Introduction: Why Feminisms and Internationalism?

Abstract

We arrived at the theme for this special issue on 'Feminisms and Internationalism' from a desire to think together, on the one hand, the wide range of different feminisms and women's movements as they have emerged in historically specific sociopolitical contexts, 1 and, on the other, the universalist ideals that have been claimed historically on behalf of feminism. 2 These ideals appear in some contexts as mere ideology and in others as valuable utopian goads to a better political practice. In either case, moreover, such ideals have had international and transnational implications. The choice of Feminisms and Internationalism, therefore, reflects our own attempt to acknowledge, and to work through, the productive tension between the centrifugal force of discrepant feminist histories and the promising potential of political organising across cultural boundaries. Our approach to the special-issue topic has been informed by the contribution of some recent feminist scholarship that has raised new questions about the relation between the local and the global contexts of women's movements and feminisms world-wide.We identify several strands of this scholarship as pertinent to our project. Our thinking has been informed, for example, by the valuable critiques that several feminist scholars have made of the use, as if they were self-evident, of such concepts as 'universal sisterhood' and 'global feminism', positing thereby either a bodily identity or a common experience of oppression supposedly shared by women all over the world. 3 These claims of universalism on behalf of an international feminist solidarity have been shown, in fact, to rest on an unreflective equation of the 'provincial' 4 or parochial experience of certain dominant versions of feminism in Western Europe and North America as the paradigmatic form of feminism per se. Thus such paradigms of 'universal sisterhood' inevitably run afoul of the many divisions between women along the lines of class, race, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, First World/Third World, and so on. At the same time, however, we have also learned from a feminist scholarship that has warned against the easy alternative of merely positing a plurality of feminisms organised around some absolute conception of national and/or cultural difference over and against the universalist project of feminism. For, as Rey Chow cautions:The attempt to deconstruct the hegemony of patriarchal discourses through feminism is itself foreclosed by the emphasis on 'Chinese' as a mark of absolute difference. To my mind, it is when the West's 'other women' are prescribed their 'own' national and ethnic identity in this way that they are most excluded from having a claim to the reality of their existence. 5What is becoming clear is that 'woman' needs to be disarticulated from its function as the designated embodiment of culture and that cultures themselves need to be recognised not as fixed products but in terms of historical processes. 6 The retreat into discrete national or cultural feminisms, moreover, for...

An Intimate and Imperial Feminism: Meliscent Shephard and the Regulation of Prostitution in Colonial India

“…Naidu highlighted that feminism, like gender, emerged in a highly politicised context of European imperial control (also see Burton, 1999). As such, the issue of universalist ideals versus specific contextualisations was as much a historical, practical one as it is now a contemporary, theoretical one (Sinha et al, 1999). Whilst feminism made universalist claims, in the late 19th century it was mostly associated with suffrage throughout the empire (Mayhall et al, 2000).…”

The All-Asian Women's Conference 1931: Indian women and their leadership of a pan-Asian feminist organisation

“…It was this 'embattled and precarious national consciousness' that had galvanised a drive towards internationalism in a new direction. 33 It should be noted that the models of international associations for women, such as the International Alliance of Women, International Council of Women and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, were dominated by socially elite women. As Leila Rupp has shown, it was only women who had the leisure time and independent means to travel and take part in activities who could do so.…”

Introduction: Gender, Imperialism and Global Exchanges

“…we can observe the shift to the more decentred global structures of transnational capitalism. 54 If these vital insights perhaps speak most directly to Katherine Marino's article on Pan-American feminist activism, they also apply to W. Chris Johnson's contribution on black radicalism and anti-colonialism. And, whereas Lorena Rizzo does not necessarily speak to organised political activism in her article, her work provocatively explores how people navigated colonial regimes and manipulated existing structures in order to attain passports required to realise their desire or need to be mobile.…”