How to be famous
You’ll remember (won’t you?) that my favorite commenter on the FGM question told us that all this had been thoroughly sorted out by the great and famous Chandra Mohanty. I was moved to find out more.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty (born 1955) is a prominent postcolonial and transnational feminist theorist. She became well-known after the publication of her influential essay, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” in 1986. In this essay, Mohanty articulates a critique of the political project of Western feminism in its discursive construction of the category of the “Third World woman” as a hegemonic entity.
Ah, good. I’m relieved to know that she took care of that. It’s always irked me, the political project of Western feminism in its discursive construction of the category of the “Third World woman”. You know? The way Western feminists talk about ‘the Third World woman’ all the time and what they’re going to do to her and what an exciting project it is.
Okay I’m lying. I’ve never in my life heard a feminist talk about ‘the Third World woman.’ It’s a stupid category that is way too big and undifferentiated to use for the ‘discursive construction’ of anything. That’s not necessarily Mohanty’s fault, it could be just the fault of whatever acolyte wrote the Wikipedia entry – but whoever wrote that silly sentence, it’s a classic of strawman nonsense. It’s also a good example of doing the very thing one is aiming to ‘critique’ – it treats ‘Western feminism’ as a ‘hegemonic entity’ by discursively constructing it as such. In other words it generalizes wildly about ‘Western feminism’ in the course of charging (by implication at least) ‘Western feminism’ with generalizing wildly. In short, it’s stupid and complacent. And typical. ‘Theory’ punches itself in the eye again.
Actually, “postcolonial and transnational feminist theorist” is the give-away. You needn’t read all the way down to “hegemonic” to know it’s bullshit.
Or even before that, with ‘prominent.’ Prominent? Prominent? Prominent according to whom? Prominent according to other postcolonial and transnational feminist theorists, presumably, which is not really all that ‘prominent.’ This business of calling each other famous, celebrated, influential, important, significant, groundbreaking, a star, and a household name is another dead giveaway of High Theoretical bullshit. Real scholars don’t do that. It’s only the ones who make stuff up with The Power of Words who do that. The more obscure, footling, self-admiring, beside the point and empty a discipline is, the more it is driven to announce how famous and earth-shattering it is.
Theory is as theory does. It therefore isn’t.
I have often proposed that a crack team of Theorists be set up to defend against intercontinental nuclear attack.
As soon as the warning goes out they could deconstruct the hegemonic patriarchal narratives of the scientism-laden presupposition of the objective existence qua existence of said “attack”, thereby rendering it moot in culturally constructed reality.
Strangely even Theorists never want to take me up on this.