"The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House"/"Under Western Eyes"

(We originally discussed this text on 2/26/20. This post began as an email offering contextual information and light analysis of Audre Lorde's "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House" and Chandra Talpade Mohanty's "Under Western Eyes")

Per Maia and Henry's recommendations, we will read Audre Lorde's short speech, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House" and Chandra Talpade Mohanty's "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses." 

For context, Lorde originally gave this speech in 1979 at the Second Sex conference in New York. The conference was staged by a group of American feminists to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Simone de Beauvoir's seminal text, The Second Sex, which contains the famous quote, "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." de Beauvoir's statement identifies a distinction between the socially constructed category of "Woman" (which is defined as inferior and oppressed in relation to the category of "Man") and the infinitely diverse and unfixed experiences and beliefs of individuals who are captured within the category of "Woman." As you read, take note of the irony of Lorde's speech. Why must she, at a conference organized by individuals who are well aware of the danger of assuming that no differences exist between people grouped under the category "Woman," make such a passionate plea for American feminist discourse to acknowledge its failure to consider and uplift the different experiences of Black, lesbian, poor, and "Third World" women? (We can also discuss the historical context behind Lorde and Mohanty's use of "Third World") 

This thread of irony continues and intensifies in the structure of Mohanty's essay, which she published in boundary 2 in 1984. Mohanty is explicitly interested in critiquing the discursive means through which colonialism is reproduced, even when the physically violent regimes of domination appear to go away. Like Lorde and de Beauvoir, Mohanty identifies a difference between the social and descriptive category of "Woman" within Western feminist discourse and the myriad experiences of "Third World" women. For Mohanty, Western feminism creates the discursive category of "Woman" in order to make itself the central referent or norm--all other societies are judged as being "good" or "bad" or "liberatory" or "oppressive" in relation to Western feminism's fantastic image of itself. This framework is particularly troubling for Mohanty (and, I argue, Lorde) because Western feminism's claim to Truth or righteousness depends on its total opposition to the logic and language of colonialism and patriarchy. However, as we will see in these two essays, the process of detaching from "Daddy" (as a social, biological, epistemological, historical, sexual, and economic construct) is neither easy nor ever complete. 

So, how would one go about developing ways to articulate and value differences between women without reproducing the category of "Woman" as a transparent, always-already oppressed referent?

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