a notion of feminisms that take root outside

of the West and that are not co-dependent on western feminisms. They have

thereby exposed the asymmetries and inequities between women and the

particularities of feminist movements that result from transnational post-

coloniality and raised serious questions about the possibil ities for feminist

alliances across discrepant and distinct social conditions and historical

axes (see Kaplan et al., 1999: 16). Instead of ignoring differences between

women, romanticizing feminist global relationships (as global feministswould do) or assuming essential distinctions between First and ThirdWorld women, feminist transnationalists depart and theorize from these

differences.

While enabling these important insights and perspectives, the kinship of

feminist postcolonial and transnational studies with male postcolonial



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theorists continues to perpetuate some of the problems of postcolonial

theory. One of these is the refusal to include aspects of a Marxist frame-

work in the construction of their texts. For example, they fail to develop

the connection between gender, nation state and mobile transnational

capital in political economic terms. How exactly do their theories address

questions of economic inequity and redistribution and/or how is theirpolitics of culture intertwined with the poli tics of economic redistribution?

Even Spivaks eccentric use of classical Marxism or of terms such as theinternational division of labor, although extremely useful to connect

political economic issues to cultural questions, leaves us in the end

clueless about how transnational capitalism will be brought to bear on

economic injustices at a local or global scale and how Third and First World

feminists will strategize and coalesce against transnational capitalism. 8

Another related problem of transnational feminist postcolonial theorists

is their attachment to poststructuralist analyses of cultural systems ofrepresentation. Their entrenchment in a postmodern critique of modernity

and nationalism often leads them to instantiate their critique of the history

of the nation in merely cultural terms.9 The notion of the nation as a

gendered, racialized and sexualized imagined community is explained

almost exclusively through its representational politics and performativity,

overlooking the configuration of the nation state as a necessary territorial-ization of capitalist relations of production and class formation in specificmoments in history. By setting up their argument in mainly cultural terms,

such theorists occlude the processes of surplus value production, extrac-tion and capital expanded reproduction in the formation of classes and

reduce the concept of class to general notions such as inequalities and

asymmetries instead of a category of economic exploitation. The erasure of

the role of capitalism in the structuring of the nation state makes it very

difficult to analyze class exploitation in conjunction with its transversalitywith gender, race and sexual formations across national boundaries and

therefore impossible to envision the obstacles that prevent feminist

alliances across these and other divides.

Some feminist transnational postcolonial scholars advocate an inte-

gration of methodologies that bring together colonial discourse analysis,

gender, political economy and the international division of labor analysis

by making Marxism and poststructuralism compatible and not merely

cohabiting in a palimpsest (see Kaplan and Grewal, 1999); Mohantysarticle Women Workers and Capitalist Scripts (1997) is a case in point. Inher analysis of case studies of Third World women workers in three distinct

geographical spaces (India, the USA and Britain), she demonstrates how

ideological constructs such as domesticity, femininity and race contribute

in all areas to define Third World womens work as less valuable and thus

more exploitable than mens, but also less valuable than western whitewomens work. In many places, we see how local, traditional and externalcapitalist patriarchal idiosyncrasies combine, transform each other and

redefine the meanings of womens work. We can follow the intricatedynamics of class, gender, race and sexual power systems in the process of

surplus production and also in its transnational linkages to global capital;



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something Nancy Fraser attempted to do in her Justice In terrup tus(1997),

but could not succeed in because of the parochial nature of her analysis,

the lack of attention to transnational economic structures or the Euro-

American bias of her schema of economic redistribution and cultural recog-

nition.

Indeed, Mohanty (1997) not only recuperates the centrality of ThirdWorld womens work to transnational capital accumulation that masculin-ist globalization theories leave out, but also situates culture in terms of a

global capitalism that many feminist postcolonialists leave untheorized.

While masculinist transnational theorists emphasize the diminished

importance of manufacturing work and give prominence to communi-

cative, intellectual immaterial labor in the service sector, Mohanty stresses

the importance of female labor in the manufacturing sector for trans-

national capital and the ways in which distinct local patriarchal cultures

converse to facilitate Third World female labors economic exploitation.This allows her to reveal the transnational linkages between Third World

women across national boundaries and conclude that potential for a trans-

national solidarity exists between them. However, because Mohanty uses

an extended definition of Third World women by including Third Worldimmigrant women in the West, transnationality and class alliances are

limited to these women and the places they inhabit. Thus cross-class

alliances between them and non-Third World women workers and/or class

alliances between women workers in other sectors of the global economy

or cross-class alliances between First World women consumers and ThirdWorld women workers do not fit into this theoretical scheme of trans-national solidarity. This may be in part because she wants to convey that

what makes the citizen consumer idea possible in transnational capitalism

is largely the work of Third World women, but also because she leaves

untheorized the contradictions of class, race, ethnicity and sexuality

between women within and beyond the confines of national borders.So what would be the basis of a feminist transnationalism that transcends

class, race and national boundaries in Mohantys terms? Clearly, such abasis cannot exist within transnational capitalism under her terms. This is

where Mohanty draws the line between her view of feminist transnational

solidarity and previous understandings of global sisterhood that ignored

differences between women. This may be reasonable not only because it

de-essentializes women and takes away the demagogic overtones of global

sisterhood politics, but also because it recuperates capitalism as a struc-

turing force in the world and enables transnational postcolonial feminism

to entertain political economic issues within their theories. Yet we are stillleft with a theoretical and political void to understand the transnational

linkages between Third and First World women and to develop a feminist

transnational solidarity that takes into account what divides women.

Transnational feminist practices

The difficulty of building a feminist transnational solidarity across class,race, ethnicity, sexuality and nations becomes more evident if we move to



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the terrain of transnational feminist practices in the global political arena.

For instance, western feminists working within the womens rights ashuman rights movement accuse feminists that emphasize womens differ-ences of obstructing the recognition of womens rights as human rights inthe global arena. Feminists like Susan Moller Okin argue that, while Third

World feminists were busy negotiating with the UN for the inclusion ofrape, domestic violence, reproductive rights violations, unequal oppor-

tunities for girls and women in education, employment, housing, credit

and health care in the human rights charter, First World academics andalso Third World feminist academics working in western universities were absorbed in obtuse theorizations of womens class, racial, sexual andnational differences (Okin, 1998).10 Interestingly, she chooses Mohantyswork to characterize this form of theorization as a blockade between

western feminist scholars and Third World activists and to prove her point

that, at the practical level, Third World feministsfind nothing but common-alities between women around the world. So, from this point of view, it

appears that the real divisions between women are those that run between

western feminist scholars and Third World feminist activists and not class,

race, sexuality or nationality. Okins view implies a division of intellectualand practical manual labor that assigns intellectual work to western and

alienated non-western feminists scholars working in western academia and

manual practical activity to Third World global activists, which fails to

recognize feminist theoretical production in the Third World.

That aside, Okins stand-in for Third World activists and her assessmentof the womens rights as human rights movement are flawed on severalcounts. First, she frames Third World feminist activism for human rights

within a global sisterhood in a way that is a decontextualization, depoliti-

cization and misrepresentation of the actual way in which human and

womens rights issues are raised and negotiated within the countriesconcerned and in the global arena. Second, her contention that Third World

feminist NGOs active in the global arena are direct representatives of Third

World women ignores and simplifies the internal contradictions thatplague the political processes behind this representation and, once again,

obscures the differences and conflicts of class, race, sexuality and nation-ality between women.11Third and perhaps one of the most difficult issuesto address in the womens rights as human rights movement and in Okinsapplication of global sisterhood is the question of the advantages oferasing cultural diversity in the conceptualization of human rights. But

perhaps the question is wrongly formulated. It is no doubt an ethical and

political (and, for that matter, social and economic) necessity to do away

with cultural justifications that legitimate womens rights violations and toexpand the human rights definition to include violations that concern

particularly women.12To pose the matter first in culturalist terms, shouldthe question perhaps be whose cultural justifications will be eliminated inthis process and through what channels can they be put forward as cultural

justifications of womens rights violations? In other words, who sets theagenda? Can African, Asian or Latin American women elevate the issue of

anorexia and other eating disorders that western women suffer to a human



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rights issue in the same manner that genital mutilation has been framed by

western feminists? Can veiled Muslim women elevate the issue of the

sexual objectification of women in the West in the same manner the veilhas been understood in the West, that is, as solely a cultural oppression of

women? Can we reduce these questions to matters of the individual choices

that western women enjoy as members of advanced societies versus thelimited choices of Third World women as members oftraditional, patriar-chal and poor societies (as many argue in the West)? What, in the end, isto be counted as cultural? This way of putting the cultural question reveals

its inaccuracy, as we suspect that womens rights violations are not simplya matter of culture. Evidently, defining the cultural in this global discussionof womens rights as human rights cannot merely be seen as a transactionor negotiation between diverse cultures. In fact, what we see is a trans-

action or a negotiated process that takes place along the divides determined

by the structures of transnational capitalism (and the legacies of colonial-ism and empire), and which is performed and reiterated in the global arena.

Surely the cultural/economic distinction is not very helpful at this point.

This I believe should be taken into account in transnational feminist

thinking and politics.

I will end with one last example of the troubled terrain of feminist trans-

national practice by considering the Latin American feminist experience.

As we know, the 1990s signified a shift from local activism to transnationalactivism in Latin American feminisms. The concentration of their activi-

ties in UN megaconferences, particularly in the Beijing process, is emblem-atic of this shift.13To understand this, we must remind ourselves that Latin

American feminisms throughout the region first went through a constitu-tive phase marked by a delinking from male left-wing organizations, an

institutional building process that concluded with the formation of auton-

omous feminist organizations, and a configuration of feminist politics thatwas defined by its critical distance from the state. Feminist activism in thisearly phase correlated with community-based womens movements, andthe major concerns of feminists of this time (gender consciousness raising)

conjugated well with community-based struggles (struggles for local

provision of public services). One can say that the original feminist project

was the construction of a popular feminism rooted in local community

struggles, to be led by feminist organic intellectuals of the urban middle

classes. We see expressed here a sort of vanguardism that invokes Grams-

cian and Leninist influences and a political horizon still rooted in nationstate imagery. Nevertheless, politicization and mobilization were set out

more in terms of redefining politics by a critical stance towards publicdiscourse, the practice of direct democracy and the creation of a counter-

culture. The subversion of the private sphere and the revolutionizing of

everyday li fe were at stake in feminist politics. Micropolitics, the changingof ideas about gender, sexuality and the sense of self, the building of

womens organizations and leadership within the popular sectors were alsoat issue. All these issues underscored the local in an unmediated sense,

that is, the local was territorialized in the local spaces of the organizations

and communities involved, and the here and now was crucial to feminist



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politics. From this perspective, it is understandable that it was the local local conditions, the local experience per se that divided the North andthe South, which we saw mirrored in the North/South feminist conflictsduring the series of UN womens conferences in the decades before the1990s, and which made transnational coalitions more difficult to build.

However, during the 1990s, this type of localism came to a gradual halt.In fact, by 1995 (the year of the Beijing international womens conference),the locus of feminist activism in many Latin American countries had

moved extensively into the transnational arena. Politicization in this sort

of exteriorization of the local is characterized by a turn to public politics,

an intensification of lobbying practices, a jet-setting or increased mobilityof globetrotting feminists mainly urban, middle-class, white mestiza now acting primarily in international conferences and coalescing with

international feminist movements and less at home building an alternative

public sphere along with community-based womens groups. Feministissues became increasingly defined in correspondence with internationaldevelopment agendas, in negotiated processes with other national feminist

movements and international organizations. Local feminist issues were, in

short, translated in terms of a new globalization discourse that emerged

conspicuously in the transnational contexts created mainly by the UN

megaconferences of the 1990s, but also by a deeper enmeshing within the

state and development apparatus. What allowed this shift to take place?

What factors underlay this shift from localism to transnationalism?

Before I turn to these questions, let me say that this shift from localismto transnationalism was traversed and characterized by what I have else-

where called a series of paradoxes. For instance, the constitution of a

feminist statism precisely at a moment when the nation state entered a deep

crisis of legitimacy and sovereignty; a partial abandonment of local cultural

politics when new information and communication technologies aggres-

sively reshaped womens daily lives and cultural understandings; entrap-ment in development discourse and policy-oriented issues at a point when

the paradigm of development was deeply questioned and distrust against

state institutions became generalized among the public;14 a retreat of

feminist groups in NGOs precisely at a juncture of diversification of thewomens movement along the lines of class, race and sexuality (i.e. lesbian,indigenous, class-based womens movements proliferated); a deeplyentrenched involvement in UN conferences and issues when a substantial

deterioration in local conditions and mobilization of poor women was

taking place. It is impossible for me to expand here upon the factors that

help explain this shift and the series of paradoxes that characterize it (not

all of which can be explained by external forces or transnational trans-

actions), however, I do want to mention some of the factors that can help

us understand the shift.First, the return of electoral democracy opened up real opportunities to

advance the feminist agenda.15 In an attempt to take advantage of these new

spaces of power, feminists pushed for more participation in policy-making

decisions, changes in legislation and the setting of quotas in political

parties. Nevertheless, the limited nature of this conciliatory move by the



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state and the political system at the local level quickly prompted feminists

to negotiate their issues in an international arena where governments findthemselves forced to protect their political images in the international

community. This political opportunity allowed feminists to force compro-mises from their governments which would otherwise have been more

difficult to obtain at the local level. A t the same time, however, economicrestructuring and neoliberal policies reduced state intervention in the

social sphere. Structural adjustment programs were put in place, major

welfare programs cut and a profound social sector restructuring took place

that relied on selective provisioning and targeted programs to the poorest

(mainly women and children), to be channeled through the private instead

of the public sector (see Benera and Mendoza, 1995). Feminist organiz-ations, which in the first phase had had close ties with community-basedwomens organizations and had undergone an NGOization process, became

the perfect sites to channel international funds now seeking alternatives tothe state. Feminist organizations wittingly or unwittingly became en-tangled with the development apparatus and neoliberal policies, and even

became financially dependent on them for their subsistence.On the other hand, feminist politics are not shaped nor do they operate

in a political void, as we have seen. They respond to local and international

political and economic structures and forces. So it is not too far removed

to understand feminist political cultures in Latin America as also tainted

by local political cultures. Thus, the political dynamics of feminist or-

ganizations such as internal power struggles, intergenerational conflicts,leftovers of authoritarianism, favoritism and clientelism, as well as remi-niscences of Marxist politics directed mainly at overcoming (or becoming)

state powers, which permeate local, traditional but also progressive

political cultures, often determine feminist political life. This type of

political culture, I believe, also contributes to the shift from localism to

transnationalism.16 In addition, Latin American feminist policy makers

emerge out of local class, race, ethnic and sexual formations. The inter-

section of these different subordinations and the imbalances that they

create in their interplay also determine who is at the front of the transna-

tionalization of feminisms in the subcontinent and what are the contradic-

tions that criss-cross the transnationalization process. Not surprisingly, it

is again urban middle-class, educated, heterosexual and mainly mestiza

feminists who are the ones leading the process.

Consider some of the political consequences of the transnationalization

of Latin American feminisms that could be observed during the 1990s.

Besides the most evident ones the deradicalization of the feminist agenda,the professionalization and developmentalization of feminism, its depoliti-

cization, the deep division of feminist movements between so-called insti-

tucionalizadas/autonomas and, of course, the decontextualization offeminist struggles from the local to the global has been the fragmentationof feminism along the lines of class, race, ethnicity and sexuality. In the

Latin American context, a fragmentation of this nature can be viewed as a

healthy move towards the feminist discussion of race, ethnicity and sexu-

ality that has largely been missing. Nonetheless, this fragmentation has also



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created a division of political labor whereby the professional feminist thegender expert has arrogated the global terrain to themselves without aclear basis of legitimation from local constituencies. This internal division

of global and local feminists interestingly often runs along divisions of

class, race and sexuality, but also along national ones. Given this, Latin

American feminist global interventions often reflect the power imbalancesof the nations of origin of the distinct national feminisms that operate in

the global arena. In this sense, to speak of Latin American feminisms as a

whole must also be seen mainly as an analytical construct, an ideal type

that does not reflect in any manner an empirical reality. All these issuesneed to be taken into account in debates on transnational feminisms.

What do transnational feminisms mean today? Perhaps a preliminary

summary of transnational feminisms is that they represent a serious

attempt to overcome the shortcomings of global sisterhood politics and that

there are clear distinctions between them. Transnational feminist theoriza-tions depart from the differences between women and largely appropriate

contemporary analysis of transnational capitalism to formulate theory and

practice and to understand themselves as generated by a novel trans-

national condition. This differentiates transnational feminisms from global

feminism. However, this same form of theorization of transnational femin-

isms leaves unquestioned (and therefore unanswered) the ways in which

the feminist political project will solve the tensions and divisions between

women across the divides of class, race, ethnicity, sexuality and national

borders. On what grounds will transnational solidarity be built under trans-national capitalist conditions, if it is at all possible?

Paradoxically, it also appears that some strands of transnational

feminism, particularly in that blurry space between global feminism and

transnational theory and practice, still tend to be attached to ideas that

come close to a liberal multicultural stance or a sort of new-found cosmo-

politanism with a subtextual parochialism, rather than being clear about

the investments of transnational capital that lie behind the ideology of

multiculturalism. On the other hand, because transnational feminism is a

term that, as with global feminism before, is mainly circulated within

western feminist academia and is associated with Third World theoretical

production in western academia, it runs the risk of becoming a code word

for Third World feminism. There are already some signs of this in the

romanticization of Third World activism in the global arena and in the limi-

tation of transnational solidarity to Third World women workers across the

First/Third World divide. This means that transnational feminism could

sooner or later stand in as the other of western white feminism.At another analytical level, we can contend that transnational feminisms

may have exacerbated inequalities between women at the local level, as an

analysis of the Latin American feminist transnational experience shows us.Also, at the transnational level itself, transnational feminist practices

demonstrate their shortcomings, as the cultural and political debates

surrounding the womens rights as human rights movement make us aware.At the pragmatic, but also the theoretical, level, transnational feminisms

have not been able to solve the contradictions and ambiguities that lie at



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the heart of global capitalism and the specters of colonialism. It seems thatthe accusation of ethnocentrism that feminism in the West faced in the

1980s and earlier has not been totally excised from transnational feminist

debates and practices.

In short, transnational feminisms have not been able to deliver the bases

for political solidarity between women across class, race, ethnicity, sexu-ality and national borders. In spite of the different frame in which trans-

national feminisms envision themselves in relationship to the theory and

politics of global sisterhood, the notion of transnational feminisms stilldoes not signify a political form of consciousness and organization morefitto negotiate the different positions and interests of women in the globaliz-

ation context. Although admittedly committed to intersectional analysis

and transversal politics and keenly aware of the accusation of ethnocentrism

that contaminated the previous concept of global sisterhood, as well as

dedicated to praxis rooted in postcolonial critiques of racism, ethnocen-trism, sexism and heteronormativity and committed to the subversion of

multiple oppressions, transnational feminist debates still reveal important

gaps between the intentions in terms of its theory and tactics andoutcomes of transnational feminist mobil izations. Many of these gaps derive

from an undertheorization or an inadequate treatment of political economic

issues within feminist postcolonial criticism and their entrapment in

cultural debates. Yet something similar occurs at the practical level when

the interconnectedness of class, race, ethnicity and sexuality is obfuscated,

as in Latin America. We can conclude by saying that the problematicaccounts of transnational feminisms discussed in this article cannot be seen

as a panacea to the issues raised by global sisterhood in any definitive way.Thus, building transnational solidarity remains a task for the future.

Feminists around the globe from their specific locations still need to workon our theories and practices to produce a world worthy of our allegiance(M. Hawkesworth, personal communication, 22 March 2002).17

AcknowledgementsI want to thank Mary Hawkesworth, Jane Bayes, Kathryn Sorrells and Savitri

Bisnath for their patient reviewing of the original version of this article.

Notes1. Charlotte Bunch (2001) defines global feminism as the spread of feminism

around the globe, the feminist global networking that takes place around

UN agendas and what she perceives as the universality of the feminist

struggle around the world in the commonality ofour opposition (to

male discrimination and violence) that presumably enshrines this global

networking.

2. For a discussion of the notion of a common context of struggle, see

Mohanty (1991, 1997).

3. According to Habermas (2001), globalization confronts western states

with the compulsory need to develop cosmopolitan solidarity and a

cosmopolitan democracy that can take over the redistributive functions of

the dismantled welfare state. Without cosmopolitan democracy, Western

Europe will necessarily succumb to the destructive forces of capitalism



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that were domesticated by Keynesian economics. Note however that, in

Habermass terms, cosmopolitanism is reduced to the West, thus revealing

not only its ethnocentric character, but also the function of European

cosmopolitanism as a defense of the West from the rest.

4. The Palestinian/Israeli struggle is considered by many globalists as the

last national liberation struggle in the postnational era. All otherresurgences ofold nationalisms that we are witnessing are from this

perspective to be viewed as reactionary or regressive movements from a

pre-globalization era.

5. Anti-globalization and anti-capitalist street protests, like the ones that

began in Seattle and later spread to other global cities of the First World

(Quebec and Genoa), can be seen also as territorial points that present

high concentrations of global forces. They also received global media

attention. Note that previous anti-globalization and anti-capitalist street

protests in the Third World (Venezuela, Dominican Republic) denouncing

structural adjustment programs in the previous decade went down inhistory as IMF riots perhaps connoting irrationality and a lack of

global substance and, despite the number of casualties, these earlier

street protests did not receive as much media attention as those that have

taken place in the First World (Porto Alegre is a more recent case in

point). Could it be that First World anti-globalization protests acquire a

universal meaning whereas Third World protests are entrapped in a

notion of particularity and localism? To be sure, what will count as global

or local can be as contentious as the concept of universalism in other

discussions. For more on anti-globalization movements across the world,see Starr (2000).

6. For an overview of feminist development approaches, see Viswanathan et

al. (1997) and Jackson and Pearson (1998).

7. See McClintock (1995) for an interesting account of the role of gender in

conquest, colonialism and nationalism.

8. I may not be doing complete justice to Spivaks work. To be sure, Spivak,

like no other postcolonial feminist, has done the most to integrate

Marxism and postructuralism. Her unorthodox use of Marxism still

causes much confusion and has cost her non-exclusion as a Marxist

theorists such as Kaplan and Grewal make us aware (see Kaplan andGrewal, 1999). However, the point here is not whether or not she is an

acceptable Marxist, but how her theory can be translated into

transnational feminist political terms, that is, if that is altogether possible.

And of course, we could not make her responsible for such a state of

affairs.

9. Here I am alluding to Judith Butlers (1997) defense against Marxist

attacks on poststructuralism as a form of culturalism. For masculinist

Marxist critiques of postcolonial theories, see Dirlik (1997) and Ahmad

(1992).

10. Interestingly, Okin fails to mention the crucial role western governments,

particularly the US government, had in the promotion and funding of

activities directed at recognizing womens rights as human rights and

thus the role that First World feminists had in mainstreaming womens

rights in UN agendas. She leaves unmentioned the instrumental role of

First World feminist activism, such as that of Charlotte Bunch in her role



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as director of the Center for Womens Global Leadership, but also her role

as a theorist of womens rights as human rights in her well-known article

(2001). Instead, Okin gives all the credit to Third World feminists that

enter into alliances with First World feminists. For an interesting

discussion of the process of mainstreaming the issue of violence against

women in the UN human rights agenda, see Joachim (2001).11. For a discussion of the political consequences of the NGOization process

of feminist organizations and the specific case of Latin American

feminisms, see Alvarez (1998) and Mendoza (2000).

12. Global feminists working in the realm of womens rights as human rights

also fail to emphasize the inseparabil ity of social, economic and political

rights. This is a result of the encapsulation of the discussion of human

rights in terms of the liberal doctrine that emphasizes individual rights

which First World feminists usually espouse.

13. For a detailed discussion of Latin American feminist involvement in the

Beijing process and its impact on the movement, see Maulen (1998),Mendoza (1996, 2000) and Valente (1992, 1996, 1998, 2000).

14. Nstor Garcia Canclini (2000) speaks of the impact that neoliberalpolicies have had on popular sectors in terms of a growing individualism

and political apathy. Notably, redemocratization processes are

accompanied by a growth of skepticism towards the public sphere by the

general public. Political deliberation has been reduced to farcical gossipor a media spectacle.

15. For a detailed account of the impact of democratization processes on

Latin American feminisms, see Alvarez (1998).16. For insights into internal feminist power struggles within feminist

organizations, see Mendoza (1996).

17. I am indebted to Mary Hawkesworth for this and many other thoughts

through personal conversations and her commentaries to this article.

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Breny Mendoza is a Honduran scholar currently holding a position as an

assistant professor at California State University, Northridge in the womens

studies and political science departments. She obtained her PhD in 1994 from

Cornell University and her Masters at the Free University of Berlin. She has

taught at Cornell University, Ithaca College and Wells College. She has also

taught at the Catholic Pontificial University of Lima and the National

Autonomous University of Honduras. Her area of research is Latin American

feminisms. Currently she is working on a book concerning the relevance of

western feminist political theory, postcolonial and queer theory to Latin

American feminist politics.

Address:Womens Studies Department, College of Humanities, California

State University, Northridge, 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, CA

913308251, USA. Email: [email protected]


Transnacional Feminisms in Question ( Breny Mendoza)

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