According to Mohanty[i] (2002) “the critique and resistance to global capitalism, and uncovering of the naturalization of its masculinist and racist values, begin to build a transnational feminist practice. A transnational feminist practice depends on building feminist solidarities across the divisions of place, identity, class, work, belief, and so on. ..[And] the differences and borders of each of our identities connect us to each other, more than they sever. So the enterprise here is to forge informed, self-reflexive solidarities among ourselves…So, the borders here are not really fixed. Our minds must be as ready to move as capital is, to trace its paths and to imagine alternative destinations” (p. 530).
Moghadam[ii] adds that “the transnational nature of feminist networks calls into question theorizing that begins and ends with single societies. One may continue to argue the need for nationally oriented research and point out the continued salience of nation-states and domestic organizations. But nation-states, national economies and cultural formations- including social movements and organizations are increasingly affected by global processes, with the result that the appropriate unit of analysis must combine global, regional and local” (p. 80).
Sassen[iii] in 1996 suggested that “by emphasizing the fact that global processes are at least partly embedded in national territories, such a focus introduces new variables in current conceptions about economic globalization and the shrinking regulatory role of the State. That is to say, the space economy for major new transnational economic processes diverges in significant ways from the duality global/national presupposed in much analysis of the global economy” (p. 17). Additionally, “globalization is creating new operational and formal openings for the participation of non-State actors and subjects. Once the sovereign State is no longer viewed as the exclusive representative of its population in the international arena, women and other non-State actors can gain more representation in international law; contribute to the making of international law; and give new meaning to older forms of international participation, such as women’s longstanding work in international peace efforts” (Sassen, p. 31). Sassn argues that “two institutional arenas have emerged as new sites for normativity alongside the more traditional normative order represented by the nation-state: the global capital market and the international human rights regime” (p. 32).
Grewal[iv] notes, in reference to “human rights” that “America has remained hegemonically constructed as a land of freedom and rights through its ability to adjudicate whether other countries and communities had them or needed them, and through the work of many organizations and activists committed to working for the human rights of women who were seen as less free than Americans” (p. 150). Grewal adds that “it is unfortunate but unavoidable that the “moral superiority” of American geopolitical discourse should have become part of the new global feminism in the United States…, constructing “American” feminists as saviors and rescuers of “oppressed women” elsewhere within a “global” economy run by a few powerful states” (p. 152). Puar[v] exemplifies the problematic s of American exceptionalism and moral superiority in “the recent embrace of the case of Afghani and Iraqi women and Musilim women in general by western feminists has generated many forms of U.S. gender exceptionalism. Gender exceptionalism works as a missionary discourse to rescue Muslim women from their oppressive male counterparts. It also works to suggest that, in contrast to women, in the United States, Muslim women are, at the end of the day, unsavable. More insidiously, these discourses of exceptionalism allude to the unsalvageable nature of Muslim women even by their own feminists, positioning the American feminist as the feminist subject par excellence” (p. 5).
through Anticapitalist Struggles. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28 (2). pp. 499- 535.
globalization. International Sociology, 15(1). pp. 57-85.
[iii] Sassen, S. (1996). Toward a feminist analytics of the global economy. Indiana Journal of Global
Legal Studies, 4(1). pp. 7-41.
Duke University Press.
University Press.
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