Continuing the Conversation on Solidarity- The Local and the Universal

 

 Last week, we continued our conversation on solidarity and focused on chapter four and chapter 6 in Mohanty’s text Feminism without Borders. 

 

Rosa presented on chapter four, Sisterhood, Coalition, and the Politics of Experience. She summarized and highlighted the main points by asking the following questions: 

How do we think about difference in feminist discourse? “Feminist analyses that attempt to cross national, racial, and ethnic boundaries produce and reproduce difference in particular ways. This codification of difference occurs through the naturalization of analytic categories that are supposed to have cross-cultural validity.” (pg. 107) 

Where do we situate commonality? Mohanty points out commonalty is often found along two threads- women as victims or women as truth tellers. She argues instead that discourse around difference must be self- conscious of its production of notions of difference and experience. (pg.  119) 

Do we need a form of commonality to have communication and coalition? Mohanty argues “for a politics of engagement rather than a politics of transcendence.” (pg. 122) 

Puja presented on chapter 6, Women Workers and the Politics of Solidarity. This chapter focuses on the exploitation of poor “third world” women and their agency as workers. Puja highlighted these main points:

Capitalism makes certain women consumers and other producers.  “The fact of being women with particular racial, ethnic, cultural, sexual, and geographical histories has everything to do with our definitions and identities as workers.” (pg. 142) 

The class struggle is a strategic move that pits people against each other. Instead of an intersectional approach, racism, sexism and classism are treated as separate issues that do not inform each other. 

The problem with qualifying work as “women’s work”. “Ideologies of domesticity, femininity, and race form the basis of the construction of the notion of ‘women’s work’ for Third World women in the contemporary economy… women’s work is defined as unskilled, tedious, and supplementary activity for mothers and homemakers. It is a specifically American ideology of individual success, as well as local histories of race and ethnicity that constitute this definition.”(pg. 158) 

 

In response to these presentations, the question was asked, “to what degree is solidarity a personal or impersonal phenomena?” This question occupied the remainder of our discussion time. 

(Notes by Audrey)