Third World women's texts and the politics of feminist criticisms.

Third World women's texts and the politics of feminist criticisms. The desire to inscribe in��scribe?tr.v. in��scribed, in��scrib��ing, in��scribes1. a. To write, print, carve, or engrave (words or letters) on or in a surface.b. To mark or engrave (a surface) with words or letters. the material and aesthetic specificity ofthird world feminist writings undergirds this project. In some sense, interms of contemporary elite academic discourses on difference, theimpulse was to claim theoretical difference in an attempt to suggestthat third world women's writings were not merely replicative ofthe tropes that had currency in first world feminist criticisms. Whileacknowledging that texts from the third world, in general, areirreducibly different, prevailing modes of criticism have tended to viewthe difference as inhering only in the subject matter, which wasinevitably more "political" and more socially significant.Fredric Jameson's by now canonized piece on national allegories inthird world texts is exemplary of that moment (65-88). In seeking,perhaps problematically, to create a space that would describe aspecific third world feminist theory and aesthetics, we articulated ourown sense of discomfiture dis��com��fi��ture?n.1. Frustration or disappointment.2. Lack of ease; perplexity and embarrassment.3. Archaic Defeat.Noun 1. at having to prove what was a given. The pointwas not that a well-defined third world feminist aesthetic did notexist, but that because of the exigencies of the United States academyand our own places in it, we needed to make a claim to the discourse ofelite theory in order to legitimate the intellectual and artisticcontributions of third world women. The move clearly demanded that wenot reproduce first world/third world divisions of labor whereby firstworld theory "reads" third world texts, and whereby Westernfeminism enabled the assimilation of third world women's texts asfeminist. As the submissions started coming in, it became apparent thatpeople working in the field were not invested in a reactive discourse.The essays did foreground specific aesthetic modes that are rooted inthe local. Their value lies in their refusal to generalize beyond therelevant text or genre. That we felt impelled to frame our project insuch combative terms, despite the fact that over the last twenty yearsfeminists working in the field have been chipping away at thoseubiquitous binaries - center and periphery, the West and the rest,modernity as Northern, tradition as Southern - speaks to thecontentiousness of the debates within feminism on authenticity,intellectual ownership, identity, struggle, and community (Johnson-Odimand Strobel; Waldman, Leontis, and Galin).Mai Ghoussoub and Hammami and Rieker, for instance, engaged in aheated debate on whether the status of Islam or the class positions ofwomen determined the condition of Middle Eastern women. Neither wasunaware of the overdetermining instances that ruled women'severyday realities. Ghoussoub's emphasis on cultural analysis andcolonial influence was read by Hammami and Rieker as "feministorientalism" and "orientalist marxism" (Ghoussoub,"Feminism - or the Eternal Masculine" 3-20; Hammami and Rieker93); Hammami and Rieker's focus on class, indigenous traditions,pre-colonial history, and anti-state biases was read by Ghoussoub as"third worldism" and "Grandmother's secrets"(Hammami and Rieker 93-107; Ghoussoub, "A Reply" 108). Thedialogue between Ghoussoub and Hammami and Rieker remains relevant inthat some of us continue to argue over whether third world feminisms arelocal and indigenous or borrowed and Western.The essays in this collection are articulated mid-space between thesepositions, even as they try to negotiate between them to arrive at amore nuanced understanding of women's perceptions of their gainsand losses under colonial rule, their resistances to that legacy. Thewritings here foreground the dialogues that many authors (Assia Djebarin Fantasia fantasia(făntā`zhə)[Ital.,=fancy], musical composition not restricted to a formal design, but constructed freely in the manner of an improvisation. In the 16th and 17th cent. and Jamaica Kincaid in Annie John) stage with the colonialconstruction of women and the authors' apprehension of thatconstruction.Regardless of what position one takes, writing about third worldwomen, whether from a Western or a third world university, is rendereddifficult because of the danger of recolonization Re`col`o`ni`za´tionn. 1. A second or renewed colonization. and homogenization homogenization(həmŏj'ənəzā`shən), process in which a mixture is made uniform throughout. Generally this procedure involves reducing the size of the particles of one component of the mixture and dispersing them evenly .(1)First world and class privilege conspire to make it dangerously easy,especially when working with representations, to cast third world womenin ways that lend us academics the greatest psychological andprofessional purchase. Kum Kum Sangari notes that the proliferation ofelite academic discourses on the third world amounts to a"reannexation of the colonial subject" (Sunder Rajan 2).Discussing postcoloniality and feminism, Rajeswari Sunder Rajansuccinctly summarizes the general difficulties of such projects, evenwhen not overladen o��ver��lad��en?adj.Loaded or burdened too heavily.Adj. 1. overladen - loaded past capacityoverloaded with personal desire: "Intellectual workproduced under the sign of global feminism and theory but over thesignature of the post-colonial academic is open to charges ofinauthenticity, dubiousness of politics, academic mileage, alienatedmodernism and native informancy" (1).In the face of such intense challenges, writing out the desire tocelebrate the work of third world women seems desperate and naive on theone hand, and unrigorous, untheoretical, and inevitably essentialist onthe other. The alternative to such naivete na��ive��t��or na��?ve��t�� ?n.1. The state or quality of being inexperienced or unsophisticated, especially in being artless, credulous, or uncritical.2. An artless, credulous, or uncritical statement or act. could of course be silence,an unnecessarily extreme response to the appropriations of third worldwomen's works. I could of course take cover under "strategicessentialism" but it seems disingenuous in light of the fact thatwe are after all transposing subjectivities on groups whose members mayapprehend their subjectivity in what some academics theorize the��o��rize?v. the��o��rized, the��o��riz��ing, the��o��riz��esv.intr.To formulate theories or a theory; speculate.v.tr.To propose a theory about. asessentialistic ways. Alifa Rifaat's short story "Bahia'sEyes" deploys a version of essentialism essentialismIn ontology, the view that some properties of objects are essential to them. The “essence” of a thing is conceived as the totality of its essential properties. that is neitherself-consciously strategic nor commonsensically biologistic adj. 1. of or pertaining to biologism.Adj. 1. biologistic - of or relating to biologism . The oldwoman who is the narrator NARRATOR. A pleader who draws narrs serviens narrator, a sergeant at law. Fleta, 1. 2, c. 37. Obsolete. of the story tells her granddaughter the storyof her life, a life that she believes to have been stringently ruled byher gender. The narrator does not feel inclined to accept her role insociety at all, indeed she merely accommodates it all through her life,and her assessment at the end is an indication of what I call"studied essentialism," an adversarial recognition that thestrict confinement of women in society is because they are women. Yetthe narrator understands her life as a poor peasant woman's in herconcrete experience and ownership of it. The narrator accepts thatbecause her body is a woman's, she experiences menstruation andchildbirth. However, when her vision fails her, she does not regard itas a woman's lot in life but as both sign and proof of theculture's devaluation devaluation,decreasing the value of one nation's currency relative to gold or the currencies of other nations. It is usually undertaken as a means of correcting a deficit in the balance of payments. of women. She does not think of herself ashaving been manipulated solely by male imperatives. The narrator'srecollections give her granddaughter strength not to accept biologicalessentialism while recognizing women's differences from men.I am not positing irreducible irreducible/ir��re��duc��i��ble/ (ir?i-doo��si-b'l) not susceptible to reduction, as a fracture, hernia, or chemical substance. ir��re��duc��i��bleadj.1. alterity Al`ter´i`tyn. 1. The state or quality of being other; a being otherwise.For outness is but the feeling of otherness (alterity) rendered intuitive, or alterityvisually represented. , nor am I suggesting thatthird world women are in an ahistorical a��his��tor��i��cal?adj.Unconcerned with or unrelated to history, historical development, or tradition: "All of this is totally ahistorical. zone as transparent women.Rather, I am suggesting that apprehensions of identity may be solid atany given moment, even as the subjects are aware of their formations aschanging. Contending with the subject status of women does not foreclose fore��close?v. fore��closed, fore��clos��ing, fore��clos��esv.tr.1. a. To deprive (a mortgagor) of the right to redeem mortgaged property, as when payments have not been made.b. but includes tactical reinterpellations of dominant ideologies.Women's lived experiences of their bodies become powerful ways ofexpelling patriarchal and imperial transcriptions. Readings of TsitsiDangarembga's Nervous Conditions included in this volume can beviewed as grappling with historicity his��to��ric��i��ty?n.Historical authenticity; fact.historicityNounhistorical authenticity and studied essentialisms, and as amode of reclaiming control of the body from hostile culturalascriptions. Studied essentialisms, in making a bid for the ownership ofthe body, challenge invasive enculturations. Ownership of the bodyresists cultural interventions, it does not theoretically accord withthem. I am here thinking of women's struggles againstclitoridectomy clitoridectomy/clit��o��ri��dec��to��my/ (klit?ah-ri-dek��tah-me) excision of the clitoris. clit��o��ri��dec��to��myn.Excision of the clitoris. and other forms of genital and physical mutilation MutilationSee also Brutality, Cruelty.Mutiny (See REBELLION.)Absyrtushacked to death; body pieces strewn about. [Gk. Myth.: Walsh Classical, 3]Agatha, St.had breasts cut off. [Christian Hagiog. alsoregarded as cultural initiation, made possible by a rejection of theenculturation enculturationthe process by which a person adapts to and assimilates the culture in which he lives.See also: SocietyNoun 1. enculturation of the body, by essentializing it purposefully. Studiedessentialism rejects the governing tenet of biological essentialism:women's bodies sum up their lives. However it would also reject theidea that the body is solely a cultural construct. In trying to distanceourselves from the roles that biological essentialism imposes, we havereallowed culture to capture our bodies by theoretically yielding todogmas on cultural construction.Even as questions of essential third world female subjectivities arebeing pursued, the task of remapping academic discourses by payingsustained attention to third world women's inscriptions has beenand is on the agenda. Florence Stratton's Contemporary AfricanLiterature and the Politics of Gender (1994) registers the need to makeAfrican women heard in African literary criticism because of therelative lack of material, theoretical or otherwise, that considers theimport of women's writing in the formation of a literary tradition(1). Carole Boyce Davies and Elaine Savory Fido make a similar gesturein their book, suggestively entitled, Out of the Kumbla. FarzanehMilani's epigraph ep��i��graph?n.1. An inscription, as on a statue or building.2. A motto or quotation, as at the beginning of a literary composition, setting forth a theme. , "To stay alive, you must slay slay?tr.v. slew , slain , slay��ing, slays1. To kill violently.2. past tense and past participle often slayed Slang silence," eloquently expresses what is at stake in these projects.In Veils and Words (1992) Milani too makes a bid for a place for Iranianwomen in the literary tradition. Francophone African Women Writers(d'Almeida, 1994) reminds us that these texts coming from specialfields are very crucial signs that third world women's writings arebeing differentiated in some contemporary criticisms.Given the contextualizations that these texts provide, the framing ofthis special issue as Third World Women's Inscriptions requiressome defense. Marnia Lazreg, among others, indicates the theoretical andideological problems patent in mapping out huge spaces (81-107). Mypurpose in using the term was slightly different. I chose to frame theproject broadly in order to set in motion a dialogue between and amongthird world women's texts. I see some value in doing that sincemany of us, because of our education, know what [little] we know abouteach other's texts through Western or colonial educational systems.I do not think that such a move inevitably entails blurring ofdifferences among different ethnicities, nations, and regions. Theplacing of third world women's texts exclusively within the purlieuof area studies does not necessarily strengthen our understanding ofeither subaltern women or texts. That we third world women need tosituate sit��u��ate?tr.v. sit��u��at��ed, sit��u��at��ing, sit��u��ates1. To place in a certain spot or position; locate.2. To place under particular circumstances or in a given condition.adj. ourselves within the framework of area studies to converse witheach other is for me an untenable proposition. I believe that the essaysin this collection bring out the rich possibilities liberated bydialogical exchanges. I have retained the use of the term third world toaccentuate the first world/third world division of labor that I find isobscured by the generalized use of the term post-colonial (see Shohat).I make no claim to represent all third world women's writingsthrough the criticisms, nor do I feel that presenting some selectedpieces obliges me to avoid the term. Some would be an accuratequalification. The volume is "uneven" in terms of areasrepresented, and does not provide an analysis of lesbian texts. Wereceived only one essay on China and none on lesbian material. Exceptfor the essays on women writing in Arabic, all the articles discusstexts written in modem European languages. The bulk of the material thatwas submitted was on writers who are canonized (Emecheta, Desai,Schwarz-Bart, Malinow), or are achieving quasi-canonical status. That isof course hard to determine, especially because such perceptions arebased on journal articles and conferences, items that say little aboutthe embattled state of literary studies in many schools in the U.S. Withthe exception of one essay on Amanda Labarca Hubertson and another onsome relatively lesser known Arab women writers, these texts do enjoysome circulation, in those courses very likely designated asmulticultural or feminist. Despite the lack of "other" voices,perhaps silenced by these, we regard the essays' intervention onthese "teacherly" texts as enabling the nuanced framing ofissues in the classroom. Many of these essays either overtly (forexample, Mukherjee's, Accad's, Saliba's) or implicitly(Fayad's, Adjarian's) sketch out discursive modes wherebyresisting subjectivities are not domesticated do��mes��ti��cate?tr.v. do��mes��ti��cat��ed, do��mes��ti��cat��ing, do��mes��ti��cates1. To cause to feel comfortable at home; make domestic.2. To adopt or make fit for domestic use or life.3. a. . The layering of issues,positionalities, and discourses in these essays debars the easyassimilation of the texts they study.AUTHENTICITIES, SUBJECTIVITIES, AND WOMEN'S PLACESRecent criticism on third world literary texts has been vigorouslydebating the issue of authenticity. Notions of authenticity are tied toplace and the relationship of center to periphery. The introduction ofthird world women's writings in the U. S. was variously heralded as"unheard voices" from distant places. The assumption was thatwomen from, say, Egypt or Bangladesh were speaking out the truth oftheir lives as women. Critiques of such unequivocal claims to authenticsubjectivities came fast and furiously (see Trinh on the question ofauthenticity). Among those are Bhabha's propositions on culturalhybridity (291-320). Authenticity is coded to imply some pure origin,some complete unified autonomous cultural heritage. Such claims forthird world women, whether made in the first or third worlds, whileunderstandably fraught with the desire to belong to a culture unmarkedby colonialist history, also play into revanchist ideologies that elide e��lide?tr.v. e��lid��ed, e��lid��ing, e��lides1. a. To omit or slur over (a syllable, for example) in pronunciation.b. To strike out (something written).2. a. tradition and authenticity - with tradition being coded as patriarchaland non-Western.The problematic elision e��li��sion?n.1. a. Omission of a final or initial sound in pronunciation.b. Omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable, as in scanning a verse.2. The act or an instance of omitting something. of tradition with patriarchal precepts hasbeen debated by feminists from these areas, women who are expected toembody either nationalist or pre-colonial values in the interests ofmaintaining an identity unimpinged by the discourse of Western bourgeoisor middle-class feminisms. Although a burdensome heritage, it is onethat is not lightly dismissed. Mariama Ba's So Long a Letter,widely acclaimed for its ability to stage a dialogue between two thirdworld women in different spaces, sets out objections to polygamy polygamy:see marriage. polygamyMarriage to more than one spouse at a time. Although the term may also refer to polyandry (marriage to more than one man), it is often used as a synonym for polygyny (marriage to more than one woman), which appears thatare different but equally powerful. The narrator's measuredresistance to polygamy is achieved without the loss of a traditionalplace. The terrible pressure of developing both heuristic feministpractices and aesthetic literary traditions rooted in the culturalstorehouse from which women derive strength and a measure of belonginginflects both creative and critical texts.Representative status is tied in with questions of authenticity.Without stepping into the minefield of figuring how a third worldfeminist author or critic becomes spokeswoman for her fellow women, onecould venture that "authenticity" yields a woman a largerspeaking space.(2) Critiques of these women's authenticities thendelegitimate their authority. Diasporic third world women areincreasingly coming under attack because they are deemed insufficientlyauthentic. Commentary on filmmaker Mira Nair and novelist BharatiMukherjee follows this trend. Such "insufficiencies" become anissue only when writings are valued for statements they make about wholegroups of people. The now mandatory politics of positionalities isirksome in enforcing moral values on writings over-determined by theirinstitutional moorings. It is certainly both paradoxical and impossibleto demand and expect, albeit under theoretical cover, the truth aboutthird world women in a first world package. Those third world women(Saadawi and Spivak for example) who do have representative statuscontinuously distance themselves from the burden of representing a wholegroup of women, perhaps uncomfortably aware of being listened to becauseof their "constituencies." Spivak, painfully aware of beingheard in the West as a spokeswoman, suggests that class differencesseparate her from certain third world subaltern women. She finds thatshe cannot speak for the two washerwomen she encounters: "What ofthe fact that my distance from those two was, however micrologically youdefined class, class-determined and determining" (135). Thewritings in this volume do not insist on the authors'representative worth, but present them rather as some approaches towomen's cultural significations.The criticisms brought together in this volume rigorously avoid athird worldism that would divest third world women of agency and renderthem subjects on the threshold of speech. Whether working with hybrid,indigenous, authentic, Westernized, or middle-class women's texts,the essayists The following is an abbreviated list of essayists, arranged alphabetically by last name (years of birth and death, if applicable, and country of birth, are noted in parentheses).Note: An individual's country of birth is not always indicative of his or her nationality. in this anthology hold no truck with partial subjectstatus or victim status. The relationship between place, the femalebody, history, and community subtend sub��tend?tr.v. sub��tend��ed, sub��tend��ing, sub��tends1. Mathematics To be opposite to and delimit: The side of a triangle subtends the opposite angle.2. these explorations of subjectivity.The agenda emerges as the desire to secure a place for women'scommunities in a space ravaged by the competing urgencies of history andlanguage as stamped on women's bodies and women's lives.Introducing an important element in the debate on authenticsubjectivities/essential bodies is the powerful and seductive connectionthat Susan Lucas Dobrian makes between the maternal and indigenousspaces in Ines Malinow's Entrada libre. Positing that"naturalized" roles such as maternity are politicized, Dobrianargues that "Malinow presents both the maternal and indigenous bodyas powerful signs that precede and resist complete assimilation"(11). She suggests that Malinow establishes a symbolic equivalencebetween the Hispanic and the paternal, between the Quechua and thematernal. By basing her notions of the maternal body in the space ofArgentinian cultural conflict, Dobrian illustrates the significance ofthe corporeal Possessing a physical nature; having an objective, tangible existence; being capable of perception by touch and sight.Under Common Law, corporeal hereditaments are physical objects encompassed in land, including the land itself and any tangible object on it, that can be feminine without taking recourse to biologicalessentialism. Dobrian's work on Malinow rejoices in the power ofthe maternal and the "mythic Quechua presence that resistssubsumption sub��sump��tion?n.1. a. The act of subsuming.b. Something subsumed.2. Logic The minor premise of a syllogism. by Hispanic culture" (20).Jeanne Garane's essay on Guadeloupan novelist SimoneSchwarz-Bart's The Bridge of Beyond approaches the quest to reclaimindigenous space by a nuanced exploration of Antillean loss of"cultural and spatial arriere pays" (22) and its impact on thecultural construction of the community. Garane shows us thatSchwarz-Bart effaces the center/periphery opposition through herremapping of that other place embedded in Guadeloupe's historicalimaginary. She positions Schwarz-Bart's protagonist Telumee'snarrative as an account of her struggle to construct an arriere pays, toinvent a history, to conquer cultural alienation. Garane maintains thatthe configuration of female communal subjectivities in Bridge of Beyondis effected by the discursive mode of the text that combines "theparabolic par��a��bol��ic? also par��a��bol��i��caladj.1. Of or similar to a parable.2. Of or having the form of a parabola or paraboloid. with the auto and cartographic car��tog��ra��phy?n.The art or technique of making maps or charts.[French cartographie : carte, map (from Old French, from Latin charta, carta, paper made from papyrus " (25).Mildred Mortimer, too, understands the "the Antillean identityquest . . . as the search of the uprooted for a sense of place"(37). Mortimer focuses on "the appropriation of imaginativespace" of Myriam Warner-Vieyra's female heroes as they striveto gain control of physical place. According to Mortimer,Warner-Vieyra's complex perspective on the relationship betweenplace, the self, and narrating subjectivities enables us to come togrips with the female quester's voyages to Senegal and to France,to the "motherland" and to the colonizer's land.Timothy Ruppel's disquisition dis��qui��si��tion?n.A formal discourse on a subject, often in writing.[Latin disqus on Bharati Mukherjee's novelJasmine works with the diasporic and the politics of culturaldisplacement. In some senses, both Warner-Vieyra's heroes andMukherjee's Jasmine are shown as invested in discovering aresistant self. Mukherjee is widely known in the U.S. and is herself thesite of cultural contestation on the notion of third worldauthenticities. Ruppel's essay offers us a way of bypassing thedebate on the author's bonafides by "reading Jasmine as acounter-narrative where 'reinventing ourselves a milliontimes' becomes a reflexive, historically situated strategy fornegotiating power" (182).DISARRAYING COLONIAL AND PATRIARCHAL HISTORIESThe rearrangements of spatiality undertaken by third worldwomen's texts interrogate versions of history that render themmute. In so doing, these texts replot master narratives. Mara Dukats, inher discussion of Maryse Conde's I Tituba, Black Witch of Salemstages a fascinating dialogue between Conde, Conde's hero Tituba,and Hawthorne's Hester Prynne inflected by Aime Cesaire'smeditations on the journey back home. Dukats situates Conde as engagedin the vital project of rewriting history through the transpositions ofthe invisible, unheard voices of subaltern black women. She contendsthat "I Tituba [thus] takes the events at Salem as a backdrop forthe exploration of the ways in which Tituba's silenced narrativehas been incorporated into canonical texts, and, more significantly, foran exploration of the ways in which the silenced text has functioned asan enabling or conditioning force for canonized texts" (53). Thepast gets recoded, maintains Dukats, in ways that reveal the hybridityof even the most sacred of canonical texts.The history of the colonization project and its impact on thecolonized female subject's relationship to society is examined inKetu Katrak's comparative study of Merle merlea pattern of coat color pigmentation with dark, irregular blotches on a lighter background. Seen in some Collies and Welsh corgis. In shorthaired dogs, e.g. Great Danes and Dachshunds, the similar pattern is called dapple. Hodge's Crick Crick, Francis Henry Compton 1916-2004.British biologist who with James D. Watson proposed a spiral model, the double helix, for the molecular structure of DNA. He shared a 1962 Nobel Prize for advances in the study of genetics. CrackMonkey and Bessie Head's Maru. Katrak's essay is a decisiverecasting of a sustaining fiction of British colonialism: the benefitsof the English language education. According to Katrak, "a genderededucational system plac[es] women in complex, sometimes worse positionsthan in pre-colonial times in relationship to their owncommunities" (61).The difficulties of both challenging and accommodating culturalhistory are brought out with rich detail in Janice Hill's essay onZimbabwean Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions. Hill'sessay moves us toward an understanding of Dangarembga's depictionof the effects of the colonial script on female bodies, bodies that arenearly destroyed by the attempt to contain the rage against theirhistory - epitomized by the memorable image of Nyasha tearing herhistory book. Hill interprets that image: "Colonial education hasforced Nyasha to purge on a plate full of history which she purges, soto speak, when she says, 'Their history. Fucking liars. Theirbloody lies'" (86).Keith Byerman discusses yet another intervention in the receiveddiscourse of the master narrative of colonialism in his detailedexegesis of Antiguan writer Jamaica Kincaid's work. His essaydefines an important articulation of resisting subjectivity. He reads ASmall Place as a mocking reversal of colonial privileges: "Kincaidinverts the power of naming inherent in colonial discourse by saying inpublic what other Antiguans can say only in private. In other words Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke"put differently , sheviolates the female role of passivity and voicelessness inscribed in theculture" (92).The stretching of genres as an important aspect of revising themaster narratives of patriarchy is highlighted in Laura J. Beard'sreading of Brazilian author Parente Cunha's Mulher no Espelho.Beard regards Cunha's text as extended rewriting of autobiography,psychoanalysis, and the literary canon "in order to engenderauthority differently" (114). Beard's placing of black andwhite female subjectivities on the screen facilitates a more intricateapprehension of their constitution. She suggests, for instance, that themotif of the opposition between the free and slave woman in Bahiaunderscores the restrictions imposed on the free woman even as itreiterates the bondage of the other subaltern woman.Sandra Maria Boschetto-Sandoval's essay on Chilean feministwriter Amanda Labarca Hubertson participates in the rewriting ofpatriarchal history by situating Hubertson in the genealogy of those whohave fought "to ameliorate the oppression of women in Chile duringthe early capitalist era" (118). Boschetto-Sandoval works withgenres to show how Labarca Hubertson's rearticulation of both thefairy tale and the academic essay was prompted by her desires as a womanreader.COMMUNITIES OF WOMENThe feminist analyses of third world women's textualpositionalities in the postcolonial arena underlines the burdens ofcombating Western and indigenous constraint of women'ssubjectivities. Raising the important question of class differencesamong women in the third world, Therese Saliba considers "thefragmentation between women that results from the structures ofpatriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism" through an acute readingof positionalities in Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions and EgyptianNawal El Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero (132). Saliba credits thetwo authors with configuring a women's community born out of thefemale heroes' refusal to accept either the colonial or the nativebranding of the female. The local patriarchal system images the femalebody as "impure im��pure?adj. im��pur��er, im��pur��est1. Not pure or clean; contaminated.2. Not purified by religious rite; unclean.3. Immoral or sinful: impure thoughts. " because of Western invasion. She states thatthe women "are cured to some degree by women uniting across classlines to form a collective body, a collective book written as part ofthe process of decolonization decolonizationProcess by which colonies become independent of the colonizing country. Decolonization was gradual and peaceful for some British colonies largely settled by expatriates but violent for others, where native rebellions were energized by nationalism. $against the oppressive legacies ofpatriarchy and colonialism" (133). Saliba's nuancedcontextualization Contextualization of language useContextualization is a word first used in sociolinguistics to refer to the use of language and discourse to signal relevant aspects of an interactional or communicative situation. of the novels wrestles with the knotty knot��ty?adj. knot��ti��er, knot��ti��est1. Tied or snarled in knots.2. Covered with knots or knobs; gnarled.3. Difficult to understand or solve. See Synonyms at complex. question of howsuch revolutionary discourses come to be complicit com��plic��it?adj.Associated with or participating in a questionable act or a crime; having complicity: newspapers complicit with the propaganda arm of a dictatorship. in reinforcingstereotypes of third world women in Western contexts.Mona Fayad, in her study of Algerian Assia Diebar's Fantasia,Palestinian Sahar Khalifa's Wild Thorns, and Huda Barakat'sLaughing Stone, calls our attention to these novelists' significantreconfigurations of nation. She looks at the role of nationalisms in theformation of communal subjectivities. Fayad's remapping of thesetexts' responses to nationalism is nuanced about the differencesbetween the three. However, she finds that the authors agree in"their rejection of woman as signifier of 'interiority.'. . . 'Interiority,' when presented as being synonymous withtradition and subsequently with Woman, is rejected as a foundation forany nationalist enterprise" (158).The debate between traditionalism and modernity in Nigeria is framedby a discussion of first world and third world feminisms in JudieNewman's commentary on Buchi Emecheta's Rape of Shavi.Newman's decisive intervention counters "third worldist"readings of Emecheta that would cast her in the role of universalliberator of African women from the evils of traditionalism. Instead,Newman shows how the text problematizes tradition by depicting "acommunity of women [who] struggle to repair the damage done by the rapeof their traditional culture by Western capitalists" (162).According to Newman, Emecheta concludes that the strength of the womenderives from that community.We bring you this issue with the hope that it will enable us toscrutinize the ways in which we read and teach third world women'stexts.NOTES1 I should mention that the much contested term "third worldwomen" denies essentialism. The signifier Third World refers to ahistorically culturally over-determined site that bears witness to theimperialist imaginary.2 For an insightful discussion of Saadawi's representativestatus, see Hitchcock 25-52.WORKS CITEDBhabha, Homi K. "DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Marginsof the Modern Nation." Nation and Narration. Ed. Homi K.Bhabha.London: Routledge, 1990. 291-523.Boyce-Davies, Carole, and Elaine Savory Fido, eds. Out of the Kumbla:Caribbean Women and Literature. Trenton: Africa World, 1990.d'Almeida, Irene Assiba. Francophone African Women Writers:Destroying the Emptiness of Silence. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1994.Ghoussoub, Mai. "Feminism - the Eternal Masculine - in the ArabWorld." New Left Review 16 (1987): 3-20.-----. "A Reply to Hammami and Rieker." New Left Review 170(1988):107-10.Hammami, Reza, and Martina Rieker. "Feminist Orientalism andOrientalist Marxism." New Left Review 170 (1988): 93-107.Hitchcock, Peter. Dialogics of the Oppressed. Minneapolis: U ofMinnesota P, 1993.Jameson, Fredric. "Third World Literature in the Era ofMultinational Capitalism." Social Text 15 (1986): 65-88.Johnson-Odim, Cheryl, and Margaret Strobel, eds. Expanding theBoundaries of Women's History: Essays on Women in the Third World.Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992.Lazreg, Marnia. "Feminism and Difference: The Perils of Writingas a Woman on Women in Algeria." Feminist Studies 14.1 (1988):81-108.Milani, Farzaneh. Veils and Words: The Emerging Voices of IranianWomen Writers. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1992.Shohat, Ella. "Notes on the Post-Colonial." Social Text31/32 (1992): 99-113.Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "French Feminism in anInternational Frame." In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics.New York: Methuen, 1987. 134-54.Stratton, Florence. Contemporary African Literature and the Politicsof Gender. New York: Routledge, 1994.Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari. Real and Imagined Women: Gender Culture andPostcolonialism. New York: Routledge, 1993.Trinh T. Minh-ha. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality andFeminism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989.Waldman, Marilyn Robinson, Artemis Leontis, and Muge Galin, eds.Understanding Women: The Challenge of Cross-Cultural Perspectives.Papers in Comparative Studies 7 (1991-1992). Columbus: Ohio SUP, 1992.Ramanathan teaches film, comparative literature, and women'sstudies at West Chester University. She has published on feminist filmand literature and is the author of the forthcoming Sexual Politics inModern Drama (McFarland, 1995). She is also Book Review Editor ofCollege Literature. Schlau teaches Latin American Literature andWomen's Studies and directs the Women's Studies Program atWest Chester University. She has published extensively on Hispanic womenwriters from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.