contesting cultures

Uma Narayan discussed how she struggled with titling herself a “Third-World” feminist because of the connotations connected with being in America and of American culture yet being born in India. She also states that it is problematic to call herself a “Third-World” feminist because there are feminists who live and function as feminists entirely within Third-World national contexts. In contrast, she states that it will only be problematic if the term is understood narrowly, or with from specific perspectives and not from an open heart or mind. In her discussion, she attempts to “reveal some of the problems and paradoxes that are embedded in [the] charges of “Westernization” as well as to understand what provoke(s) them”. I wonder, like I stated in a previous blog, if the term/phrase “third-world” itself seem problematic to the authors, although their focus, I believe, is on the authenticity of the practices, discourse and ideologies of “third-world” feminism and their fear of being ignored and overlooked by “Western” feminism. Reading this also made me wonder that since feminism technically developed in the “West”, therefore it would have…let’s say…access to a variety of ways to get their side of “the message” out nationally and internationally. Or perhaps, have feminism ALWAYS been around and did not develop in the “West” and it was just another “great idea” stolen by the good people of the “West”? Should “Western” feminists just mind their own business and focus on things that affect them and not make assumptions about “others” or “non-Western” feminists?