(Page 3 of 32) - Danger in the Post-Cold War Era: Nation, Environmental Security and Postcolonial Feminism authored by Urban, Jessica.

“intersections of these relations of ruling that third world feminist struggles are positioned” (Mohanty,
1991b:13).

Finally, Mohanty argues for a project that simultaneously focuses on deconstructing and

dismantling on the one hand, and building and constructing on the other (1991b:51), and this
project forms a core of Postcolonial Feminist understandings of agency and resistance.
Recognizing the diversity of women’s and men’s lives, experiences, and needs, as well as
building genuinely diverse and empowering national and transnational coalitions against all
forms of oppression are critical concerns to many Postcolonial Feminists. They highlight and
argue for resistance that is historically, materially, culturally and politically contextualized, non-
elitist, and directed toward dismantling the entire system of oppression and privilege. In this context,
people are recognized as agents as opposed to homogenized and inferior “victims.” As agents, people
not only reproduce the terms of their existence but also take responsibility for them. Moreover,
dismantling discourses that render some inferior/exploitable interrupts the ideological bases of
oppression. It is a mistake to assume that critiques of universal, essentialized categories of
“womanhood” are also rejections of commonalties and common bonds among women (Trend,
1995:121). While common bonds and room for transnational activism certainly exist, Mohanty
(1991b) and others problematize strict claims of universality and essentialism. Re-evaluations of
history and historicity with women’s and “other” men’s self-determination at its core (Alexander and
Mohanty, 1997:xvi), as well as the creation of autonomous, geographically, historically and culturally
grounded feminist struggles (Mohanty, 1991b:51) are central to the forms of resistance elucidated by
those included in my analytical framework. Although many of the authors in this analytical framework
tend to argue for specific forms of resistance to specific manifestations of oppression, Alexander and
Mohanty also go on to explain that developing transnational feminist movements involves “shifting the
unit of analysis from the local, regional, and national culture to relations and processes across
cultures,” i.e. developing an understanding of the local in the context of the global (1997:xix).

Alexander and Mohanty (1997:xvii) use the term recolonization to refer to the global

realignments and new forms of colonization which, like “traditional” forms of colonization, are based
on hierarchical, racialized and sexualized constructions and systems of domination. Resistance to this
process comes in the form of decolonization, which necessitates thinking and acting oneself out of
spaces of domination. In other words, we must think through an “anti-colonialist, anti-capitalist lens,”
recognize the destructive effects of colonization and then proceed to build “actively anti-colonialist
relationships and cultures” (Alexander and Mohanty, 1997:xxii) without reinforcing homogenized
constructions of the “other as victim.”

In sum, Postcolonial Feminists speak to the need for a new consciousness, one that sees

histories of colonialism, contemporary postcolonial relations, and ideologies and structures of
domination and privilege based on race, nation, class, gender and sexuality as interlocking and
mutually constitutive. Furthermore, they suggest that resistance is useless without an understanding of
this interlocking system. Many also emphasize the importance of redefining “power” in such a way as
to speak to physical and ideological violence as well as economic, ecological and social violence.
Building and sustaining genuinely diverse, empowering transnational movements aimed at “changing
the system” is no easy task, but as Gunning explains, “no one said that multicultural dialoguing or
alliances would be easy. They are just the necessary prerequisites to solid sisterhood” (2000:282).
Recognizing that the theoretical and activist strategies utilized in building transnational movements
have political, social and ethical implications themselves is absolutely crucial because, “the process by
which we struggle for rights is important” (Gunning, 2000:277). Therefore, “good intentions are not
enough. Constant vigilance and self-criticism are required for the feminist or progressive who truly
intends to bridge the multicultural divides to create sisterhood” (Gunning, 2000:276). Finally,
understandings of coalitional activism and social change are crucial to identifying and resisting