Imperialism

Imperialist policies are often implemented and enforced by targeting women because women are often at the heart of a culture&s;s sense of its own essence, soul, and social bond. Some feminism has bolstered imperialism and shared its interests as European feminists demonstrated their independence and autonomy through travel and provided a moral justification in “freeing” women from the oppression of their own cultures. This can be seen, for example, in practices of “unveiling.” At the same time, feminism has often been at the frontlines of anti-imperialist movements. Feminist theory criticizes how women often are caught in a tug-of-war between, on the one hand, local patriarchal cultures, including religious ones, and, on the other hand, imperialism&s;s needs to conscript women to adopt their “liberalizing” ideologies. Instead, feminist theory wants to interpret the “Third World Woman” as an ethics of connection to the not-yet-representable. This chapter considers works by Ann Laura Stoler, Petrus Liu, María Lugones, Françoise Vergès, Marnia Lazreg, Lila Abu-Lughod, Caren Kaplan, Joan Scott, Chandra Mohanty, Rashmi Varma, Carolyn Eichner, Saba Mahmood, Aihwa Ong, Leela Gandhi, and Gayatri Spivak.