A little over a month ago, on January 16th, 2020, Yale University invited famous activist and scholar Angela Davis to speak to commence Yale's week long celebration of Martin Luther King. I had been a fan of Angela Davis' academic work which always emphasized an intersectional approach to not only feminism, but all global struggles for equality, justice and rights. The phrase may be on its way to buzzword status, but intersectionalism is the heart of what Chandra Mohanty is discussing in her essay, "Under Western Eyes." Feminism is not a homogeneous category, and not is that of "The Woman." In particular, Mohanty critiques the existence of the Third World Woman as a ready made category that exists before an individual becomes any specific "type" of woman by entering a given relationship.
I am reminded of a commen Davis once made about her initial reaction when she was being referred to as a feminist for her scholarship on gender and race. She recounts in this speech here how her immediate reaction was "I'm not a Feminist... I'm a Black revolutionary!" Though she later admits that this was the result of her perhaps only narrowly understanding the meaning of Feminism, she made a very important point that underlies much of this course: there isn't any one kind of any one thing when we talk about isms or ideas. She clarifies in her speech that she didn't realize she was critiquing "Bourgeois Feminism". It is thanks to the academic labor performed by those like Davis herself that we can take intersectional feminism for granted, if even as a buzzword.
It's interesting how during last election cycle with Hillary's nomination to the democratic party and now again this cycle with a refreshing number of women vying for party nominations, the language of "glass-ceiling feminism" circulated as the reasons for supporting this or that candidate. I don't reject the legitimate symbolic meaning of a women president, and I in fact do value the emphasis placed on electing female leaders. However, particularly with Hillary's election, so many people specifically wanted to "break the glass ceiling." In this same video, Davis mentioned how this goal is not one she is interested in; anyone already close enough to break the glass ceiling is benefiting from privileges and hierarchies that come at the expense of poorer and working class women. The way each class navigates the world is radically different. They are not all a ready made category of "women" with equal needs and experiences.
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