Postcolonial Ideology And Gender Analysis

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Gender and Othering I agree with all of the above authors, and strongly advocate for changing the Orientalist and neocolonial ideology that is all too common in global politics. However, I would argue that their strategies are insufficient because they do not sufficiently take gender into account. In saying this, I want to clarify that gender analysis alone also falls short because it fails to take race into account. Feminist IR has been criticized for “exhibiting Eurocentric and imperialist properties” (Anievas, 94: 2014). Non-Western feminists have written about the need to “form strategic coalitions across race and national boundaries” and how the Eurocentric tendencies of Western feminism has limited collaboration with postcolonial scholars (Mohanty, 61: 1998). Mohanty argues that there is great possibility for a partnership between these two disciplines. For example, “the relationship between Woman- a cultural and ideological composite Other constructed through diverse representational discourse and women- real, material subjects of their collective histories” is similar to the relationship between the simplified, constructed idea of the colonial Other and the reality of the diversity of life in the ‘Oriental East’ (Mohanty, 62: 1998). An understanding of postcolonial scholarship could help combat feminist IR’s tendency towards “ethnocentric universality and inadequate self consciousness” about race and imperialism. …show more content…
It is shaped by gender as well as Orientalism, and feminist and postcolonial IR should be used in tandem to fight against the suppression of guilt for atrocities committed against faceless, nameless other. Gender policing has marked compassion as a sign of femininity, the ultimate weakness and orientalist discourse has marked the Middle East as a land of terrorist savages wholly deserving of our drone

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