Decolonizing Feminism Through Intersectional Praxis

Abstract

Transnational feminism should have normative force and be anti-imperialist. This article addresses the possibility of an anti-imperialist transnational feminism in conversation with Serene Khader's Decolonizing Universalism. Khader argues that the key to an anti-imperialist feminism is separating universalism from the features that result in imperialism, such as ethnocentrism and justice monism. This article shares Khader's commitment to anti-imperialist feminism and further explores three relevant issues: human rights, the definition of feminism, and economic justice. It proposes a decolonizing view of rights that advocates a critical examination of their uses, applications, and origins. It argues that transnational feminism should engage with issues of economic justice. And it proposes that feminism as an intersectional praxis should include normative dimensions in addition to antisexism, such as antiracism and economic justice.

Women’s Assessments of Gender Equality

“…. However, just which set of normative commitments is continually open for debate” ( McLaren 2017 :2, 8, 9, 14).…”

“Willpower knows no obstacles”: Examining Neoliberal Postfeminist Messaging in Nike’s Transnational Advertisements for Women

“…While Nike accurately illustrates the unique challenges that physically active women encounter, importantly, their experiences are not universal. As transnational feminists have demonstrated, women from developing countries and the Global South face innumerable obstacles that have recurrently been ignored, misrepresented, or discounted by Global North, Eurocentric, and white feminists (McLaren, 2017;Mohanty, 2013;Tambe, 2010;Tambe & Thayer, 2021). Nike-clad women are no exception.…”

“…For this reason, we have critiqued Nike's iterative deployment of neoliberal postfeminist themes-specifically responsibilitization, individual competition, and empowerment-through its transnational advertisements, notwithstanding its attention to locally specific elements such as attire, location, and language. By uncritically focusing on the ability of individual women to overcome structural barriers singlehandedly and advancing this message as universally applicable to all women, Nike's advertisements present the neoliberal values of individual responsibility and competitiveness as values synonymous with the liberation of women around the world (Andrews & Silk, 2012;McLaren, 2017). Though the company has constructed a brand identity based on supporting women athletes, their advertisements advance a particularly commodified, neoliberal, Western-centered message of feminist empowerment that ultimately obscures the complex and multidimensional identities of women around the world and opposes the more radical project of envisaging transnational, anticapitalist feminist solidarities.…”

“…To do so, we conduct a textual analysis of six recent Nike advertisements featuring women athletes from across the world: the United States, Mexico, the Middle East, Turkey, India, and Russia. Using a theoretical framework informed by scholarship in transnational feminism, which rejects homogenized and Western-centered ideas of (white, middle-class) feminism and argues that such messaging obscures the operations of "imperial or parochial interests" (Kaplan & Grewal, 1999;McLaren, 2017;Tambe, 2010;Tambe & Thayer, 2021)-we examine and critique the extent to which Nike advertising (mis)represents women of all classes, races, and nationalities through the particular "encoding" (Hall, 1980) of a commodified, universal, Western-centered message of female athletic empowerment within their global marketing campaigns. By de-universalizing and critiquing the particular Western-centrism of Nike's representations of women, our article seeks to buttress and further transnational feminist scholarship on the "differences and inequalities between women" around the world, "such as different priorities and ways of understanding gender issues and different ways of conceptualizing agency" (Enns et al, 2021, p. 12).…”

Violência E Política: Uma Cartografia Das Ciborgues Desde a América Latina

“…Essa secularização do conhecimento e a centralização do poder colonial europeu diz respeito não só a imposição do capitalismo ocidental, europeu e iluminista ao mundo colonizado, mas também à colonização e superação de saberes concretos dentro da própria Europa, suplantando perspectivas indígenas, minoritárias e socialmente marginalizadas. O eurocentrismo também homogeneizou as diferenças entre grupos distintos, ao tornar astecas, maias e demais populações originárias "índios" e as distintas tribos africanas iorubá, azande e outras "africanos" e "negros" (MCLAREN, 2017).…”