Gedalof, Irene (1997) Against purity : identity, western feminisms and Indian complications. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis argues that Western feminist theoretical models of identity can be
productively complicated by the insights of postcolonial feminisms. In particular,
it explores ways that Western feminist theory might more adequately sustain a
focus on 'women' while keeping open a space for differences such as race and
nation. Part One identifies a number of themes that emerge from recent Indian
feminist scholarship on the intersections of sex, gender, race, nation and
community identities. Part Two uses these insights to look critically at the work
of four Western theorists, Rosi Braidotti, Judith Butler, Donna Haraway and Luce
Irigaray. I argue that strategies which privilege sexual difference as primary
cannot deal adequately with differences such as race and nation. But I also argue
that strategies which privilege destabilizing identity can be equally constrained
by the logic of dualisms which has made it so difficult for feminists to sustain a
focus on women and their differences. Part Three discusses how the insights to
be drawn from Indian ferninisms might be taken on board by Western ferninisms
in order to develop more complex models of power, identity and the self.
Throughout the thesis I draw on a Foucauldian understanding of power as
productive, and on Foucault's insight that subjects and identities emerge, not
through the imperatives of a single symbolic system, but through the intersection
of multiple networks of discourses, material practices and institutions. I argue
that, by attending to women's complex location within intersecting landscapes of
gender, nation, race and other community identities, feminist models of identity
can dispense with a logic of dualisms in order to redefine, and not only
destabilize 'women' as the subject of/for feminism. This requires working against
purity on three levels. First, it requires a model of power that gives up on the
search for pure, power-free zones and works instead with the instabilities power
produces as it both enables and constrains women. Second, it requires seeing
'women' as a complex, impure category that bleeds across the apparently coherent
borders of identity categories such as gender, race and nation, and contesting
discursive constructs of 'Woman' as the pure space of origin upon which these
apparently discrete categories stand. Third, it requires the development of
alternative models of the self that take these complex, impure spaces as a valid
and valorised position from which to act and to speak.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BD Speculative Philosophy H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Feminist theory, Identity (Philosophical concept), Power (Philosophy), Feminism -- Indian influences
Official Date:	June 1997
Dates:	Date Event June 1997 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Social History
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Rai, Shirin ; Battersby, Christine, 1946-
Sponsors:	British Academy. Humanities Research Board ; University of Warwick
Extent:	342 p.
Language:	eng

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