Local Invisibility, Postcolonial Feminisms


Book Description

This book offers gendered, postcolonial insights into the poetic and artistic work of four generations of female Asian American artists in the San Francisco Bay Area. Nancy Hom, Betty Kano, Flo Oy Wong, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Theresa H.K. Cha, and Hung Liu are discussed in relation to the cultural politics of their time, and their art is examined in light of the question of what it means to be an Asian American artist. Laura Fantone’s exploration of this dynamic, understudied artistic community begets a sensitive and timely reflection on the state of Asian American women in the USA and in Californian cultural institutions.







Postcolonial Feminism in Management and Organization Studies


Book Description

The term feminism is often treated as a stable and universalizing politics and practice. For postcolonial feminism, the issues of interest are not only social and cultural inequalities in terms of caste, class, color, ethnicity, gender, and religion, but also historical, political, and geographical inequalities in terms of “Third World”, “Global South” and “remnants of the colonial past”. Postcolonial feminism pays nuanced attention to historical diversity and local specificity of feminist issues. This book draws upon the work grounded specifically in the context of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh to demonstrate the plurality of thinking. In mainstream management and organization studies, context is often understood as a present, static field. This book discusses how context is an important consideration for any management and organization study and for feminist studies in management and organization studies. It informs the way we need to understand context not just as “present” but also as “past”. Postcolonial feminism highlights the historical roots and past privileges of a context that often gets overlooked in management and organization studies where context is mostly understood in the present. This book highlights the contributions of women writers, poets, and activists such as Christina Stringer, Elena Samonova, Gayatri Spivak, Mary Douglas, Naila Kabeer, and Uzma Falak to postcolonial feminism in management and organization studies. Each of these women has engaged with writing that has the potential to enrich and transform understanding of postcolonial feminism in management and organization studies, making this book a valuable resource for researchers, academics, and advanced students.




Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labor


Book Description

Popular representations of third-world sex workers as sex slaves and vectors of HIV have spawned abolitionist legal reforms that are harmful and ineffective, and public health initiatives that provide only marginal protection of sex workers' rights. In this book, Prabha Kotiswaran asks how we might understand sex workers' demands that they be treated as workers. She contemplates questions of redistribution through law within the sex industry by examining the political economies and legal ethnographies of two archetypical urban sex markets in India. Kotiswaran conducted in-depth fieldwork among sex workers in Sonagachi, Kolkata's largest red-light area, and Tirupati, a temple town in southern India. Providing new insights into the lives of these women--many of whom are demanding the respect and legal protection that other workers get--Kotiswaran builds a persuasive theoretical case for recognizing these women's sexual labor. Moving beyond standard feminist discourse on prostitution, she draws on a critical genealogy of materialist feminism for its sophisticated vocabulary of female reproductive and sexual labor, and uses a legal realist approach to show why criminalization cannot succeed amid the informal social networks and economic structures of sex markets. Based on this, Kotiswaran assesses the law's redistributive potential by analyzing the possible economic consequences of partial decriminalization, complete decriminalization, and legalization. She concludes with a theory of sex work from a postcolonial materialist feminist perspective.




Postcolonialism, Feminism and Religious Discourse


Book Description

Contributors examine white feminist theology's misappropriations of Native North American women, Chinese footbinding, and veiling by Muslim women, as well as the Jewish emancipation in France, the symbolic dismemberment of black women by rap and sermons, and the potential to rewrite and reclaim canonical stories.




Black and Postcolonial Feminisms in New Times


Book Description

This book is a compelling collection of essays on the intersection of race, gender and class in education written by leading black and postcolonial feminists of colour from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean living in Britain, America, Canada, and Australia. It addresses controversial issues such as racism in the media, exclusion in higher education, and critical multiculturalism in schools. Introducing new debates on transglobal female identity and cultures of resistance the book asks: How does black and postcolonial feminisms illuminate race and gender identity in new global times? How are race, gender and class inequalities reproduced and resisted in educational sites? How do women of colour experience race and gender differences in schools and universities? This book is a must for political and social commentators, academic researchers and student audiences interested in new feminist visions for new global times. This book was published as a special issue of Race, Ethnicity and Education.




Woman, Native, Other


Book Description

" . . . methodologically innovative . . . precise and perceptive and conscious . . . " —Text and Performance Quarterly "Woman, Native, Other is located at the juncture of a number of different fields and disciplines, and it genuinely succeeds in pushing the boundaries of these disciplines further. It is one of the very few theoretical attempts to grapple with the writings of women of color." —Chandra Talpade Mohanty "The idea of Trinh T. Minh-ha is as powerful as her films . . . formidable . . . " —Village Voice " . . . its very forms invite the reader to participate in the effort to understand how language structures lived possibilities." —Artpaper "Highly recommended for anyone struggling to understand voices and experiences of those 'we' label 'other'." —Religious Studies Review Audio book narrated by Betty Miller. Produced by Speechki in 2021.




Writing in a Post-colonial Space


Book Description

The Contemporary Creative Literature In English Is Marked By An Irresistible Urge To Look At Its Past And The Surrounding Realities From A Changed Perspective. The Remnants Of Colonial Rule Include Many A Deepening Wound Which Upset The Sensitive Artist To Redefine The Relationship Between The Empire Arid The Centre. In Fact, The Post-Colonial Space Is The Ongoing Project Of Analysing And Combatting Unequal Power, Structures. This Volume, Comprising Sixteen Perceptive Essays, Addresses Itself To The Multiple Intricacies Of The Post-Colonial Resistance. This Volume Focuses On The Diverse Strategies Of Sixteen Major Indian Writers Who Have Appropriated The Post-Colonial Space To Manifest Their Strong Animus Against The Erstwhile Hegemonic Power And Its Assumptions. Divided In Three Sections General, Author-Based And Text-Based The Essays Provide Marvellous Critiques Of Some Contemporary Indian Classics Like A Suitable Boy, A Matter Of Time, And The Great Indian Novel. The Contributors Include Senior English Faculties With Proven Expertise In The Third World Literature. The Volume Opens Up Fresh Vistas Of Critical Enquiry And Interpretation In Respect Of Contemporary Indian Literature In English.




Contemporary Arab Women Writers


Book Description

This book engages with contemporary Arab women writers from Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon and Algeria. In spite of Edward Said’s groundbreaking reappraisal of the uneven relationship between the West and the Arab world in Orientalism, there has been little postcolonial criticism of Arab writing. Anastasia Valassopoulos raises the profile of Arab women writers by examining how they negotiate contexts and experiences that have come to be identified with postcoloniality such as the preoccupation with Western feminism, political conflict and war, the social effects of non-conformity and female empowerment, and the negotiation of influential cultural discourses such as orientalism. Contemporary Arab Women Writers revitalizes theoretical concepts associated with feminism, gender studies and cultural studies, and explores how art history, popular culture, translation studies, psychoanalysis and news media all offer productive ways to associate with Arab women’s writing that work beyond a limiting socio-historical context. Discussing the writings of authors including Ahdaf Soueif, Nawal El Saadawi, Leila Sebbar, Liana Badr and Hanan Al-Shaykh, this book represents a new direction in postcolonial literary criticism that transcends constrictive monothematic approaches.




A Decolonial Feminism


Book Description

For too long feminism and multiculturalism have been co-opted by the forces they seek to dismantle. However, in this manifesto, Francoise Verges argues that feminists should no longer be handmaidens of capitalism, colonialism and imperialism and fight the system that created the boss, built the prisons and polices women's bodies.Attuned to the temporalities of contemporary struggles, the book incorporates issues such as Eurocentrism, whiteness, power, inclusion and exclusion, within feminist discourse. Throughout we touch upon feminist and anti-racist histories, as well as assessing contemporary activism, including #MeToo and the Women's Strike.Centring colonialism and imperialism within intersectional Marxism, this is an urgent demand to free ourselves from the capitalist, imperialist forces that oppress us.