Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s revolutionary piece, “Under Western Eyes: Feminists Scholarship and Colonial Discourse” (1984), is brilliant, blunt, and unforgiving in its appraisal of Western feminist scholarship discourse. Mohanty thoroughly and productively critiques the then current state of “inadequate self-consciousness” (335) and ethnocentrism coming out of feminist scholarship on the “third world.”
Mohanty streamlines her grievances with western/”first world” feminist discourse into three bullet point principles: 1) the assumption of women as a coherent group with identical interests, desires, oppressions the globe over, regardless of historical, geographical location and specificity; 2) uncritical use of particular methodologies in providing “proof” of this ahistorical,unified and universal group; and 3) the homogenous notion of the oppression of women (336-337). These principles come together to create a universal notion of “third world women,” which are then acted upon as objects subject to universal patriarchy.
The problem Mohanty points out with this, and is perhaps the most problematic with the discourse in my eyes, is then therefore, one would logically conclude there is a universal answer to universal patriarchy effecting all these “women.” “Male violence must be theorized and interpreted within specific societies, both in order to understand it better, as well as in order to effectively organize to change it” (339). In addition to needing specific and contextualized solutions, we first need to identify and acknowledge contextualized, living, breathing woman. “As Michelle Rosaldo states: ‘. . . woman’s place in human social life is not in any direct sense a product of the things she does (or even less, a function of what, biologically, she is) but the meaning her activities acquire through concrete social interactions'” (340). Therefore, when western feminists take her out of context, remove her from her culture, its history, her location, and her intersecting life and daily choices, we colonize her agency; is there any worse a feminist sin?
I spend so much time on her original work, not because I don’t find her 2003 follow up, “‘Under Western Eyes’ Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles” any less brilliant or painstakingly representative of the field’s required attention today, but because as a western/”first world”/one-third feminist (whether I like it or not), I’m guilty of these colonizing traps myself, and would be hard pressed to ask my peers, especially those with a focus on global, basic human rights issues, are you guilty too? This isn’t meant to make one feel guilt, but instead feel the depth of responsibility in researching and reporting on a woman whose daily responsibilities, family history, society, village, we know very little about yet feel entitled to speak and write about based on the sole fact she’s subject to female genital cutting.
A post strictly dedicated to Mohanty’s 2003 piece is to follow as I find that one extremely pertinent to the women’s studies field for my generation of corporitized, privatized, commodified, individuals, but I leave you with one request before closing this one. For our discussion on Tuesday, please come prepared to speak about a research project, paradigm of thought, or a specific example of how you may have colonized a woman’s and/or women’s agency. Be prepared to use the language and feminist vocabulary Mohanty so eloquently lays out for our field of study in her 1984 piece.
Confessions of a Bleeding Heart 
I agree with you that Western feminists ought not to let Mohanty’s very valid critique discourage research pertaining to women in “third-world” countries. Instead, I think she has given us a tool in the form of an incredibly useful framework that works to rid ethnocentrism from feminist research (or at the very least make us aware of it). It is certainly quite a challenge, but perhaps not impossible if we are constantly exercising reflexivity, and if we are careful to always consider/incorporate the criticisms and voices of others into our work.