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Under Western Eyes – Summary

Chandra Mohanty became widely known and celebrated (as well as critiqued) after her essay "Under
Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses," which was originally published in 1986.
"Under Western Eyes" is the opening chapter of Feminism Without Borders, a collection of mostly
previously published work representing Mohanty's significant contribution to feminist post-colonial and
transnational studies over the last two decades. This widely cited and many times reprinted essay was
hugely influential to those engaged in cross-cultural feminist scholarship. The essay demonstrated that
many researchers, particularly those trained and inserted within Western feminist scholarship, have
tended to produce monolithic, universalizing, and essentializing constructions of women in the Third
World. Mohanty was particularly critical of the discursive production of the `Third World woman' in
writings on Gender and Development that tended to erase historical and geographical specificity.
"Under Western Eyes" alerted us to the dangers of assuming that women are a coherent group upon
which social, economic, or political processes act and enabled us to produce work which engaged more
seriously with the politics of knowledge production.

Mohanty begins by pointing out the fact that even if the process of colonization may appear to be
sophisticated, it includes a suppression of the heterogeneity of the subjects. She admits that even the
western feminist discourse and political practice is not singular and homogenous. But she attempts to
draw attention to certain effects of various textual strategies used by particular writers that codify
Others as non- Western and themselves as Western.

Two dimensions of the term ‘Woman’

The term ‘woman’ can be seen in two dimensions

1. As a cultural and ideological composite Other constructed through diverse representational

discourses like science, cinema, judiciary, language, literature etc.
2. As real, material subjects of their collective histories.
The relationship between these two dimensions of the term is what the practice of feminist
practice seeks to address. This relation is an arbitrary relation set up by particular cultures.

Critique of Hegemonic Feminist Discourse of the West

“Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” (1986) by Chandra Talpade
Mohanty is perhaps the first ever written critique of the hegemonic feminist discourse of the West by an
Indian. In her essay, Mohanty analyzes the portrayal of the “Third World Women” as presented in
Western feminist works. She not only exposes but also provides a critique of hegemonic “Western”
feminisms. Mohanty detects the so-called “colonialist move” in a number of Western radical and liberal
feminist writings, and accordingly marks out three analytical presuppositions in those texts which led to
the production of the Third World Woman as “a singular and monolithic subject”.
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The practices of Western scholarship fail to visualize the heterogeneity of the Third World Women
primarily because

1. Of certain assumptions of privilege and ethnocentric universality

2. Of inadequate self consciousness about the effect of Western scholarship on the ‘third world’, in
the context of a world system dominated by the West.

First World and Third World Women

Mohanty exposes certain principles which western scholarship employs for the overgeneralization of
women into Western and Third World.

1. The assumption that women are an already constituted, coherent group with identical interest
and desires, regardless of class, ethnic or racial location.
2. The uncritical use of particular methodologies in providing ‘proof’ of universality and cross
cultural validity.
3. The model of power which the West puts forth; namely, the humanist, classical notion of men as
oppressors and women as oppressed. This universal concept of patriarchy and its stress on the
binary “men versus women” does not take into account the various socio-political contexts,
thereby “robbing” women of their historical and political agency.

Mohanty uncovers ethnocentric notions that ignore the diversity among third world women belonging
to a large geographical spectrum and critiques their grouping under the universal identity as victims.
This overgeneralization tends to damage the solidarity among women by dividing them into two
opposite groups- Western Women (universally liberated, enjoying equality, having control over their
own bodies and sexuality, superior, intelligent, educated, secular, free minded) and Third World Women
(universally uneducated, victimized, sexually battered, religious, family oriented, weak, powerless and
domestic). The Western feminist discourse categorizes third world women as a coherent group with
identical interests, experiences and goals prior to their entry into the socio-political and historical field.
The attitude of white feminists towards third world women is very paternalistic; economic, religious and
familial structures are all judged by Western standards.

Mohanty enhances her argument by bringing examples from various sources.

1. Maria Rosa Cutrufelli’s Women of Africa: Roots of Oppression – Cutrufelli generalizes in this
book that since all African women are economically dependent, their main source of income is
prostitution.
2. The concept of veiling in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, and India- this was looked upon as a
way of sexual control over women. But evidences suggests that other than the patriarchal and
religious enforcement of veiling, there were other reasons too, like the woman who used veil as
a means of solidarity with their working class sisters in Iran during the Revolution of 1979.
3. Reductionist approach by Juliette Minces- Minces argued that since tribe and family are the only
patriarchal social structures that a Muslim woman typically knows, the only status that she
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acquires in a society is that of a mother, wife or sister. Mohanty critiques Minces view, which
assumes a singular kinship system to be the effecting factor of the oppression of women and it
also fails to consider the class and cultural differences that exist between these societies. This
sort of worldview of women in Muslim society victimizes all Muslim women and undermines
their ongoing struggles, efforts and achievements.

The final blow comes with Mohanty’s critique of the white feminists’ concept of “sisterhood” in terms of
common experiences and goals, and the notion of women’s oppression under the monolithic, conspiring
sort of patriarchal dominance. This Western methodology of over-simplification of “facts” does not
appeal to Mohanty. Instead of “sisterhood”, the idea of “solidarity” grabs her attention. In the process,
Mohanty tries to expose the space between the Third World Woman as “representation” versus “real
life” third world women. Here, she is only putting forth her hypothesis that secularization may have
played a pivotal role in the becoming of a white Western feminist consciousness, but this may certainly
not be so for women, globally. Under the Western Eyes informs us that the factor that unites women as
sisters in struggle is the sociological understanding of the “sameness” in withstanding oppression,
regardless of class, culture, or geographical borders we belong to. In her commitment to feminist
solidarity, Mohanty suggests that it is imperative to be mindful of the hegemony of the Western
scholarly establishment when producing and disseminating texts that emphasize monolithic terms such
as “Third World women.” Otherwise we give way to yet another form of discursive colonization that not
only overlooks pluralism but also impedes the cause of women.

In this essay, Mohanty exposes the production of a singular category of ‘Third World Women’ which
damagingly creates the ‘discursive homogenization and systematization of the oppression of women in
the third world’. She recognizes that Western feminism’s attention to ‘Third World’ women is valuable
and laudable. But for a variety of reasons, ‘Third World’ remains subservient to the West, at the levels of
economic wealth, scientific development and technological resources. Mohanty argues thatWestern
feminism cannot escape implication in these global economic and political frameworks and must be
careful not to replicate unequal power relations between the ‘First World’ and ‘Third World’. Yet
Western feminism is in danger of doing this in its analysis of ‘Third World’ women.