Under Western Eyes: Journal Article by Chandra Talpade Mohanty

Feminist Homogenization Critique

Chandra Talpade Mohanty challenges the portrayal of third-world women by Western feminists as a single, uniform group defined mainly by victimhood. She argues that this reductive view ignores the diversity and agency of women in different cultural and historical contexts. Mohanty identifies this as a form of feminist colonialism that imposes Western frameworks and silences alternative voices, reinforcing global power imbalances in feminist discourse.

Intersectionality and Anti-Colonial Feminism

Mohanty situates her critique within a broader intersectional framework, emphasizing how race, class, and geopolitical contexts shape women's experiences worldwide. She exposes how Western feminist narratives replicate colonial power relations by assuming that Western ways of knowing and liberation are universal. Instead, Mohanty calls for solidarity based on mutual respect and contextual understanding rather than rescue missions. Her work advocates for decentering Western knowledge production by amplifying voices from the Global South and recognizing the situated nature of feminist knowledge. This approach seeks to dismantle universalizing discourses and build feminist coalitions through anticapitalist and anti-imperialist struggles that respect cultural specificities.

Knowledge Production and Global Feminism

"Under Western Eyes" foregrounds the politics of knowledge production in feminism by critiquing how Western academia and media construct "third-world woman" stereotypes. Mohanty illustrates how these portrayals serve to maintain hegemonic relations between First and Third World contexts, sustaining ideas of Western superiority. She argues for feminist scholarship that acknowledges power dynamics and the historical specificity of gender oppression. Her call encourages a transformation in global feminist praxis, one that moves beyond static images and embraces the complexity and agency of women worldwide within ongoing transnational anticapitalist struggles.

Key themes

• Critique of Western feminist scholarship's tendency to homogenize and stereotype “Third World women.”
• The importance of analyzing women's situational differences within colonial and capitalist structures.
• Calls for feminist solidarity built on anticapitalist struggles that acknowledge global power inequalities.
• Reconsideration of postcolonial feminist methodologies to include complex social locations and histories.
• The tension between decolonization projects and ongoing globalization shaped by Western hegemony.

Motifs & problems

Mohanty's work recurrently engages with the motif of "Western eyes," symbolizing the dominant Western gaze that frames and often misconstrues non-Western women as homogenous victims. This gaze flattens complex identities into simplistic categories, creating a discursive colonial "Other." A key interpretive crux is Mohanty's challenge to the universalizing tendencies of Western feminist knowledge, emphasizing situatedness and historicized social locations. The text wrestles with how to build an anticapitalist feminist solidarity that transcends imposed binaries of the West/Third World without erasing difference.

Study questions

What are the dangers of universalizing Western feminist narratives about “Third World women”?
How does Mohanty propose we rethink feminist solidarity in the context of global capitalism?
Why is the concept of "social location" central to Mohanty’s critique?
In what ways does Mohanty address the ongoing relevance of colonial discourses today?
How might Western feminist scholarship incorporate postcolonial feminist critiques without erasing difference?
What does Mohanty mean by the need to recraft the project of decolonization?
How are antiglobalization movements connected to feminist struggles in her argument?
What challenges arise when trying to build feminist alliances across diverse social and cultural contexts?

Critical approaches & debates

Mohanty’s “Under Western Eyes” has been widely analyzed through feminist, Marxist, and postcolonial lenses. Feminist critics emphasize her challenge to Western feminist universalism, arguing that it often homogenizes “Third World women” and erases differences in culture and politics. Marxist and anticapitalist readings highlight her insistence on linking feminist solidarity to global capitalist exploitation, calling for politicized intersectionality. Postcolonial scholars focus on her critique of Western epistemologies and call for decolonizing feminist knowledge production. Disagreements arise regarding her use of “Third World,” with some arguing it risks essentialism despite Mohanty’s own critique and revision; debates also concern balancing particularity with systemic global inequalities in feminist analysis.

Key passages

A key passage centers on Mohanty’s critique of “the homogenization of ‘Third World women’” as a discursive construction by Western feminist scholarship. She uses this to expose how Western feminism imposes a single narrative framework, dismissing diverse experiences and obscuring capitalist and colonial power structures. This argument turn is pivotal as it reorients feminist solidarity toward recognizing power relations embedded in knowledge, not merely cultural difference.

Bibliography

Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses, Feminist Review, No. 30 (1988). Foundational critique of Western feminist epistemologies.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (2003). Expands on intersectionality and globalization.
Mies, Maria. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale (1986). Marxist feminist analysis cited by Mohanty.
Recent scholarship includes analyses of feminist anticapitalism and postcolonial feminism engaging Mohanty’s framework.