The Ethnocentrism Problem in Feminism

Oda Karoline Storbråten Davanger

Thesis presented for the degree of

MASTER IN PHILOSOPHY

Supervised by Professor Tove Pettersen

Associate Professor Kari Jegerstedt

Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas

Faculty of Humanities
UNIVERSITY OF OSLO
Spring 2018

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The Ethnocentrism Problem in Feminism
Oda K.S. Davanger

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© Oda K.S. Davanger

2018

The Ethnocentrism Problem in Feminism

Oda K.S. Davanger

http://www.duo.uio.no

Trykk: Reprosentralen, Universitetet i Oslo

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Abstract
I am concerned with the ethnocentrism problem in feminism, what it is and what philosophy
might to do help solve it. I rely mostly on the works of bell hooks and Uma Narayan to argue
that the question of ethnocentrism is important for the feminist political project, and support
my assertion by relying on methodologies from Jaques Derrida and Audre Lorde. In order to
investigate ethnocentrism in feminism, I develop the idea of latent ethnocentrism. I
distinguish between an epistemological prong and a political prong in the ethnocentrism
charge against feminism. I use hooks’ interlocking-axes model of oppression and Narayan’s
destabilization of the West/rest dualism to investigate the epistemological causes of
ethnocentrism. I defend the thesis of epistemic privilege, upon which they base their claims. I
find that our language and the political agendas of the norm of whiteness and the Western is
reciprocally reinforcing, which is a mechanism I call the episteme-politic. In the political
prong, I consider solutions to the ethnocentrism problem that have been attempted in feminist
politics: identity politics, intersectionality, and transnational feminism, and find that it is
difficult for feminism to overcome the ethnocentrism problem while also being reliant on
Othered identities in emancipatory resistance. I consider that one faction of transnational
feminism may find good ways of doing non-ethnocentric feminism because of its focus on
intercultural dialogue and a negotiating praxis that presumes non-ideal situations. I conclude
by comparing the strategies of revolution and reform for the ethnocentrism problem in
feminism, and find that feminism has to work continually on this problem.

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Acknowledgements

I am greatly indebted to the time and effort that my supervisor Tove Pettersen has put into
this project. I am grateful for her support, enthusiasm, and her honest feedback. I am also
very thankful to my secondary supervisor Kari Jegerstedt for valuable insights and guidance.

I would like to thank Caroline Hansen in the philosophy administration at the University of
Oslo, for all of her help during my two years as a master student.

I think of the many wonderful teachers I have had in schools throughout all the stages of my
education, who have taught me to write intelligently and think independently. I cannot
mention them all here by name.

Thank you to my fellow student sparring-partners and friends at the philosophy institute, and
the excellent group of students at the gender studies center for the many breaks and
interesting discussions during the times we spent writing.

Thank you to the Science Studies Colloquium Series and the philosophy institute (IFIKK) for
the grants that I have received for this thesis.

Lastly, I appreciate the support from my family and friends outside the University.
Particularly Arne Martin Vik, who has been an invaluable support for the duration of this
project.

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Contents

1 Introductory Chapter ............................................................................................................ 1
1.1 What is Feminism? ........................................................................................................................ 1
1.1.1 Definitions of Feminism by Feminist Theoreticians and Philosophers ............................ 2
1.1.2 Challenges to Feminism from Black and Post-Colonial Feminist Philosophy ............... 5
1.2 What is Ethnocentrism? ............................................................................................................... 9
1.2.1 Necessary Ethnocentrism .................................................................................................................. 10
1.2.2 Latent Ethnocentrism .......................................................................................................................... 11
1.3 Methodology ............................................................................................................................... 14
1.3.1 Feminist Philosophy and The Western Philosophical Canon ............................................ 14
1.3.2 What Is Poststructuralism? ............................................................................................................... 15
1.3.3 The Master’s Tools Paradigm .......................................................................................................... 19
1.3.4 bell hooks and Uma Narayan ........................................................................................................... 21
1.4 The Ethnocentrism Charge Against Feminism ..................................................................... 22
1.4.1 The Two Prongs of the Charge ........................................................................................................ 23
1.4.2 What is at stake? .................................................................................................................................... 24
2 The Epistemological Prong of the Ethnocentrism Charge ..................................... 25
2.1 Feminism’s Metaphysical Heritage ......................................................................................... 26
2.1.1 Ethnocentrism in mainstream feminism .................................................................................... 26
2.1.2 Feminism Is Not Inherently Ethnocentric .................................................................................. 29
2.1.3 Difference And Devaluation .............................................................................................................. 30
2.2 The Political Effects on Feminist Epistemology ................................................................... 35
2.2.1 Destabilizing the West-and-the-Rest Dichotomy .................................................................... 36
2.2.2 Dualisms Represent Political Agendas ........................................................................................ 38
2.3 The ‘Something Rotten’ ............................................................................................................. 40
2.3.1 The Problem of Knowing the Other .............................................................................................. 41
2.3.2 The Bias Paradox in Feminist Standpoint Theory .................................................................. 45
2.3.3 The Essentialist Silencing Problem ............................................................................................... 49
2.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 52
3 The Political Prong of the Ethnocentrism Charge .................................................... 54
3.1 Identity Politics ........................................................................................................................... 54
3.1.1 Identity Politics Is the Use of Masters’ Tools ............................................................................ 55
3.1.2 Defense of Identity Politics as a Successful Method of Resistance .................................. 60
3.2 Intersectionality ......................................................................................................................... 64
3.2.1 Crenshaw’s Intersectionality ............................................................................................................... 64
3.2.2 The Popularity of Intersectionality ............................................................................................... 66
3.2.3 Puar’s Objection to Intersectionality ............................................................................................ 67
3.2.4 Letting Identity Go or Not .................................................................................................................. 70
3.3 Transnational Feminism ........................................................................................................... 72
3.3.1 Othering in Transnational Feminism ........................................................................................... 72
3.3.2 Cultural Abstractionists ..................................................................................................................... 74
3.3.3 Cultural Contextualists ....................................................................................................................... 76
3.3.4 Against Purity Politics ......................................................................................................................... 79
3.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 81
4 Reform and Revolution ..................................................................................................... 82
4.1 hooks’ Radical Revolution ........................................................................................................ 82

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 4.2 Revolution Disillusion ............................................................................................................... 85
4.3 Narayan’s Reform ....................................................................................................................... 92
4.4 Adequate Reform ....................................................................................................................... 94
4.5 Reform and Revolution Are Two Sides of the Same Coin .................................................. 97
5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 98
Works Cited ................................................................................................................................. 101

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1 Introductory Chapter
One does not simply begin with the problem. First, one has to give that which the problem is
about. I am concerned about ethnocentrism in feminism, if there is such a thing in feminism,
what it means, why it is there, how it is important, and what philosophy might be able to do
about it. In this thesis, I will examine the charge of ethnocentrism against feminism. I rely on
two feminist schools of thought to do so, black feminism and post-colonial feminism, and the
feminist philosophers bell hooks and Uma Narayan. I will consider the charge from an
epistemological standpoint and a political standpoint. Near the end of this thesis I consider
possible ways forward toward non-ethnocentric feminism, whether revolutionary or by
reform. I end by concluding that ethnocentrism is an ongoing problem – not only for
feminism, but because this thesis is meant as a feminist examination of feminism, I hold that
this problem is something on which feminists need to continue to work. First, before the
discussion, I explain some central concepts, and more thoroughly lay out the issues at hand.
In this introductory chapter I will explain the two most central concepts in this thesis,
namely, feminism and ethnocentrism. I give a brief overview of some general narratives of
feminism and introduce Black and post-colonial feminist concerns about ethnocentrism in
feminism. I explain what I mean with ethnocentrism in this thesis, which I refer to a latent
ethnocentrism. I draw on feminist poststructuralism for my methodology, and am inspired by
poststructuralist critique of ethnocentrism in Western philosophy. In the final parts of this
chapter, I give a precision of the ethnocentrism charge against feminism, which I find can be
separated into two prongs – one epistemological and one political. In this thesis, I question
what the ethnocentrism problem in feminism is, and what philosophy might do about it.

1.1 What is Feminism?

Feminism, in its many forms and varieties, has grappled with ways in which to overcome or
surpass unjustified differential treatment largely based on ideas about sex and gender.
Feminism is an emancipation project, and opposes whatever it is that generates inequality
based on sex and gender in society. The many versions of feminism have prescribed a variety
of measures in order to do this, and have different outcomes in mind as for what the ideal
society might look like. I will cover some of the main frameworks for understanding
feminism, before introducing some of the main tenants of Black and post-colonial feminism.
Etymologically, the word feminism stems from the Latin femina, which means
woman (Holst 2009, 9). The coinage of the term féminisme has long been attributed to French

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political philosopher Charles Fourier (1772–1837), although this is much disputed. It is rather
safe to assume, however, that the term first appears during the “political agitation of the
1830s” along with terms such socialisme and individualisme (Offen 1988, 45). My stance is
that feminism is first and foremost a political project and an ideology much like classic
liberalism or socialism, but also a philosophical discipline that spans and challenges other
areas in philosophy including – but not limited to – epistemology and political philosophy.

1.1.1 Definitions of Feminism by Feminist Theoreticians and Philosophers

Although the ethnocentrism charge is leveled against a mainstream feminism, there many
different kinds of feminism, which may complicate any idea of a general feminism. In her
book Feminism (2002), gender scholar Lena Gemzöe gives a definition of feminism based on
an overall premise on which all feminisms might agree: Firstly, woman is subservient to man
and secondly, this relation should change (2002, 13). The generality of this premise
unfortunately does not say anything about the nature of the feminist movement or its agenda,
which is to create equality, and of which there are many different versions with different
ideas about strategy and analysis (2002, 23–27). To account for some of its variations,
feminism is often divided politically, chronologically in ‘waves,’ or into ‘difference’ or
‘equality’ feminists.1 I will briefly account for these variations.
Feminism is often analytically divided in the ideological terms of liberal, Marxist or
socialist, and radical feminism, according to feminist philosopher and poststructuralist Chris
Weedon in Feminist Practice & Poststructuralist Theory (1987, 16–18). Cathrine Holst,
sociologist and political theorist problematizes the clean distinction between feminisms in her
book What is Feminism,2 arguing that many feminists are liberal in one sense, and radical in
another (2009, 73–74). According to Gemzöe, liberal feminism, with its roots in
Enlightenment philosophy ideals of fundamental freedom and rights of all individuals, holds
that women should have the same democratic liberties and rights as men because they share
the same capacity for reason (2002, 38). Liberal feminism is effective at gaining basic rights,
such as the right to vote, but cannot account for women’s continued subjugation (2002, 42).
Marxist/socialist feminism draws from the philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, who connect women’s liberation with socialist revolution against capitalism (Gemzöe
2002, 58). In capitalism, a system of private ownership, most people belong to the working

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In addition to these, there are several other strands of feminism with specific foci such as black feminism,
post-colonial feminism, anarchist feminism, ecofeminism, French feminism, and lesbian feminism to name
some. Many other ideologies also have other versions of feminism as parts of the main ideology.
2
Original title: Hva er feminisme (2009).

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class and sell their labor to the much smaller upper class without the opportunity to share in
the economic surplus that their work creates (Gemzöe 2002, 65–67). Socialist feminism
builds on the Marxist assumption that human nature is “socially produced and changeable”
and can be transformed (Weedon 1987, 17–18). Marxist philosophy has been influential for
feminist epistemology, most notably feminist standpoint theory.
Radical feminism originates in the 1960s and is an umbrella-term that includes
several different views, but focuses on women’s lived experiences, which means that its
theoretical reach includes oppression that is related to sexuality, domestic violence, and
domestic work. Radical feminists oppose patriarchy, which Gemzöe explains as an
oppressive ideology and invisible mechanism of power that organizes society in favor of men
(2002, 45–46). The patriarchal structure of power relations subordinates women’s interests
(Weedon 1987, 2). I find Marilyn Frye’s explanation of the term “oppression” helpful.
Etymologically, oppression literally refers to a “press,” Frye finds that people often fail to see
oppression in terms of macroscopy and usually look in microscopic ways that obscure its
complexity. Using the metaphor of a cage, Frye argues that if one only looks at one of the
wires of the cage, one might be inclined to think that circumventing one little barrier might
not be too difficult. If one takes a step back to view the construction of the cage put together
by many wires, its entirety exposes the restrictions for one inside the cage. This construction
is not “accidental or occasional,” but systematically restricts and penalizes (2005, 84–86).
Although Weedon connects radical feminism with an essentialist view of gender – namely
that there is an intrinsic female property (1987, 17) – Gemzöe finds that there are strands in
radical feminism that believe gender is socially and historically created, which came to be
referred to as gender having been socially constructed (2002, 49). The danger with asserting
intrinsic female properties is that this position may lead to biological determinism, which
means that gender relations cannot or should not be altered.
In addition to the three ideological strands mentioned above, Gemzöe names a fourth
strand that originates as a dialogue between Marxist and radical feminism. The principle of
socialist radical feminism is that the individual in liberalism cannot be disconnected from its
social context and historical conditions. Marx held that people in similar social conditions
develop similar capacities, such as better conditions for health and educational development
in the upper classes (Gemzöe 2002, 71). Socialist radical feminists hold that bodies and our
psychology are formed by social structures. They contest, therefore, that there is anything
natural binding women as a group together, but find instead that ‘woman’ is an abstraction

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(Gemzöe 2002, 74).3 Questioning and destabilizing the category ‘woman’ is also often
attributed to feminist poststructuralism as a branch of postmodernism. Feminist
poststructuralism has informed much of my analysis in this thesis, and will be discussed in
the section on methodology. Other variations, such as difference versus equality feminism is,
in short, a discussion on whether femininity should be more valued or whether society should
be more gender neutral. Chronologic feminist ‘waves’ refer to different feminist foci from the
late 19th century, beginning with issues such as suffrage in the first wave, reproductive and
domestic rights in the second, and focus on difference and anti-normativity such as sexual
and cultural difference in the third.4
With these presentations of feminism, I have hoped to show what the standard
narratives are and that it is difficult to speak about any sort of mainstream or general
feminism. Holst is critical of these general narratives of feminism, because they do not
properly account for feminism globally, and risks falsely painting the West as a leader of
feminist development (2009, 58). It is important, nevertheless, for any feminist project to be
able to speak about generalizations in order to analyze societal structures and mechanisms of
oppression. Therefore, in order to ask the questions – is there ethnocentrism in feminism,
what is it, and if so what can philosophy do about it? – I have to insist on some generalization
of feminism, or at least invite the reader to consider a form of ‘mainstream’ feminism against
which the charges of ethnocentrism are brought. In none of the standard stories of feminism
does multiculturalism or critique of Eurocentrism come entirely to the fore. Perhaps this is an
indication that there is still a form of tension in feminism between analyzing sexism alone,
and analyzing sexism as part of a larger framework of oppression. In her introductory book,
Holst is quick to point out that feminism is not simply about sexual equality, but is concerned
with creating a just society for everyone. Feminism is not just about sex, she writes, but about
working against all forms of injustice related to sex or gender (2009, 10). Even though she is
critical of the standard narrative, Holst does not spend much time in her book discussing
cultural or racial difference, besides the occasional issues related to Western supremacy,
multiculturalism or global feminism. Neither does Margaret Walters, the author of Feminism:
A Very Short Introduction (2005), except for a final chapter on feminism around the world.

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Some feminist philosophers are skeptical to the notion of the category or group “woman” at all. See for
instance Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990). This question is of no irrelevance to this project, but is also a
complete separate question in its own right and will not be thoroughly tackled in this thesis.
4
These frameworks will not be discussed in detail here, but see Joan W. Scott (1988) for a critical analysis of
difference versus equality feminism. See Jane Spencer (2007) for an overview of the three feminist waves
outlined by Julia Kristeva, and a critical analysis of how the wave analogy obscures long-standing feminist
disagreements. See Munro Ealasaid (2013) for an overview of the potential fourth feminist wave.

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Gemzöe, similarly, tackles ethnicity and culture in one of her final chapters. Granted, there
are probably good reasons for these authors to structure their books as they did, and there
might exist counter examples to this trend, but the prevalence of this structure indicates that
issues related to race and culture are seen as niche, not unlike how feminism is relegated to
the margins in political philosophy.5

1.1.2 Challenges to Feminism from Black and Post-Colonial Feminist Philosophy

Many feminists and feminist philosophers have long since acknowledged that there is or has
been an ethnocentric issue in feminism and have been trying to remedy that issue. Many
‘intersectional’6 feminists promote a more inclusive feminism that is more sensitive to sexism
as one of many axes of oppression that women face. For instance, Maggie Humm, author of
The Dictionary of Feminist Theory (2005) notes in her definition of feminism that a
“fundamental goal of feminist theory is to understand women’s oppression in terms of race,
gender, class and sexual preference and how to change it” (Humm 1995, xii). Nevertheless,
feminist projects, still today, when attempting to be attentive to differences between women,
are charged with ethnocentrism on the basis of failing to acknowledge or properly
acknowledge the forms of oppression that other women experience. In 2013, feminists from
Harvard Law School and Women’s Center were mocked and criticized by Indian activist,
feminist and blogger Nivedita Menon for announcing their intent to help Indian feminists
with rape violence in India (2013). One might be inclined to ask why Menon was so quick to
reject help from such well-connected, privileged women with – I presume – excellent
knowledge of feminist theory. Perhaps the Harvard feminists had not properly recognized the
work put in place by Indian women, or Menon perceived a certain self-congratulatory attitude
from the elite Western women that was in bad taste, or that they had somehow miscalculated
the value of the help they were offering in an Indian context. Uma Narayan discusses these
sorts of reactions from nonwestern feminists in “The Project of Feminist Epistemology:
Perspectives from a Nonwestern Feminist” (2004). Nonwestern feminists are weary of help
from Western women and respond negatively to feminism as savior, even though they oppose
Western women’s dismissal or minimization of their specific struggles (2004, 219.) It does
not seem that the issue of ethnocentrism has been successfully resolved. If there is a root

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This trend of relegating to the back of the book is noticable for books about general narratives in political
philosophy as well. Two examples where feminism and multiculturalism is added toward the end of the book in
introductory works to political philosophy are David Miller’s Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction
(2003), and Johnathan Wollf’s An Introduction to Political Philosophy (1996 & 2015).
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I will discuss intersectionality in chapter three of this thesis.

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philosophical ethnocentrism in feminism, then that problem may be more difficult to
eliminate from feminism and feminist philosophy than many may have thought.
The criticism of such representations of feminism by women of color is not something
new, and in the United States can be traced back to the early 1800s.7 The Combahee River
Collective, an organization created by Black feminists, many who were also lesbians,
released a statement in 1977 where Barbara Smith, Demita Frazier and Beverly Smith argued
that “the major systems of oppression are interlocking” (Smith, et. al. 2009, 501–502). They
did not feel heard in the Black liberation movement, the feminist movement, nor in the
socialist movement. They saw black feminism as the “logical political movement to combat
the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.” They argue that
their feminism was the only feminism inclusive enough to address racism, sexism, classism,
and heterosexism – in other words, multiple axes of oppression. Patricia Hill-Collins, a black
feminist philosopher who writes on the origins of black feminism in Black Sexual Politics
(2004), explains that The Collective held that racism is “gender-specific” and that anti-racist
movements that do not recognize this cannot claim to fight for the liberation of all Black
people (2004, 7). The majority of African American men were not willing to hear criticism of
their movement in the 1970s and 1980s, because any sort of criticism was seen as a threat to
the already vulnerable movement (Hill-Collins 2004, 8).
The solution for Women of Color (hereafter WOC), when they saw that feminism
served Western/Anglo Women (hereafter WAW)8 and black liberation served black men, was
to argue that the form of oppression that affects them is particular, and needed its own
movement. The solution was identity politics (Smith 2009, 503). Hill-Collins defines identity
politics as “a way of knowing that sees lived experiences as important to creating knowledge
and crafting group-based political strategies” (2004, 351). Identity politics, however, should
not be conflated with any sort of biological determinism, which is exactly what The
Collective opposes. It is exactly the belief in biological determinism that has made racism
and sexism possible. The Collective held that the solution for all oppressed people meant the
“destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as

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Sojourner Truth (1797–1883), Amy Jacques Garvey (1895–1973), Anna Julia Cooper (1858–1964), Harriet
Anne Jacobs (1813–1897), and Jarena Lee (1783–1864) are a few historical U.S. black feminists.
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It should be noted that the WOC and WAW categories (and NNW that is also introduced in this section) are
not mutually exclusive, and indeed overly general. It should also be noted that there are White people in non-
western countries that may suffer from Western imperialism, and that there are people of color in Western
countries that benefit from Western imperialism. There are also those who traverse these categories. I use them
solely for the purposes of this thesis.

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patriarchy” (Smith 2009, 504). For black feminists in the US, identity politics has been a way
to articulate this simultaneity of different forms of oppression.
Somewhat unlike black feminism’s preference for identity politics, postcolonial
feminism is averse to any analytic framework that homogenizes nonwestern women
(hereafter NWW). Humm defines post-colonial theory as concerned with the effect of
imperialism that is still present in the world and in cultures that used to be colonized. The
field was largely shaped by thinkers Franz Fanon, Edward Said, and Gayatri Spivak, the latter
who contributed enormously to feminist post-colonial theory. Of great importance to the field
is the critique of Western ethnocentrism (Humm 1995, 214). In “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
(1993 [1988]) post-colonial and poststructuralist feminist Gayatri Spivak argues that the West
has constituted a static Other in its colonial subjects in order to consolidate the European
Self. She argues that this Other – often created by Western intellectuals and products of a
colonized elite, who are deeply submerged in a discourse of nation-states and capitalist
economics – grossly ignores the irretrievable heterogeneous nature of the colonized subaltern
subject (1993, 79). In Colonial fantasies (1998), post-colonial feminist Meyda Yeğenoğlu
finds that WAW use the same structure that Others them in their society to establish the
masculine subject in their idea of the homogenous Other woman, which they use to construct
their own subjectivity and become equal of the men in their own societies. In this way,
Western or mainstream feminism is imperial and masculinist (1998, 12). In article, “Under
Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” (1988) Mohanty argues that
the homogenization of the Orient by the West creates the false and dangerous impression that
WAW and NWW have common interests:

If such concepts are assumed to be universally applicable, the resultant homogenization of class, race,
religious, and daily material practices of women in the third world can create a false sense of the
commonality of oppressions, interests and struggles between and amongst women globally. Beyond
sisterhood there is still racism, colonialism and imperialism! (1988, 76–77)

Mohanty is skeptical of false senses of universality about patriarchy and oppression that
serves the Western feminist interest more than the interests of NNW, and holds that an idea
of shared gender is not sufficient for adequate solidarity between NNW and WAW. Mohanty
argues that Western feminism’s idea of what she calls the “Third-world difference” gives rise
to paternalistic attitudes (1988, 80). While on the one hand, black feminism finds that identity
politics is a useful tool, postcolonial feminism strives to bring forth the diversity between
people and women in an otherwise homogenized notion of “other” cultures.

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 Despite differences, the analytical similarities between post-colonial feminism and
black feminism are numerous. Much like the black liberation movement, post-colonial theory
has been criticized by feminist post-colonialists for ignoring its gendered component.
Yeğenoğlu critiques Edward Said for disregarding feminist arguments in his works (1998,
68). On the one hand, post-colonial feminists like Yeğenoğlu and Spivak have criticized post-
colonialism for ignoring feminist and gender questions. On the other hand, post-colonial
feminists have criticized the broader feminist movement as well for not considering, or
properly considering, NNW. Another similarity is the belief that oppression is not adequately
understood if it is analyzed by a gender framework alone. Yeğenoğlu argues that there is a
connection between Western philosophical, colonial and patriarchal discourses; that they
share are certain premises, which means that seriously tackling patriarchy will necessarily
involve a tackling of colonial discourse (1998, 119). She argues that an analysis that treats
patriarchy and colonialism as separate issues has inherited the masculinist framework of
Western philosophy (1998, 122). Spivak claims that the “subaltern” is “doubly in shadow”
between nationalism and imperialism (1993, 84). The subaltern refers to the structural
position of many NNW, who are excluded from the powers that make them be heard.9 The
subaltern existence does not permit her the sort of language, perspective or knowledge that
are prerequisites for her to argue her case. By the separation of nationalism, imperialism and
feminism there is no analysis that adequately represents the subaltern. Spivak argues that
ignoring this post-colonial framework is “an unacknowledged political gesture” that permits
the continuation of the status quo of patriarchal and imperial power structures (1993, 90–91).
It is to give the subaltern woman an impossible task and to relegate her to her already
oppressive position alone. Analytically treating imperialism and sexism separately effectively
plays into the hands of those who are served by the current arrangement of power.
Much like the claims of The Collective, post-colonial feminists are weary of
supporting a cause that ends up disproportionately serving the interests of others, i.e. WAW.
Both black feminism and post-colonial feminism are partially founded on a protest against
the form of mainstream feminism they find does not adequately address the multi-faceted
oppression faced by NNW and WOC. In black and post-colonial feminism, is a tension
between wanting mainstream feminism to adequately include NNW and WOC, but also an
aversion to the kinds of inclusion that occur. They argue that any collaboration, solidarity or

9
It is in this vein that Spivak quotes Marx: (1993, 71): “They cannot represent themselves, they must be
represented. Their representative must at the same time appear as their master…” Karl Marx, The Eighteenth
Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, VII (1852). She argues against the Foucaultian and Deleuzian stance that the
oppressed can speak for themselves.

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sisterhood between NWW and Western feminists has to grapple with feminism’s
philosophical heritage, and the entanglement of Enlightenment philosophy and imperialism
with patriarchy. If patriarchy, racism, and imperialism are global phenomena, they surely
need globally coordinated resistance.

1.2 What is Ethnocentrism?

Ethnocentrism may be a problem for feminism in so far as feminism’s goal is to liberate all
women and tackle all forms of oppression that women may face, including racist, imperialist
and sexist oppression. Ethnocentrism in feminism may make co-operation and solidarity
difficult, even in cases when feminists do not wish to be ethnocentric. In this subchapter I
discuss several accounts of ethnocentrism10 to define ethnocentrism for the purpose of this
thesis. I find that some forms of ethnocentrism are necessary for the production of meaning.
In between necessary ethnocentrism and overt, racist ethnocentrism I argue that there are
gradients of what I call latent ethnocentrism, which is blameworthy although not entirely
freely chosen in many cases.
Some accounts of ethnocentrism have been given in a feminist context. Philosopher
María Lugones describes ethnocentrism as believing in the superiority of one’s culture (1990,
48). This is probably the most well-known understanding of ethnocentrism, along with the
belief in the superiority of one’s folk or nation. This normative understanding of
ethnocentrism may easily be tied to fascist ideology, used to justify imperialism and racial
violence. It is a normative ethnocentrism because it is to some degree a chosen position,
without discounting the effects of upbringing and society, and therefore blameworthy. The
Oxford Dictionary of English (2010) gives a slightly less damning account, namely that
ethnocentrism is the “evaluation of other cultures according to preconceptions originating in
the standards and customs of one’s own culture.” This descriptive ethnocentrism simply
means that whenever one is looking toward another culture, one is using the self and one’s
own culture as the yardstick with which to understand. Even if one admires the other culture,
or even adopts another culture as one’s own, one has always encountered that culture from a
place where that culture has been foreign and knowable only in contrast and comparison to
oneself and one’s formative culture.

10
In this thesis ethnocentrism is mostly used to describe an ethnocentrism that takes the West as the self, in
other words, Eurocentrism. Eurocentrism is often used in order to explain how feminism inhabits Western
(European, more specifically Western European or Anglo-American) ethnocentrism. I use the term
ethnocentrism to open for questions relating to whether certain types of feminism can be ethnocentric in ways
that are non-Western, for example if black feminism is ethnocentric in terms of Blackness.

9
 In these two accounts, there is a difference between whether ethnocentrism is
something that is blameworthy for unfairly passing negative judgments on other cultures as a
consequence of the belief in the superiority of one’s own, or whether it is merely a way of
evaluating other cultures by using what we already know to do so. I find that this distinction
between normative, or otherwise overt ethnocentrism such as fascism on the one hand, and
simply descriptive ethnocentrism is too restrictive the charge of ethnocentrism against
feminism. Ethnocentrism in feminism is different from racism or fascism. I will give a more
detailed account of descriptive ethnocentrism, which I call necessary ethnocentrism, before I
suggest a third kind of ethnocentrism, which constitutes the charge against feminism. This
third kind of ethnocentrism I call latent ethnocentrism.

1.2.1 Necessary Ethnocentrism

In Woman, Native, Other (1989), a post-colonial work that criticizes colonialist aspects of
feminism, the feminist theorist and artist Trinh T. Mihn-ha explains that the self is a
necessary precondition for meaning, which means that all meaning is entangled in self and
Othering. In this sense, ethnocentrism is necessary for knowledge, and thereby not
blameworthy. By examining writing, Mihn-ha claims that no writing can go beyond an
expression of the self:

An analysis of the other-not-me (or of oneself) does not occur without the intervention of the me (or of
one’s “higher” self), and the division between the observer and the observed. The search for meaning
will always arrive at a meaning through I. I, therefore, am bound to acknowledge the irreducibility of
the object studied and the impossibility of delivering its presence, reproducing it as it is in its truth,
reality, and otherness. (Mihn-ha 1989, 70)

In Mihn-ha’s explanation of the Self, there is a distinction between the Self and the Other that
is not me, and the Self and the Other that is me, namely the “higher” Self and the Other Self
within the Self.11 The Self and Other dynamic also occurs between individuals and groups.
This means that for any group identity, some ethnocentrism is necessary. That is not to say
that groups of identity are always necessary. The meaning that is created, especially in Self-
Other oppositions that occur in a group fashion such as Man/Woman or West/East, is created
ethnocentrically because it takes as its center and point of reference this Self. In order to

11
In Georg W.F. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, the master-slave dialectic (lordship and bondage) turns out
to be a relation between Othered parts of a fragmented Self, where the master depends on the Othering of the
slave (Hegel 1977 [1807], 111–119).

10
determine itself as center, the Self needs Otherness.12 Even in order to establish the meaning
of an ‘I’, Othering is necessary.
I find that this necessary form of epistemological ethnocentrism where the ‘I’ is
necessary for meaning can be traced back to Nietzsche’s essay “Truth And Falsity In An
Extra-Moral Sense” (1993 [1873]), where he argued that all language is a metaphor, and has
no real truth-value because words are androcentric generalizations:

When we talk about trees, colors, snow, and flowers, we believe we know something about the things
themselves, and yet we only possess metaphors of the things, and these metaphors do not in the least
correspond to the original essentials. (Nietzsche 1992, 62)

[…] man forgets himself as subject, and what is more as an artistically creating subject, only by all this
does he live with some repose, safety, and consequence. (Nietzsche 1992, 66)

This essay has been influential for poststructuralism, which as informed much of my
methodology.13 Language leads us to believe that all things signified by them are equal, when
in reality they are different. Actually, one failed to represent the thing adequately, and in the
pretense of something universal is actually something expressed ethnocentrically. The
possibility of knowledge is limited by the Self, or the ‘I’ that knows. This limitation is also
paradoxically the precondition for the very possibility or actuality of human knowledge in the
first place. Perhaps we may say something similar about knowledge. For knowledge to exist,
it must be constrained somehow, and the limitations to that knowledge make the knowledge
possible and in this way are necessary for it. This ethnocentrism that is necessary for the
establishment of meaning and thereby also knowledge, is not blameworthy. One might be
tempted to say that one cannot be blamed for ethnocentrism when it is part of knowledge
constitution, but that would be an excuse for racist and imperialist ideologies. On the one side
there is necessary ethnocentrism, and on the other side, there is overt ethnocentrism such as
racism and fascism. Somewhere in between I find what I call latent ethnocentrism.

1.2.2 Latent Ethnocentrism

In her essay on ethical feminist theory, Lugones elaborates her understanding of
ethnocentrism as the “disrespectful, lazy, arrogant indifference to other cultures that devalues

12
In this thesis I use the term Other with capitalized O, in keeping with the tradition from Edward Said’s
Orientalism (1978). He is heavily accredited one of the founders or most central scholars of postcolonial studies.
In the 2003 preface to Orientalism Said wrote on the role of the Orient as Other for the centrality of the West.
To maintain the identities of the West and the Orient, an opposition between the two terms is necessary: “[…]
neither the term Orient nor the concept of the West has any ontological stability; each is made up of human
effort, partly affirmation, partly identification of the Other” (Said 1978, Preface (2003), xii).
13
Nietzsche has been identified as the first philosopher to attempt to do justice to difference, and criticized 18 th
century Enlightenment thinking, which held that things could be objectively named. (See Hermsen 1996, 169).

11
them” (1990, 48). Here, ‘indifference’ can be a form of ethnocentrism. To illustrate this
understanding of ethnocentrism, I will draw on an example brought to the fore in Diane Fuss’
book Essentially Speaking (1989). Fuss describes a literary tradition of white, male, mostly
Western authors as phallocentric and ethnocentric (1989, 84). Ethnocentric indifference here
appears as an exclusion of other identity types. In other words, ethnocentric indifference can
be the exclusion of Otherness, or rather, the exclusion of difference. It is this exclusion that
verifies the superior belief in one’s own culture – the superiority of the Self over the Other.
The exclusion in Fuss’s description of literary tradition takes the form of indifference toward
gendered, raced and non-Western Others. It does this not by explicitly denying these authors
a place in the tradition, but by disregarding them as valid contenders altogether.
The implicit assumption of the superiority of the Self may even be unbeknownst to
the Self. In her essay “What Should White People Do?” (2000), feminist epistemologist
Linda Alcoff addresses the white antiracist flaw, namely, covert supremacist pretentions.

White support for antiracism is often similarly flawed: riven with supremacist pretentions and an
extension at times of the colonizer’s privilege to decide the true, the just, and the culturally valuable.
(2000, 262–263)

Alcoff is describing the well-meaning Western, but who fails to recognize that understanding
racism by employing white/Western situated knowledge might not be suitable. I Alcoff’s
white supporter of antiracism illuminates an important feature of ethnocentrism; one which I
find is not best examined through a dichotomous framework of is or is not ethnocentric.
I argue therefore that there such a thing as structural ethnocentrism, which I have
called latent ethnocentrism. I find it useful to think about latent ethnocentrism much like
structures of consumerism and global capitalism. Certainly, individual decision-making may
impact the growth or recession of consumerism and global capitalism, but to reduce solution-
making strategies to individual choice is to misunderstand the construction of the problem
entirely. When a problem is structural in nature, it very much needs a structural solution.
Blaming individual choices for consumerism, such that consumers tend not to check what
retailers are outsourcing production to factories with humane conditions and workers’ unions,
is to neglect the main part of the problem, namely that the powers of the free market are
valued above basic human rights. Covert, latent ethnocentrism occurs by simply riding the
tide of normalcy, and is therefore structural. Consider the tide of normalcy and the typical
Western consumer who, while morally principled in many ways and makes conscientious
choices for herself and others, is guilty of perpetuating consumerism lest she makes a radical

12
break with normalcy and declines to purchase anything that can be traced back to sub-par
production conditions.
I think there is something about Western ethnocentrism in particular that makes it
important to investigate in feminism. Western ethnocentrism – or Eurocentrism – is of a
different global significance than that of other cultures’ ethnocentrism due to colonial history,
capitalism, and the flow of theory from the West to the ‘peripheries,’ which disregards theory
produced in nonwestern cultures.14 Eurocentrism has had and continues to have large
amounts of influence on nonwestern societies, while the opposite does not occur to the same
extent.15 In order to increase the legitimacy of nonwestern knowledge production, a critique
of Eurocentrism is necessary.16 The political balance of power is not removed from my
understanding of ethnocentrism and the particularity of Western ethnocentrism in the world.
My concern for ethnocentrism does occur beyond context, and it is as a European feminism
that I acknowledge the importance of European self-criticism.
In this thesis, I am concerned about what I have called latent, covert and structural
ethnocentrism in feminism. Latent ethnocentrism is distinct from what I have called
necessary ethnocentrism that is constitutive for knowledge production, unavoidable and not
blameworthy; and overt ethnocentrism, such as fascism. Latent ethnocentrism is a middle-
ground between the two and includes indifference toward others and notions of superiority of
the group-Self. It is a status quo-ethnocentrism that covertly permeates knowledge
production under the guise of normalcy. It is latent, but is possible to change and therefore
also blameworthy. One does not necessarily consciously choose to act or speak in structurally
ethnocentric ways, but it is not a necessary condition. Efforts are needed to change this latent
ethnocentrism, which may explain why this form of ethnocentrism is so widespread. In the
next subchapter, I will briefly discuss the methodology behind this thesis, before I turn to
what I find to be ethnocentric charges against Western feminism by bell hooks and Uma
Narayan in the final section of the first part.

14
See Roberts & Connell (2016) for an account of how knowledge production in academia flows from the West,
and that theory produced in nonwestern societies are not read by Westerners, while the opposite is often
required.
15
Engaging in European self-critique does not mean that the imperialist ethnocentric behavior of others is not
problematic, such as Chinese economic imperialism. The difference between Eurocentrism and other kinds of
ethnocentrism, such as national resistance movements in post-colonial countries are also of importance. I make
a distinction between what I call primary ethnocentrism, which is perpetuated by dominant groups in order to
serve their interests, and secondary ethnocentrism, which is a form of resistance and self-preservation as a
response to imperialism.
16
See Tove Pettersen’s “Less Travelled Texts: The Case of Women Philosophers” (2018) for an account of a
similar structure within academia concerning gender, and the academic preference for texts written by men over
texts written by women.

13
 1.3 Methodology
In order to investigate whether there is structural, latent ethnocentrism (Eurocentrism) in
mainstream feminism, I will examine the arguments presented by bell hooks and Uma
Narayan, who have both examined this question. They represent black feminism and post-
colonial feminism, both schools of thought that find Eurocentrism in feminism, but who are
also committed to feminism’s political project. There are few, if any, who argue against
hooks and Narayan that there is no latent ethnocentrism in feminism, so there are no obvious
candidates that argue the opposite case in detail. I will therefore not examine arguments
against the thesis that there is latent ethnocentrism in feminism, but rather arguments against
the foundations on which hooks and Narayan base their arguments. In this subchapter I first
introduce feminist challenges to the Western philosophical canon. Second, I introduce
poststructuralism as a school of philosophical thought, before I in the third section defend
feminist poststructuralism from some objections from feminist philosophers. Fourth, I
introduce Audre Lorde’s master’s tools paradigm to illustrate that although traditional
philosophical assumptions might be useful for feminism, they will not lead to structural
change. I briefly discuss my situatedness in relation to this thesis before finally situating bell
hooks and Uma Narayan within their own respective fields.

1.3.1 Feminist Philosophy and The Western Philosophical Canon

Feminist philosopher Karen Warren points out some central features of the Western
philosophical canon that are problematic both because they have led to the subjugation of
women – and I add people of color – and because they do not adequately represent reality.
Dualisms – such as reason/emotion, mind/body, culture/nature, public/private,
objective/subjective and absolutism/relativism – have not “functioned historically in gender-
innocent or neutral ways nor accurately represented reality” (2009, 19). Another foundational
feature of the canon of Western philosophy is its basic assumptions: rationalism,
essentialism, objectivism, universalism and absolutism. Rationalism is the assumption that
humans are distinctively rational, in contrast to nonhuman entities. Essentialism assumes that
things, including humans, “have properties (essences) that make them what they are and
distinguish them from what they are not.” In contrast, many feminist philosophers deny
conceptual essentialism, but not strategic essentialism,17 which “collectivizes a group for
practical, political, or strategic reasons” so that one can make generalizations for purposes of

17
Strategic essentialism is attributed to Gayatri Spivak (1988 [1987]).

14
argument and analysis.18 Objectivism is “the assumption that basic, true claims of philosophy
are impartial, detached, and disinterested (in contrast to being subjective, partial, attached,
and interested).” Objectivism (masculine) is seen to be incompatible and wholly different
from, and superior to, subjectivism (feminine). Finally, the Western philosophical canon also
assumes that “basic, true philosophical principles apply cross-culturally (universalism) and
are absolute in the sense of being either prima facie binding or never overridable” (2009, 20–
21). Reality, Warren purports, is more complex and ambiguous than is representable by
dualisms and these five assumptions. Indubitably, dualisms and these five assumptions have
been harmful and used unjustly, but have also been very useful for the feminist project, for
instance by appealing to women’s rationality or a common human essence for asserting their
personhood alongside men, or by appealing to objectivity to assert the legitimacy of their
claims regarding the mechanisms of sexist oppression. Poststructuralism has provided ways
to think about concepts such as these five that challenge and destabilize them. I think that
feminist poststructuralist challenges to conventional concepts that reveal implicit biases
contributes to a productive analysis of ethnocentrism in feminism.

1.3.2 What Is Poststructuralism?

Feminist poststructuralism (hereafter FPS) seeks to “deconstruct patriarchal power relations,”
and finds that meaning is not fixed, but discursive. Discourse is “a historically, socially, and
institutionally specific structure of statements, terms, categories, and beliefs” (Scott 1988,
35).19 Discursive fields may overlap and influence one another. Often discourses will appeal
to “truth” for legitimation, which are given a powerful “objective” status, supposedly beyond
dispute. Challenges to these fundamental assumptions are often “marginalized or silenced”
(Scott 1988, 35). When there is a claim to neutrality and objectivity, there is also an exercise
of power (Weedon 1987, 171). FPS historizes concepts “otherwise treated as natural” such as
man/woman, or absolute such as equality or justice (Scott 1988, 34). This means that
language, instead of being a representation of something, is conditional for understanding
everything and anything, including institutions, social and production relations, and identity.
This way of understanding knowledge and power and how they are produced inform how
feminists understand women’s oppression in patriarchal societies. It also allows feminists to
look at what power-mechanisms take place in feminism.

18
This distinction among other things highlights that “one is not entitled to assume that there are necessary and
sufficient conditions that identify all and only women as women – an assumption made by” [most canonical
philosophers] (Warren 2009, 20).
19
It is a term that, in poststructuralism, has mostly been developed by French philosopher Michel Foucault.

15
 FPS builds on the insights of poststructuralism, and particularly the works of Jacques
Derrida. Because I am interested in FPS, I will explain poststructuralism by relying on FPS
interpretations. We think in terms of exclusions, where meaning is achieved by establishing
what it is not. When we say something by excluding what we do not say, that very exclusion
is implied in, and thereby included in, what we are saying.20 Derrida’s poststructuralist
philosophy is indebted to Nietzsche’s critique of language, and Martin Heidegger’s thoughts
about the sign. Derrida’s notion of différance names the mechanism by which meaning is
produced by difference to other terms, or signs, and deferral, which is difference from past
and future meanings of the sign (Weedon 1987, 25). Meaning is made by contrast, and by the
fact that it is impossible to assert anything positively – by itself – without distinguishing it
from other things. According to Derrida “this opposition is congenital to philosophy”
(Derrida 1978 [1967], 284). We create existence through contrast and consequently expose a
certain limit to thought, perhaps the very limit that has been necessary for the possibility of
thought in Western philosophy. His concept of deconstruction is “the reversal and
displacement of binary opposition” in order to expose the fact that these opposites, such as
male/female, are not “natural” or fixed, but constructed “for particular purposes in particular
contexts” (Scott 1988, 37–38). The structure of binary and hierarchical oppositions permeates
the Western philosophical tradition (Scott 1988, 36–37). Derrida’s critique of what he calls
Western philosophy’s ‘metaphysics of presence’ (logocentrism), springs out of some fixed
point or first premise, which Derrida refutes (Petrović 2004, 90). Logocentrism is the idea
that “signs have fixed meaning recognized by self-conscious rational speaking subject”
(Weedon 1987, 24). For Derrida, the absence of such a principle admits the impossibility of
“some original, full, unmediated meaning […] like Godot, the final truth, revelation or
salvation [which will] never arrive” (Petrović 2004, 91). Meaning is never fixed, but always
implicated by its history, its other, and the openness of a radically open future – and yet,
meaning is derived in structure and opposition through reiteration. Because of différance,
meaning can never be fixed, even by the author’s intent. It the discursive context meaning is
formed contextually in relation with other signs, and is not inherent or essential.
Books on FPS tend to follow the same trend as introductory books on feminism,
where issues tied to race and culture are often treated as afterthoughts. This is the case for
Feminism and Poststructuralism (1987) by Chris Weedon, Feminist and Deconstruction

20
‘Apophatism’ is the technical term used for definition by negation, and is often used when trying to explain or
define something ineffable, such as in negative theology. Examples in philosophy are Anaximander’s apeiron,
Plato’s Parmenides and Plotinus’ the One.

16
(1994) by Diane Elam, and Feminism From Revolution to Deconstruction (2011) by
Pam Papadelos. Diana Fuss’ book Essentially Speaking (1989) is an exception to this trend,
and will be discussed in chapter two.
Some feminist philosophers find that FPS is a problematic methodology.21 Professor
in literature Lena Petrović credits deconstruction as a tool to see ways in which repressive
ideologies control its subjects, and mentions examples such as rationalism, capitalism and
patriarchy, but does not find that deconstruction can lead to any emancipation from these
repressive ideologies, nor provide the theorist with an alternative (2004, 91). That would
require the establishment of a new kind of structure, one which, according to poststructuralist
theory, also would be repressive and subject to deconstruction. Skepticism to this
methodology also comes from feminist philosophers concerned about ethnocentrism in
feminism. Patricia Hill-Collins argues that theories that perceive race as a “social
construction” are too abstracted from reality in ways that are not useful for African
Americans. Social issues and daily struggles such as voting rights and infant mortality that
target the black community particularly hard are better analyzed with traditional black/white
paradigms, she argues, instead of abstractions of race and ethnicity (2004, 12).
Despite the many criticisms from established feminist theories of knowledge, many
feminist philosophers and thinkers adhere to poststructuralist thought and methodology.
Ramazanoglu and Holland argue that “feminists do not have to play postmodern games by
their rules” (2002, 103). This suggests that FPS can deviate somehow from ‘mere’
poststructuralism. Several prominent feminist philosophers and thinkers can be classified as
FPS.22 bell hooks has defended the use of poststructuralism, and is one of few black feminist
scholars to do so. I find that Uma Narayan also relies on insights from FPS. I have
summarized the skepticism toward FPS in three points based on Seyla Benhabib’s critique of
postmodernism in Feminist Contentions23 (1995), which I have adjusted to account for other
prominent criticisms as well: (A) The loss of autonomy accusation, namely that women lose
their agency if the subject is deconstructed; (B) The valueless accusation, namely that there
can be no normativity to claim that women have been treated unfairly in society; (C) The

21
See for instance Seyla Benhabib (1995), Linda Alcoff (1996), Sandra Harding (1993), Helen Longino (1993),
and to some degree Nancy Fraser (1995) for criticisms of FPS. Note that some of these criticize postmodernism,
a term often conflated with poststructuralism.
22
Among others, these include Judith Butler, Gayatri Spivak, Barbara Johnson, Joan Scott, Drucilla Cornell,
Diane Elam, Chris Weedon, Veronica Vasterling, Elizabeth Grosz, Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous and Julia
Kristeva. Although the latter three have been influenced by poststructuralist philosophy, they might be better
categorized as French feminists.
23
Benhabib articulates her critique of postmodernism in strong and weak versions of (1) The Death of Man; (2)
The Death of History; and (3) The Death of Metaphysics.

17
relativist accusation, namely, that there is no way to separate what is true from what is false. I
briefly provide a defense of FPS.
(A) The loss of autonomy accusation: In FPS, the subject is not only situated in, but
constituted by practices, institutions, and matrices of power and discourse (Butler 1995, 42).
The critique of the subject is not a negation or repudiation, but an interrogation of its
construction as a pre-given (Butler 1995, 23). Instead of the humanist “conscious, knowing,
unified, rational subject” poststructuralism finds that subjectivity is neither unified nor fixed,
but “a site of disunity and conflict” (Weedon 1987, 21). In being reiterated always in light of
some fabricated ideal, identity categories tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes, even
while they claim to “describe, authorize and liberate” (Butler 1993, 308). This is true even for
strategic essentialism, because essentialism can ‘take on a life of its own’ since the intention
– strategy – does not determine the meaning of the sign (Butler 1990, 6–7). Conflicting
discourses constitutes and enables us to give meaning to the world and to act to transform it
(Weedon 1987, 31), not stripping us of agency.
(B) The valueless accusation: According to Butler, poststructuralism takes as its
issue that “power pervades the very conceptual apparatus that seeks to negotiate its terms”
(1995, 39). In other words, even if one attempts to limit potentially oppressive powers of one
instance, that limitation is itself an exercise of power – perhaps even a more dangerous one,
since it purports an ‘anti-oppressive stance.’ FPS holds that the universal is ethnocentrically
hegemonic because the Other is structurally excluded in order to establish the universal
(Butler 1995, 40). Although a FPS might say that beyond discourse there is no meaning, she
will not concede that within discourse there is no normativity.24 It is not that FPSs do not
believe in any or all metanarratives, but rather, they are more sensitive to that which is
excluded, and are skeptical to the clean distinction between good and bad.25 General theories
of historical progress, for instance, negate other narratives from black or nonwestern women.
(C) The relativist accusation: There is no truth beyond discourse, holds FPS, and
herein lies the accusation of relativism and nihilism (Weedon 1987, 76). If we understand
how invested interests construct discourses, we can explain why they are influential and
account for the ways they fail to provide coherent accounts of experiences and how we can

24
This may be a response to Nancy Fracer’s concern in Feminist Contentions that FPS are not able to
distinguish between bad resignifications and good ones, and that Butler seems to valorize change without
paying heed to feminist judgment (1995, 68).
25
Weedon quotes Spivak to make this point, who writes that “We cannot but narrate, but when a narrative is
constructed, something is left out. When an end is defined, other ends are rejected, and one might not know
what those ends are” (Weedon 1987, 177). Spivak argues that there is no normative standard one can appeal to
that is not also discursive. This does not, however, immediately invalidate standards of normativity.

18
alter them (Weedon 1987, 178). Since signifiers are located in a discursive context from
which they derive their temporary meaning, the meaning of something will depend on the
location within discursive relations at any particular moment and will always be open to
reinterpretation (Weedon 1987, 25). In this way, the notion of Truth is strange to a
poststructuralist. It is not that a FPS will deny that the sky is blue or that the Earth is round,
but instead of examining the truth-value of these statements, she will be interested in what
kind of discourses we have access to in order to explain our reality to ourselves.
Although Warren’s analysis of some of the tools of traditional philosophy illustrates
the problems using these tools in feminist philosophy, several feminist epistemologists wish
to hold on to versions of autonomy, normativity and objectivity. Much of the skepticism
toward FPS can be summarized fear of a deconstruction of feminism. According to Butler,
however, these fears are exaggerated and restrictive (1995, 50). To support her point, in
Ethics of Ambiguity Simone de Beauvoir wrote that “It is in the knowledge of the genuine
conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for acting”
(1948 [1947]). Granted, I do not believe Beauvoir intended for her statement to be interpreted
in a poststructuralist context, but I find that our genuine conditions may be the discursive
constitution of our reality, and that knowing this may be our strength.

1.3.3 The Master’s Tools Paradigm

Poststructuralism is useful for this thesis in part because of its use in exposing ethnocentric
assumptions in work claiming to be universal and neutral. My motivation for using FPS is
rooted in Derrida’s concern with ethnocentrism in philosophy and European self-critique. In
“Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences” (1978 [1967]), Derrida
critiques Claude Lévi-Strauss’ attempt in The Savage Mind (1966) at finding something
universal for all human beings. Lévi-Strauss maintained that all humans classify and order
the world around them (1966, 15). As Lévi-Strauss denounces ethnocentrism by
acknowledging the values of other cultures, he simultaneously “accepts into his discourse the
premises of ethnocentrism” because he uses key signifiers of the “modern science” of his
own culture to do so (Derrida 1978, 283). Derrida criticizes Lévi-Strauss for relying on
ethnocentric premises as he tries to evade them, and that as an acclaimed anthropologist he
should have known better that to claim that he has achieved non-ethnocentric analysis of
other cultures. I find that Derrida points out an instance of what I have called latent
ethnocentrism. Lena Petrović analysis illustrates the difficulty of asserting something with
epistemological premises that are founded on oppositional claims to the assertion:

19
 Derrida would have none of this. In his opinion, to exploit the relative efficacy of these terms in order
to destroy the old machinery to which they belong and of which they are themselves pieces is by
definition a self-defeating project. (Petrović 2004, 92)

Derrida’s objection to the circular project of using tools from that which one refutes is
strikingly similar to the position of black lesbian feminist writer Audre Lorde, who wrote:
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (2003 [1983], 27). Lorde wrote
this text to criticize the lip-service that white feminists pay to anti-racism, without actually
seeing racism as a feminist concern. She wanted to expose the ethnocentrism of the feminist
conference she was invited to, by calling attention to the fact that she was one of the two
women of color invited, that they were invited at the last minute, and that no-one expected
them to speak about anything other than racism (Lorde 2003, 25). The way I understand
Lorde is that the master’s tools that construct the master’s house are a metaphor for a
Eurocentric patriarchy. The tools of the house – or rather, the Western philosophical tradition
– cannot be used to dismantle the house. If the same tools are used, they will only end up
rebuilding the house. The tools themselves are involved with values of oppression. Lorde’s
words are a critique of white, Western feminism, which she finds reproduce the same systems
of patriarchy as they claim to oppose. In patriarchal discourse, Weedon explains, “the nature
and social role of women are defined in relation to a norm which is male,” whereas many of
women’s social and political gains have been about including women “in the rights and
privileges which men have instituted to serve their own interests” (Weedon 1987, 2), for
example racism. With this strategy, structure that excludes is not being challenged, but
expanded to include more people. The problem is that everyone cannot be included in a
structure that is founded on exclusion.
Some may argue that my interpretation of the master’s tools paradigm is overly all-
encompassing, and not narrow enough. Surely, not everything in the epistemological tool-
case of Western philosophy should be classified as a master’s tool. This objection may hold
that there must be some ways to distinguish master’s tools from other available tools that are
not imbued with the masters’ agendas. Those who hold this position may question, what is it
that makes tools the master’s tools, because the mere fact that they have been used by the
master seems arbitrary. The vagueness of the meaning of the term ‘masters’ tools’ has been
left purposefully covert throughout this thesis, in part because it is covert, ambiguous and
contextual. Another concern for this paradigm is whether feminism has a leg to stand on if it
totally forsakes rationalism, essentialism, objectivism, universalism and absolutism. And if it
does, then what tools should it use instead? If one’s understanding of the master’s tools is

20
broad enough, it seems there are no tools that may dismantle the master’s house, which seems
grave. This problem is a central concern for ethnocentrism in feminism.
In a way, situated knowledge is Derrida’s solution in “Structure Sign and Play,”
because he disarms his own ethnocentrism by acknowledging his own Western situatedness.
For Derrida the acknowledged ethnocentrism is better than the unacknowledged, which gives
itself out to be universal and neutral. By acknowledging ethnocentrism, the philosopher
disarms her claims and makes them less useful for oppressive purposes. I would like to
address my own situatedness as a philosopher and student, in keeping with Derrida’s move
and the genre of feminist philosophy. Frequently, work by white feminists who attempt
intersectionality turns out “patronizing and condescending” toward women of color.
According to bell hooks, “[WAW] make us the ‘objects’ of their privileged discourse on race.
As ‘objects’ we remain unequals, inferiors” (hooks 2000a [1984], 13). It is necessary to keep
in mind a self-critical examination of whether this thesis contributes to the Othering of WOC
and NWW. In investigating complex philosophical issues, I do think in line with many
feminist epistemologists that there is no ‘view from nowhere,’ but that views from ‘many
where’s’26 may contribute to a fuller understanding. In line with FPS, I do not think that my
situated distance from racial and cultural Othering is completely good or bad for this thesis,
but both restrictive and constituting – a limitation that also makes this thesis possible.

1.3.4 bell hooks and Uma Narayan

I have chosen to limit the scope of this thesis by examining the works of bell hooks and Uma
Narayan. hooks has been very influential for feminist philosophy and gender studies, and
even though she is not classified as a philosopher in the traditional sense, she reads and is
quoted by many philosophers interested in systems of oppression. Narayan is a philosopher
by academic standards, and has been influential in feminist ethics of care and feminist
epistemology as well as political philosophy and post-colonialism. Both of them have voiced
important considerations about the master’s tools paradigm that have illuminated the
difficulties involved for feminism that attempts non-ethnocentrism. This thesis is not meant
to be a full investigation in all their works and I refer only to their works that are relevant for
the ethnocentrism charge in feminism. Some readers may object that the texts used in this
thesis are too old to state anything about the current situation in feminism, since some were
written as far back as the 1980s. I think that their charges are nevertheless important to

26
This insight and articulation comes from feminist empiricist epistemologist Helen Longino, who argues for a
more democratic notion of objectivity by the use of intersubjectivity, which is establishing knowledge based not
on neutrality, but on a collection of different perspectives (1993, 113).

21
examine philosophically, and unless someone claims that feminism was then ethnocentric but
is ethnocentric no longer (which I believe would be naïve to assume), the charges still stand.
Interestingly, hooks and Narayan are both divergent in their fields. Of contemporary
black feminism scholars in the United States, hooks is one of very few who advocate for the
usefulness of postmodern thought for black liberation.27 Feminist post-colonialists generally
have a much closer relation to the French philosophical and literary tradition than
American/Anglo intellectuals. Several well-known feminist post-colonialists such as Gayatri
Spivak, Meyda Yeğenoğlu, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Jasbir Puar are influenced by
poststructuralism. Narayan, however, is not overtly poststructuralist or even postmodernist.
She is influenced by feminist standpoint epistemology, which is derived from Marxist
thought Nonetheless, I find that her writings play into a FPS framework, especially because
of her focus on the harms of universalization, essentialism, oppression and paternalism.
Neither hooks nor Narayan argue that feminism is intrinsically or necessarily ethnocentric.
They do argue that generally feminism is formed in an ethnocentric way, and connect this
ethnocentrism with an epistemological framework that comes from the Western philosophical
canon. This ethnocentric praxis is evident from the political manifestation of feminism. hooks
writes (mostly) from the context of the United States, and Narayan mostly writes with a
global outlook. Despite differences, their positions share certain important features, which I
believe support the validity of their work.

1.4 The Ethnocentrism Charge Against Feminism

Before I present hooks and Narayan on the political and epistemic charges of ethnocentrism
against feminism, I will consider some general arguments against charges of ethnocentrism in
feminism. Firstly, an objection to ethnocentric charges is that feminism is a project against
sexism in particular, and should not be expected to grapple with race or culture as forms of
oppression. Granted, it is an unfair and unrealistic standard to set for feminists to work
against all forms of structural injustice, as if feminists were somehow held to higher moral
standards than other political ideologies. Furthermore, a very broad focus on oppression may
divert attention away from the struggle against sexism by perpetuating the expectation that
women should take responsibility and suffer for the lives of others (husbands, children,
parents), instead of following their own dreams and ambitions in life. A second objection
may be that those who charge feminism with being ethnocentric simply want to prioritize

27
See for instance hooks’ essays “Essentialism and Experience” (1991) and “Postmodern Blackness” (1991).
Weedon also notes that hooks speaks favorably of FPS (Weedon 1987, 177).

22
their own issues, and that it is unnecessary to charge others who want to prioritize their own
issues with ethnocentrism. In other words, the pot is calling the kettle black.
While these objections may hold ground for specific projects, I do not find that they
hold for feminism on a state or international scale. Working against one form of systemic
oppression without working against them all, hooks argues, means undermining the feminist
project altogether (1990, 29). One way to understand this interconnectedness is to think about
oppression in a historical context. It makes no sense, for instance, to think about the systemic
racism of the Atlantic slave-trade without capitalism and its constant need for expansion and
cheap labor. Narayan holds that overly generalizing women’s problems can be ethnocentric
because “women’s issues” are those that most often pertain to WAW (1998, 86). Therefore,
many women who are indeed oppressed may, paradoxically, find that feminism does not have
anything to offer them in terms of liberation. Ethnocentrism charges against feminism are not
interested in replacing valid feminist concerns with other concerns, but wish to include more
concerns to improve feminism. These inclusions might, admittedly, lead to a reprioritization
of the totality of concerns. In “‘Under Western Eyes’ Revisited” Mohanty points out that
those who are subjected to multiple axes of oppression manifest the most inclusive feminism.
She argues that poor NWW who “bear the brunt of globalization” are able to see the
necessity of addressing multiple axes of oppression simultaneously. They are,

the hardest hit by the degradation of environmental conditions, wars, famines, privatization of services
and deregulation of governments, the dismantling of welfare states, the restructuring of paid and unpaid
work, increasing surveillance and incarceration in prisons, and so on. (2003, 514)

It follows that a movement that aims to target only one axis of oppression is then best suited
for those people who experience that axis only, and is the same reason why class and anti-
race movements have been criticized for not taking gender into account.

1.4.1 The Two Prongs of the Charge

If hooks and Narayan are right in their charge against feminism, and correct about the
interrelatedness of axes of oppression, then ethnocentric feminism does not dismantle the
master’s house. It might, as Lorde states, bring about effect for a short term, but not the long
haul. Sometimes it is difficult to make the distinction between the political and the
epistemological, since the political requires an epistemic position and the epistemic in turn
requires a political position. For the purpose of this thesis, however, I divide the accusation of
ethnocentrism into two prongs based on this distinction. The two prongs are related due to the
conviction that the epistemological framework affects the political work of feminism.

23
Therefore, it is important not only to investigate whether or not the political work is
ethnocentric, but also whether the epistemological framework behind it is ethnocentric and
may be a cause of political ethnocentrism. hooks articulates this when she writes that

The foundation of future feminist struggle must be solidly based on recognition of the need to eradicate
the underlying cultural basis and causes of sexism and other forms of group oppression. Without
challenging and changing these philosophical structures, no feminist reforms will have long-range
impact. (2000a, 33)

The first sentence expresses a need for a specific construction of political struggle, namely,
that it must found itself on the erasure of causes of oppression, which is not an exclusive
focus on sexism. The second sentence addresses the philosophical structures behind such a
political construction, and a need to challenge these as causes of the shape political feminism
takes. This double thinking has formed the investigative structure of this thesis.
The epistemic prong springs out of the concern that feminism’s ethnocentrism is
connected to Western philosophical heritage of a sense of Western superiority that comes
from dualism based on hierarchy, and essentialism, that is needed for categorical analysis and
identity. The political prong is an evaluation of feminist measures that have been put in
against ethnocentrism in feminism, such identity politics, intersectionality and transnational
feminism. With reference to the master’s tools paradigm, I evaluate how these measures
might support the system they are intended to challenge. Lorde’s tools-paradigm is fitting for
my analysis, because the risk for both of these manifestations of ethnocentrism is that
feminism inadvertently ends up reproducing oppression that it aims to dismantle.

1.4.2 What is at stake?

That which is at stake for feminism, if practiced in an ethnocentric way and if shaped by
ethnocentric foundational premises, is firstly, women’s solidarity. If feminism is conceived in
such a way that only certain women are being heard, it cannot count on the solidarity of the
female masses. Secondly, what is at stake in this thesis are what tools that might be
acceptable and useful for the feminist project. This thesis will not examine all possible tools
to disclose which ones will be ‘master’s tools,’ but I will discuss the relevance of some tools
for the feminist project. Thirdly, and most importantly for this thesis, what is at stake is
feminism’s liberating quality; whether feminism risks reproducing oppression in the attempt
to thwart it. This is the threat of the master’s tools. It is this third point that I find is being
addressed when Mohanty states that feminists need to “examine the political implications of
our analytic strategies and principles” (1988, 64). Mohanty is worried about the risk for
feminism of not adequately and consistently resisting patriarchy on all fronts.

24
2 The Epistemological Prong of the Ethnocentrism Charge
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark
– William Shakespeare, Hamlet

In my investigation I have asked whether there exists a latent, structural ethnocentrism in

‘general feminism’, if we can speak of such a thing. In this chapter, I investigate whether
there is something about our epistemological framework that supports ethnocentric
expression in feminism, and on what epistemological grounds bell hooks and Uma Narayan
base their charge. In this chapter, I argue that ethnocentrism is not an occasional or accidental
issue in feminism, nor an issue with individual women, but a structural issue. Epistemology is
the study of how we know what we know. Uma Narayan thinks the project of feminist
epistemology predominantly Anglo-American, and that feminist epistemology poses certain
political problems for nonwestern feminists that it does not for Western feminists (2004,
214–215). By examining how we know what we know, we may find faulty assumptions that
have serious impacts on the politics that are created as a result of what we (think we) know.
This chapter is divided into three sub-chapters. First, I examine how epistemology
affects the political. By looking at hooks’ interlocking axes-model and the exhaustive
inclusion-problem in poststructuralism, I argue that Western metaphysics form the base of an
epistemology that has resounding effects in feminist politics. The heritage of western
metaphysics has produced concepts that shape the way we think, and which extends into
feminism as well. In the second sub-chapter, I examine how political agendas affect our
epistemological tools, such as the hierarchy of dualisms. I draw on and her destabilization of
what I call the West/rest-dichotomy to support my argument that dualisms are created to
serve political agendas, and that challenging the devaluation of one side of the dualism will
nevertheless partake in maintaining the dualism. From the first two subchapters, I conclude
that our language and the political agendas that produce ethnocentrism in feminism exist in a
circular reaffirming relation to one another that makes alternative politics and epistemology
difficult to establish, which I call the episteme-politic. In the third subchapter I seek to
understand the ‘something rotten’28 in mainstream feminism that makes it difficult for WAW
to connect meaningfully with WOC and NWW in feminist struggle. I defend hooks’ and
Narayan’s premise on which they build their arguments about ethnocentrism in feminism –
namely, the epistemic privilege of the oppressed.

28
This is a term I borrow from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, an articulation I appreciate for its ability to point out
what it cannot seem to easily and explicitly point out.

25
 2.1 Feminism’s Metaphysical Heritage
In this subchapter I will make the claim that feminism’s epistemological framework is
influenced by Western metaphysics, which makes it difficult for feminists to perceive
ethnocentric structures in feminism. I maintain that this epistemological framework affects
feminist politics that can prove counter-productive. First, I will provide some examples of
ethnocentrism in mainstream feminism. Second, I will rely on arguments by hooks and
Narayan to show that feminism is not inherently ethnocentric. Third, I discuss hooks’
interlocking axes-model of oppression, which is based on a critique of Western philosophical
dualisms. I will present hooks’ argument that ethnocentric feminism is not simply self-
contradictory if one is concerned with justice, but also counterproductive because the
structures of domination that produce sexism are being supported by the conceptual
separation of sexism and racism.

2.1.1 Ethnocentrism in mainstream feminism

In the introductory chapter I invoked some examples of latent ethnocentrism from
introductory books and flow of knowledge production that favors Western academic
feminists and Western narratives. Here I will give some examples of ethnocentrism in
feminism outside academia. Racist feminism is possible and does occur. In an educational
documentary on cultural critique called Cultural Criticism & Transformation (2002), bell
hooks argues that superstar Madonna (Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone) was a feminist not
in spite of her racist remarks and attitudes, but that her feminism was permissible over time in
the patriarchal mainstream because of her racism.29 This example illustrates that it is possible
to hold racist and feminist sentiments at the same time, and that feminism may seem less
threatening for patriarchal society if it is paired with racism. I am less interested in overtly
racist feminists, however, and more interested in latent ethnocentrism.
One example of is structural, latent ethnocentrism in feminism can be found in the
online #MeToo movement, which gained mainstream support and media attention in October

29
hooks introduces Madonna as an artist who laid claim to “an engagement with feminist politics,” positioning
herself as someone who “would break new ground and was going to challenge the sexism of that industry.” In a
1996 Spin magazine interview, Madonna made racist statements about Black men and women while positioning
herself as a strong white woman with feminist views (hooks, 2002). She held that Black men were the most
sexist, that Black women were submissive, and stated her dislike for Black people in general. hooks argues that
in order to maintain her superstar status in a society with oppressive structures that she had challenged by her
feminist stance, Madonna supported other axes of oppression in order to limit her danger to the status quo.

26
2017. Senior editor at the American news outlet The Atlantic30 Gilligan White wrote about
the movement’s mainstream neglect of the experiences of WOC:

Though the #MeToo movement has made clear the insidiousness and prevalence of sexual harassment
and assault, it has also been centered mostly on the experiences of white, affluent, and educated
women. One doesn’t need to look far to see instances of women of color being forgotten or sidelined.
In October, as #MeToo began to trend on social media, many credited the actress Alyssa Milano, who
took to Twitter to encourage women to share their own stories of sexual harassment and assault; what
got lost amid those calls was the fact that the originator of that slogan was a black woman named
Tarana Burke, who came up with the concept more than a decade ago. The oversight highlights a
common concern about the ways that black women’s contributions can be ignored or belittled, only to
have the same ideas lauded when they are presented by white women. (White 2017)

WOC organized an online protest to gain traction for taking the harassment complaints of
WOC more seriously, arguing that American culture tends to believe white women’s
accusations of sexual harassment more than those of black women.31 According to White,
white women did not show up in similar numbers to the online protest organized by the
WOC, which led them to question the solidarity of the movement. This question was also an
issue during the U.S. Women’s March protest in January 2017, writes White, where issues
that mostly affect WOC were not prioritized, such as police brutality. There is something to
be said for the neutrality of the #MeToo movement, which is according to White presented as
“uncomplicated, straightforward feminism” in order to appeal to solidarity from all women.
The #MeToo issue is indicative of a larger discussion in feminism that is a modern
version of Mary Daly’s critique of WOC’s interjections that I discussed in the introduction:
When WOC make interjections into feminist movements, they are often blamed for breaking
with feminist solidarity. In “Feminism’s Toxic Twitter Wars” (2014) feminist journalist
Michelle Goldberg writes about what she finds are dissenting voices in the feminist
movement. According to Goldberg, these voices that critique feminism for not being diverse
enough are a sign of “slashing righteousness,” “chastisement and rooting out individual sin”
that make many women feel “emotionally savaged,” uncomfortable and turn away from
engaging in feminist politics, which stifles the entire feminist movement (Goldberg 2014). In
an article from 2016, sociology professor at City University of New York Jessie Daniels
critiques White dominance in online feminist activism, and points out that Goldberg finds
toxicity in WOC’s dissenting voices instead of finding toxicity in the mainstream feminist
movement that gives rise to complaints from WOC (Daniels 2016, 4).

30
The Atlantic is a respectable news outlet, but far from one of the largest or most influential ones. It is known
for leaning to the political left. Although all major news outlets were reporting on the #MeToo movement, its
latent ethnocentrism was given little attention from mass media. White is a woman of color.
31
Sexual violence against Black women in the US has a long history of not being addressed, which is connected
to the long history of sexual violence against Black women slaves, which was legal for several hundred years.

27
 Although Goldberg does have a point about how nasty the internet can be, this
problem is a general one, and does not pertain specifically to online feminists. Rather, what I
find more interesting, is that Goldberg invokes a notion of what one might call ‘fake
intersectionality.’ Black feminist Anna Holmes is quoted in the article saying “There are
these Olympian attempts on the part of white feminists to underscore and display their ally-
ship in a way that feels gross and dishonest and, yes, patronizing” (Goldberg 2014). Perhaps
this is a point on which the journalists White and Goldberg could agree, namely that WAW
feminists are quick to portray what American professor of media culture Susana Loza calls
“symbolic multiculturalism.” This is a term to describe how many WAW invoke words such
as diversity and intersectionality in feminist projects without doing the work that requires to
demonstrate solidarity with WOC when it is specifically asked for (Loza 2014). In short,
these discussions in feminism display that WOC and WAW solidarity is more difficult to
achieve than one might at first imagine, and that WOC cannot simply be added to mainstream
feminism without changing the movement. The discussions illuminate that the issue is not
simply one of including WOC in mainstream feminism, but that WOC also wish to have an
impact on mainstream feminist politics.
The problem of ‘fake intersectionality’ has been a long-standing problem in American
feminism. In Ain’t I A Woman, hooks takes issue with feminist Adrienne Rich’s claims in her
essay “Disloyal to Civilization: Feminism, Racism, Gynephobia” (1978), where she writes
about WAW and WOC solidarity, and even claims that White women defied patriarchy for to
help black people. In this instance hooks argues that Rich, whom hooks often credits as a
great feminist inspiration elsewhere,32 contributed to a “glorification of the role white women
played.” During slavery and the suffrage movement, hooks holds, the alliance with White
women did not serve black slaves. White women in the movement were appropriating the
horrors of slavery to “enhance their own cause” rather than being sensitive to slave
experiences (1981, 126). hooks writes that while WAW saw themselves as generous and
inclusive toward black women, “[t]hey could not see that their generosity was directed at
themselves, that it was self-centered and motivated by their own opportunistic desires” (1981,
144–145). hooks’ stance here shares common ground with Narayan, who in “Colonialism and
Its Others: Considerations on Rights and Care Discourse” (1995) argues that benevolent
colonialists such as missionaries thought of themselves as caring for the colonized, whereas
instead they were acting in paternalistic ways that upheld colonialism.

32
hooks credits Adrienne Rich with feminist insights on language, for instance, in chapter 15 “On Self-
Recovery” of Talking Back (1989).

28
2.1.2 Feminism Is Not Inherently Ethnocentric
It is important to establish that feminism is not intrinsically ethnocentric, that latent
ethnocentrism is not foundational to feminism, and that there is something that can be done.
hooks believes that feminism has had an incredible capacity for self-criticism and
adaptability, unlike some other liberation movements, and can become less ethnocentric and
more inclusive. She argues in her book Feminism is for Everybody, that race-based criticisms
of feminism have made it stronger, not weaker (2000b, 110). When it comes to non-
ethnocentric feminism, hooks believes that anyone can take a political stance against “sexist,
racist, heterosexist, and classist oppression,” and choose to focus on any particular issue in
that struggle. If the feminist has a firm stance against “all forms of group oppression,”
however, this broad consciousness will influence her work, even if she is working for a
narrow cause (hooks 1986, 137). For her, feminism is not “simply a struggle to end male
chauvinism” or ensure equal rights with men. Instead, it is a “commitment to eradicating the
ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels” (1981, 194–195).
In Feminist Theory, From Margin to Center hooks finds that the way in which some
feminists understood their daily struggles as shaped by politics and influenced by the larger
society instead of being a set of individual personal grievances also contributed to the
inhibition of their understanding of women as a collective group (2000a [1984], 26).
Understanding the issues women face systematically and not in terms of personal grievances
makes an analysis a feminist one, and may incite solidarity to work toward the dismantling of
unjust social orders. I find that hooks implies that feminism is a method, as well as a political
project with philosophical underpinnings. She argues that the ways in which women analyze
their personal woes in the private sphere is what makes or unmakes a feminist, and in this
sense I find that she is a radical second wave feminist.
Uma Narayan further develops the notion of feminism as methodology, which saves
feminism from inherent ethnocentrism. In her book Dislocating Cultures (1997a) Narayan
uses the idea of feminism as methodology to argue that feminism is not inherently Western.33
Based on various women’s movements around the world, Narayan finds that “political
connections to other women and their experiences” are necessary for feminism, along with
political analyses of their problems and attempts at finding political solutions to those
problems (Narayan 1997a, 11). She holds that post-colonial feminism is not a Western
infiltrator or colonial heritage, but a mode of thinking not owned by or derived from any

33
Holst describes meeting nonwestern women who dismiss feminism as a project for WAW (2009, 10–11).

29
culture. This mode of thinking is feminist but not culture-specific in that (A) it brings the
discourse out of the private sphere and into “general concern and public debate,” (B) it does
this in “terms of analysis” and “explanatory accounts” that differ from non-feminist analysis,
which is often given apolitical terms of analysis, and (C) it concerns women’s situations
within specific contexts [Narayan’s italics] (1997a, 12). In contrast to those who explain the
suffering of women in terms of being unfortunate and being victims of immoral others,
Narayan claims that feminists, like herself, look toward the “systemic and systematic nature
of the problems.” There isn’t anything essentially or intrinsically Western about that, she
argues. Epistemologically, this feminism-as-method takes experience as a source of
knowledge. Narayan and hooks maintain that feminism is not intrinsically or fundamentally
ethnocentric or Eurocentric. The problem is that feminism often plays out in Eurocentric
ways. If ethnocentrism is not necessary, then why does feminism seem to have an
ethnocentric problem? hooks and Narayan often invoke Western philosophy as the source of
this problem.

2.1.3 Difference And Devaluation

In this section, I argue that metaphysical presumptions in Western epistemology affect how
we think of oppression, and can have consequences for how feminism operates in
ethnocentric ways. We think of oppression as restrictive social structures that inhibit people’s
freedom unjustly. We separate forms of oppression conceptually, into different “axes” of
oppression such as sexism, racism, imperialism, capitalism and class struggle, and even
ageism, discrimination against disability, sexuality and so forth. hooks claims that the
separation of the axes of oppression such as racism and sexism stems from Western
metaphysical dualism. Herein lies the epistemological ethnocentrism that constructs a norm
and the peripheral deviants that uphold it. hooks maintains that present in Western culture is
an ‘ideology of domination,’ which is informed by Western philosophy and the derived belief
that “the superior should control the inferior.” She writes:

The sexism, racism, and classism that exist in the West may resemble systems of domination globally,
but they are forms of oppression that have been primarily informed by Western philosophy. […]
Within our society, all forms of oppression are supported by traditional Western thinking. (hooks
2000a, 36)

These philosophical foundations of binaries and hierarchies makes it possible to separate axes
of oppression. Sexism, racism, and imperialism are all dualistic ways of asserting people as
Other from the norm of our world, which is the White male. The separation of the axes of

30
oppression are made possible by binaries with allegiance to the norm, that obscure the
interlocking feature of the axes and that the interlocking oppressions culminate in an
ethnocentric structure for the benefit of the Western patriarch. hooks find that Western
metaphysical dualism34 is a dangerous master’s tool that blinds people to the interlocking
structure of different axes of oppression under the ‘ideology of domination.’ In Writing
Beyond Race, Living Theory and Practice (2013), hooks writes,

Meaningful resistance to dominator culture demands of all of us a willingness to accurately identify the
various systems that work together to promote injustice, exploitation, and oppression. To name
interlocking systems of domination is one way to disrupt our wrongminded reliance on dualistic
thinking. Highlighted, these interlocking systems tend to indict us all in some way, making it
impossible for any of us to claim that we are absolutely and always victims, calling attention to the
reality of our accountability, however relative. (hooks 2013, 37)

By seeing the axes as interlocking instead of each separately related to the norm, hooks
thinks feminists will more easily see that racism is as much of a feminist issue as sexism. Her
objection to the axes-model of oppression is founded on the ability of the axes-metaphor to
separate axes of oppression from one another. In “Gendered Reason: Sex Metaphor and
Conceptions of Reason” (1991) feminist philosopher Phyllis Rooney investigates reason by a
genealogy of metaphors that explain reason in gendered fashion, and that works to exclude
groups of people (1991, 77).35 I find that argument about the double edged sword of
metaphors helps hooks’ claim that the axes-metaphor obscures the interlocking feature of
different forms of oppression. According to Rooney, metaphors may seem like they provide
clarity, but instead give an even more distorted picture of reality by homogenizing
differences.36 Metaphors will enhance, select, and suppress some aspects, and organize
features to fit into the metaphor-image. So much so, that a metaphor may turn into a “self-
certifying myth” because it has an effect on how we understand the world (1991, 87–88). If

34
Dualisms are prevalent in many cultures, and often serve patriarchal systems in Eastern civilizations as well.
For instance, the Ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius’ five cardinal relationships are based on a hierarchical
dualism where the stronger part rules over the weaker part.
35
Rooney analyzes several historical metaphors explaining or invoking reason – often in a gendered contrast to
emotion – from prominent and influential philosophers such as Plato, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Augustine,
Descartes, Hume, Rousseau, Locke, Kant, and Hegel. She questions whether our understanding of reason is
separate from these metaphors that base the very validity of reason, which is its impartiality, neutrality,
abstraction and universality, which is derived from a gendered dichotomy (Rooney 1991, 86–86). In this way,
the construction of the notion of ‘reason’ is based on an implied and assumed ‘natural’ and unquestioned gender
hierarchy that serves as affirmation of the value, strength and importance of reason itself. This understanding of
metaphors illustrates a serious problem for the impartiality of reason.
36
Rooney employs a chess-metaphor to demonstrate this distortion, which she credits to Max Black. In order to
describe a battle between people by using the metaphor of a game of chess, several important aspects of war
such as death and despair are suppressed in favor of other aspects such as strategy. It also gives the impression
that there are two opposing teams with opposing interests, who internally share the same interest. In a war
between people, this may be far from reality (Rooney 1991, 87).

31
we believe the myth that the axes of oppression can be separated from one another, we are
going to form our world around that belief, and also our resistance.
There is much evidence to support hooks’ claims about oppression being supported
by Western philosophy,37 which starts early on with a devaluation of difference. Instead of
the cloak of neutrality that Western philosophy often dons, many feminist philosophers argue
instead that Western philosophy values perceived ‘masculine’ qualities over perceived
‘feminine’ ones. The gendering of qualities is made particularly explicit in the Pythagorean
table of opposites. Pythagoras preceded Socrates and influenced Plato and Aristotle, and
thereby also a large part of Western philosophy. His table of opposites has demonstrated the
devaluation of sexual difference in Western philosophy:38

Limited [Bounded] Unlimited [Unbounded]

Odd Even
One [Determinate Form] Many [Indeterminate Form]
Right Left
Male Female
Resting Moving
Straight Curved
Light [Clear] Darkness [Vague]
Good Bad
Square Oblong

The qualities in the column on the left seem to confirm to a standard of the norm, whereas the
qualities in column on the right differ from it. These two columns are, beyond being
gendered, also explicitly linked to normative values. Difference is not merely descriptive, but
always differs from something that is thereby established as norm. In line with this
interpretation, feminist philosopher and ethicist Sabina Lovibond argues that this
organization also means that the differing is marked in a hierarchical relation to sameness and
to the male, where qualities such as difference and the feminine occupy a lower hierarchal
position (Lovibond 1994, 97). Although feminism has long been critical of this devaluation
of difference, hooks is not convinced that feminism has managed to overcome its
philosophical heritage. I argue that her interlocking axes-model of oppression demonstrates
how this philosophical heritage produces latent ethnocentrism in feminism.

37
Much like my generalization of feminism, I rely on a generalization of Western philosophy in this thesis. I do
not do this to purposefully discount the many various strands of Western philosophy that do not correspond to
its general representation. By using this generalization in order to make claims on the pervasiveness of dualisms,
I follow in the poststructuralist tradition.
38
The table is discussed in Lovibond (1994), but originally retrieved from Aristotle’s Metaphysics 986a22. I
have added alternative translations in brackets for nuance.

32
 hooks’ claims about the ‘ideology of domination’ is that each axis of oppression is a
devalued difference from the norm, much like in Pythagoras’ table of opposites. In other
words, these differences are not simply innocent complementary contrasts, but are instead
value-based and hierarchical. My interpretation of hooks’ argument finds that the
metaphysical presumptions of the division of the axes affect how we think of oppression in
ways that do not serve feminist purposes. In general, feminism is concerned with sexism as a
form of oppression. hooks argues that this understanding of feminism as sexist oppression is
ethnocentric, because it first and foremost pertains to the experiences of white women, who
are able to isolate gender as a singular axis of oppression. It is “ethnocentric white values,”
hooks writes, that have constructed within feminism a “priority of sexism over racism,” one
which does not reflect the reality of lived experience for women suffering from racist as well
as sexist oppressions (hooks 2000a, 53). For this to be accurate, I will add that this would be
correct for middle- and upper-class White women, who are also able to ignore class as form
of oppression, since they are on the privileging end of class oppression. A feminism,
therefore, that serves the interests of WOC would not be concerned with sexism as a primary
form of oppression, but rather, one of several interlocked axes of oppression.
The language that separates racism from sexism is misleading, if the axes of
oppression are intertwined. Despite her objections, hooks does define feminism as “a
movement to end sexist oppression,” simply put (hooks 2000a, 28). Read charitably, this is
no contradiction from the view that centering sexism above other axes in feminism is
ethnocentric. From hooks’ texts, I have found that a feminism that only focuses on sexism as
an axis of analysis is a feminism that undermines its own efforts as feminism. The
prioritization of sexism is made possible by the conceptual separation of the axes of
oppression under the ‘ideology of domination.’ One of hooks’ main and recurring arguments
in the many texts she writes on sexism and racism over the period of several decades, is that
conceptually dividing oppression into axes leads feminists to think that they can be treated
separately. In Writing Beyond Race, Living Theory and Practice, hooks writes that “[…]
challenging patriarchy will not bring an end to dominator culture as long as the other
interlocking systems remain in place” (hooks 2013, 36). The unquestioning acceptance of
different axes of oppression actually inhibits an understanding of the overall interlocking
oppressive structure, and makes it all the more difficult to dismantle it.
Because the system in its entirety is based on upholding the norm, and the Othering of
those whom differ from the norm, as long as that basic structure is maintained, any feminist
struggle for the eradication of sexism will be limited. The basic structure of Othering will

33
remain, and so will the basic structure of the norm, because it is established by the periphery.
In order to capture this structure in her language, hooks develops the term imperialist white
supremacist capitalist patriarchy to better describe the ‘ideology of domination’ to
encompass multiple axes of oppression in an attempt to provide “a way to think about the
interlocking systems that work together to uphold and maintain cultures of domination”
(hooks 2013, 4). Imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy benefits from the
division of axes of oppression and seeks to maintain obscurity by letting aspects of the
system to be challenged separately, both conceptually and temporally (hooks 2013:24).
Different struggles are even pitted against one another, hooks argues, such as the race for
suffrage between black and women’s liberation in the 19th century (hooks 1981, 126).
Emancipation strategies that conceptually separates the axes will support the status
quo of White supremacy. These interlocking systems – imperialism, white supremacy,
capitalism and patriarchy – depend on and sustain one another:

Since dominator culture relies on interlocking systems (imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism,
patriarchy) to sustain itself, it seeks to cover up the connections between these systems. Or it allows for
only one aspect of the system to be challenged at a time: for example, allowing anti-racist critiques
while silencing anti-capitalist or anti-sexist voices. (hooks 2013, 34)

I find it is helpful to think of the ideology of domination as a many-legged stool. Imagine a

stool with the ability to regrow new legs, each leg represents an axis of oppression, and the
seat of the stool represents the established norm. If this stool had had three legs, attacking one
sole leg – say, sexism, will be enough to topple the stool for good. Since the stool has many
legs, in this case as many legs as there are axes of oppression, the stool will have many other
legs to stand on while the one is under siege. This type of ‘divide and conquer’ strategy
serves to strengthen the status quo of the ideology of domination. In this vein, hooks writes
that feminism needs to be “based on a recognition of the need to eradicate the underlying
cultural basis and causes of sexism and other forms of group oppression.” It is the causes, and
not so much the effects of oppression that hooks wants feminism to tackle, which echoes
Lorde’s master’s tools paradigm: “Without challenging and changing these philosophical
structures, no feminist reforms will have long-range impact” (hooks 2000a, 33).
Related to this problem is the way in which the idea feminist liberation takes
inspiration from the status of the norm. According to hooks, it is a mistake to think that
sexism can be eradicated by a “movement that aims to make women the social equals of
men” because men are not equal either (hooks 2000a, 19). Black men, for instance, are not
equal to White men in the U.S., and neither are working class men equal to upper class men.

34
On the one hand, there is no ‘liberation’ for black women to become the equals of black men
because black men are also oppressed. On the other hand, hooks argues that if feminism is
about making women equal to men, and especially white men, feminists have made a goal for
themselves that involves the domination of others, because the status of men in the
imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy relies on domination. hooks’ project is
very much an attempt at saving feminism from this ethnocentric master’s tool-pitfall of
equating liberation with a status that requires the domination of others. If the women’s
liberation is measured by measuring a woman’s ability to fare in the world like an upper-class
white male, hooks does not think feminism is an anti-oppressive politic.
The inheritance of metaphysics as an epistemological tool in feminism has perhaps
made it difficult for feminists to perceive the ethnocentric structures that they perpetuate. In
this subchapter I have illustrated how the epistemological framework affects the political.
Because the epistemological framework is tied up in metaphysical dualisms, language –
which operates as metaphor and reflects these dualisms – shapes our conception of reality in
a way that can produce misguided directions for the political.39 hooks’ interlocking axes-
model is an example of the effects language-as-metaphor can have on feminist politics, for
instance when feminism tackles sexism as lone axis. hooks’ arguments have demonstrated
that when feminism works with a concept of sexism as an axis of oppression that it is
separable from other interlocking axes, feminist politics end up serving the agenda of the
‘ideology of domination.’ hooks strives to correct this issue by urging her readers to see the
interlocking feature of the axes, and to strive to think in non-oppositional terms. I think that
hooks’ work shows that inherited metaphysical dualism forms the base of an epistemology
that has a resounding effect on the political in feminism. In the next subchapter, I will argue
that the political in turn has an effect on the epistemological, and that this has consequences
for feminism in so far as feminism is an attempt at emancipation.

2.2 The Political Effects on Feminist Epistemology

In relation to hooks’ analysis, Narayan’s work may be read as an inter-societal critique on a
global scale, whereas hooks’ work is an intra-societal critique, albeit with outward global
awareness. The two differing perspectives are in one sense strikingly similar. They both
destabilize dualisms connected to white supremacy and Western dominance, which are based

39
Feminist physicist Evelyn Fox Keller was one of the forerunners in arguing for a feminist approach to science
and stated that language, images and metaphors “can become hardened into a kind of reality” (Keller 1985, 78).
In other words, the meanings of these ideas start forming our understanding, instead of simply articulating our
understanding.

35
on essentialist differentiations. hooks and Narayan are both concerned that our language,
which informs our epistemology, serves the agendas of the ruling elite. In the preceding
subchapter, I argued that epistemology has an effects on politics, and that Western
metaphysical dualism allows feminists to think in terms of isolated axes of oppression. These
ways of thinking then have consequences for the ways in which political struggle is made.
Less often, however, one considers the effects that political agendas may have on the
epistemological. Therefore, it may be worthwhile to examine whether the political extends to
the integrity of epistemological claims, and what political agendas might be served by the use
and acceptance of concepts and dualisms, such as white/black and Western/nonwestern. In
this section I argue that the political has an effect on epistemology in return, because the
consistent and compatible structures of difference that values the West and the male have not
simply appeared on their own. I will call this doubly affective structure between the political
and the epistemological for the episteme-politic. First, I use Narayan’s destabilization of the
West/rest-dichotomy to demonstrate that the essentialist dualisms in the epistemological
framework is not prediscursively real. Second, I suggest that upholding these dualisms
nonetheless is done for the purpose of serving Eurocentric political agendas, and that even
resistance projects are not separable from the episteme-politic.

2.2.1 Destabilizing the West-and-the-Rest Dichotomy

In this section, I investigate the validity of the distinction between the West and the
nonwestern. After demonstrating that the Othering of the nonwestern is based on false
homogenizations, I will question why these distinctions are and have been upheld. Narayan
exposes the incoherence of Othering binaries by pointing out inconsistencies with the West’s
portrayal of itself in these dualisms, and the West’s selective understanding of its Others that
ignores similarities between Western and nonwestern cultures. In Dislocating Cultures
(1997a), Narayan warns against understanding terms such as “Westernization” and “cultural
preservation” as what she describes as “innocuous descriptive terms” (Narayan 1997a, ix).
These are not neutral or innocent terms with no power or harmful effects. The notion of
“Westernization” comes from a binary understanding of cultures constructed during colonial
times, which pits the view of the colonizer in against the view of the colonized, usually in
terms of the colonizers’ supposed historical progress and the ahistorical and static culture of
the colonized (Narayan 1997a, ix). In this manner, the use of “Westernization” perpetuates
problematic old colonial notions of “progress,” “civilization” and “culture.” This language
served justified colonialization. In order to destabilize this dichotomy, Narayan demonstrates

36
that what is Western and what is nonwestern is difficult to establish, because things originate
in one place and become appropriated in another culture. Therefore, the language that insists
on the West/rest-dichotomy informs the way we think benefits the hidden political agendas of
the one’s in power.
In her article “Essence of Culture and a Sense of History: A Feminist Critique of
Cultural Essentialism” (1998), Narayan points out that values such as “equality” and “human
rights” are often hailed as Western, which leads people to what Narayan argues are false
conclusions about Eurocentrism.40 Why are notions such as equality and human rights
particularly Western, Narayan asks, when the historical reality is that “Western doctrines of
equality and rights” coexisted a long time alongside Western perpetuation of slavery,
colonialism, patriarchy, and internal discrimination against minorities (Narayan 1998, 97).
Western civilization has a consistent history of not championing these rights for other than
the middle/upper-class white male in its own societies. According to Meyda Yeğenoğlu,
these dichotomies serve to identify the West with the universal, and an essentialist view of
the East and West as “constitutively contrary and profoundly different” (Yeğenoğlu 1998,
104). The “profound similarities” between the West and the rest, such as “hierarchical social
systems, huge economic disparities between members, and the mistreatment and inequality of
women,” were systematically disregarded in the making of the Western/nonwestern dualism
[Narayan’s italics] (Narayan 1998, 90). Genealogies of concepts, objects, ideas and practices
often expose the ambiguity that dualisms cover up: “Entities of non-European origin that
have been assimilated into “Western culture” over time include items as disparate as
gunpowder, compasses, Christianity, and coffee.” Certainly, the origin of something does not
determine its cultural significance, or “limit its scope of relevance” [Narayan’s italics]
(Narayan 1998, 97). If notions such as equality and rights did in fact originate in what is now
Europe, and nowhere else – which would be very difficult to prove – the West can hardly lay
unique claim to these concepts and ideas. Whether by appropriation or by discovery of their
own, other cultures will also have relations to these ideas. The insistence on difference
between Western and nonwestern cultures, Narayan argues, comes from an unquestioning
acceptance of the very dualisms that rely on cultural homogeneity and have been used to
justify Western colonialism (Narayan 1998, 90).

40
Narayan’s criticism is directed at Adamantia Pollis and Peter Schwab (1979), who argue that the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights is an imposition of Western values on nonwestern cultures. Narayan argues that
their argument is based on cultural essentialism.

37
 In order to demonstrate the homogenization of culture that takes place in the Othering
of the nonwestern, Narayan invokes a metaphor of culture and history as pictures. The still-
frames obscure the movement and historicity within culture and history, and obscure the fact
that they, the pictures, are mere representations, rather than the “natural givens” that they
suggest. Narayan’s use of the picture-metaphor is useful because a picture is a still-frame
without movement, which makes it hard for the onlooker to see what is represented as “the
historical inventions and constructions that they are.” The pictures do not present the
“economic and political agendas” that stand behind the wish to “return to past traditions”
(Narayan 1997a, 21). Narayan’s point is that feminists will create better theory if able to see
the beyond an ethnocentric lens because the ethnocentric lens serves ethnocentric agendas. I
think this reaction against ethnocentric is not a claim on objective truth, but rather a
proposition to be more aware of one’s own situatedness in relation to others. Neither is it
cultural relativism, because it does not involve a valueless or mere descriptive onlooking of
other cultures. It includes an awareness of other modes of discourses and a drive to figure out
what agendas are served by those modes of discourses. Having shown that the West/rest-
dichotomy is arbitrary and served the agendas of those who benefited from the belief in this
difference, I will investigate how these dichotomies contribute to ethnocentrism in feminism.

2.2.2 Dualisms Represent Political Agendas

In this section I will argue that politics and power dynamics influence the epistemological, in
other words, influence the way we understand our world. In this sense, epistemology cannot
be removed from these dynamics of power. Even resistance to the ‘ideology of domination’ is
impacted by the way epistemology is affected. In the previous section, I discussed Narayan’s
arguments to show that dichotomous differences are presented in such a way that implies that
they are “pre-given and prediscursively real,” and merely describe natural givens instead of
constructs. The particular danger of discursive reiteration of essentialist differences such as
the Western and nonwestern is that it shapes people’s self-understanding. Narayan holds that
discourses about these differences “often operate to conceal their role in the production and
reproduction of such “differences,”” whereas the discourse is part of their construction and
perpetuation. In this sense, these discourses are not merely descriptive (Narayan 1998:88–
89). Instead, these conceptual differences are conflated with reality. The hierarchical
metaphysical substructure of these terms perpetuates the sense of Western superiority, which
in turn justified colonialism and functioned as rationale for imperialism. The political,
namely, the ‘ideology of dominance’ has had a large impact on our epistemological tools.

38
 The political impact on epistemological tools is that political agendas uphold
essentialist dichotomies that work in their favor. According to hooks and Narayan, this
impact is harmful. Firstly, as hooks and Narayan have illustrated, Western dualisms make
essentialist claims about gender, racial and cultural identities. These essentialisms establish a
norm, from which the Others differ. The norm is the upper/middle-class white Western male.
The norm, which is presented as both neutral and superior at once, establishes an
ethnocentric epistemological standard, from which all other identities are compared, and that
leads to structural ethnocentrism based on how alike the norm one’s identity qualifies. The
second reason for hooks and Narayan’s claim that Western dualisms are harmful is because
several Western dualisms serve patriarchal and Western imperialist political agendas in the
West and globally. Perhaps not all of the West is imperialist in mind, but the majority of the
Western civilization benefits from its imperialism. The heritage of Western philosophy has
ethnocentric consequences for feminism, because it accepts and uses imperialist categories,
which categorizes and prioritizes the anti-oppression focus of feminism.
Even resistance is inundated with politically affected epistemological foundations.
Feminism, even in its patriarchal-resisting liberatory ways cannot get away from these
ethnocentric thought mechanisms. In an article called “Colonialism and Its Others:
Considerations on Rights and Care Discourses” (1995), Narayan explains that these
ethnocentric foundations may limit feminism:

The alternative moral visions of the agency of women or of the colonized that developed in such
political contestations, though they challenge the moral picture of the world held by the powerful, are
not themselves immune to creating or reinforcing other relationships of power. (Narayan 1995, 137)

What Narayan is saying here, is that the context in which liberation projects emerge –
feminist or nationalist – often lead to the perpetuation of power-structures that can be
oppressive. This is correct even in the politics of resistance for feminism. This also means
that even attempts to alter devaluation the lesser part of dualisms is not enough to dismantle
the structures that serve these agendas. For instance, all Othered identities such as woman,
black and nonwestern are defined by their relation to the members of the dominant group.
Many groups of people are, and were in colonial times “normatively defined in terms of their
relationships as inferiors and subordinates vis-à-vis members of dominant groups” (Narayan
1995, 136). Even the positive acclamation of one’s designed identity is still an acceptance of
the identity that fortifies the norm. The circular model of the reciprocal fortifying-relation
between the epistemological and the political status quo can explain why it is so difficult to
resist without using the master’s tools. This mutually affective relationship makes sure that

39
metaphysical dualisms create an epistemological foundation that is used for oppression and
liberation, but a liberation that rests on the very same epistemological foundations as
oppression. This is a problem that will be discussed more in chapter three when I examine
attempted solutions to ethnocentrism in feminism.
In this subchapter I have argued that in addition to epistemology having an effect on
politics, political agendas that serve the interests of the imperialist white supremacist
capitalist patriarchy have an effect on the epistemological as well. I imagine this mutually
reinforcing mechanism in a circular fashion, which makes it even harder to break out of. I
picture it like a circular track that has been paced in for so long that it is hard to climb out of
it, especially because all the edges are curved and smooth, and there are no corners with
which climb out of the track. In the next subchapter, I will argue that this mutually affective
relationship between the epistemological and the political produces a structural, latent
ethnocentrism in feminism. This circular structure, which I call the episteme-politic, makes it
difficult even for well-meaning WAW feminists who acknowledge ethnocentric tendencies in
feminism to dismantle ethnocentrism in feminism. This difficulty is the symptom of the
‘something rotten’ in feminism.

2.3 The ‘Something Rotten’

I argue that the difficulty for well-meaning WAW feminists to extract themselves from the
structure of latent ethnocentrism is symptomatic of the ‘something rotten’ in feminism – or
rather – what I have called the episteme-politic in which we are entangled. In the first section,
I argue that the “something rotten” expresses itself in the problem of knowing the Other. Not
much has been written defending feminism against ethnocentrism, but philosophers like
Richards and Diana Fuss present challenges to some of the foundations on which feminist
philosophers such as hooks and Narayan base their claims. In the following two sections, I
discuss some problems with the thesis of epistemic privilege, which explains why WOC and
NWW will have specific access to knowledge about certain forms of oppression. I defend the
thesis of epistemic privilege against 1) the ‘bias paradox’ in standpoint theory that
undermines the validity of claims based on epistemic privilege, and 2) what I have called the
essentialist silencing problem that worries if epistemic privilege silences those who do not
have a claim on it. I demonstrate the validity of epistemic privilege as a form of
epistemological analysis by appealing to Narayan’s nuanced understanding of epistemic
privilege, and hooks’ improved concept, the “privileged standpoint.” I conclude in this

40
section that the thesis of epistemic privilege is important in order to assert the claim that there
is latent ethnocentrism in the form of Eurocentrism in feminism.

2.3.1 The Problem of Knowing the Other

Narayan and Harding have articulated ‘something rotten’ in our epistemological framework,
which is the way in which the Other is understood with a latent ethnocentric lens. This
latently ethnocentric way of attempting to understand the Other is a result of what I have
called the episteme-politic, which is the reciprocally reinforcing mechanism of 1) language
that provides meaning and understanding of the world, and 2) political agendas. Narayan and
Harding are writing about sexism and androcentrism, but I find that the same can be said
about ethnocentrism in feminism:

It is worth recalling that the deepest forms of sexism and androcentrism – the ones most difficult even
to identify, let alone to eradicate, have not been those visible in the intentional actions of individuals
(which is not to excuse such overt or covert sexism and androcentrism). It has not been sexist or
androcentric motivations or prejudices of individuals – their false beliefs and bad attitudes – that has
given women the most trouble. Rather, it has been the institutional, societal, and civilizational or
philosophic forms of sexism and androcentrism that have exerted the most powerful effects on
women’s and men’s lives – the forms least visible to us in our daily lives. The discouraging news for
Enlightenment enthusiasts is that being very smart and well intentioned has not been sufficient to
prevent us from enacting and supporting the most egregious of sexist and androcentric practices.
(Narayan & Harding 2000, vii–viii)

Narayan and Harding astutely point out that the ‘something rotten’ is not an individual
problem as such. The root problem has to do with institutional, societal, civilizational and
philosophic – in this case epistemological Western ethnocentrism (Eurocentrism) – that may
be difficult to identify, especially because it is guised as norm.
The ‘something rotten’ may help explain the skepticism of WOC corresponds well
with the thesis that WAW often operate with an epistemological foundation that is influenced
by structural Eurocentrism, even when well-intentioned. For this reason, Narayan argues that
“good-will is not enough” (Narayan 2004, 219). Even well-meaning feminists, who might be
aware that ethnocentrism, racism and imperialism may occur in feminist struggle, and who do
not wish to participate in the perpetuation of ethnocentrism, racism and imperialism, may still
unwittingly do so. Narayan states that Western feminists who critically examine their own
culture, “often tend to be more a part of it than they realize” and “tend to participate in the
dominance that western culture has exercised over nonwestern cultures” (Narayan 2004,
219). It seems therefore, that there may be “something rotten in the state of feminism,” so to
speak – that makes it difficult for Western feminists to resist the structural ethnocentrism of
Western metaphysical dualism even when they want to and try to.

41
 In “White Woman Feminist” (1992) philosopher and feminist Marilyn Frye, who is a
White woman in the U.S., writes about the experience of being unaware of one’s underlying
ethnocentric attitudes, and the difficulty of unlearning Western ethnocentrism41 in feminism:
“All my ways of knowing seem to have failed me” (Frye 1992, 148). Her statement is a
testament about the inadequacy of the existing epistemological system. I question, after
considering the claims brought forth by hooks and Narayan and many other black and post-
colonial feminists insist that WAW act and think in Eurocentric ways, what is it that WAW
feminists do not see when they attempt to self-critically overcome their politico-
epistemological ethnocentrism? To what are they blind? For answers, I turn to the ways in
which WOC claim that there are problems for WAW when they attempt to understand the
Other. Next, I will examine the thesis of epistemic privilege, on which hooks and Narayan
build their claims about ethnocentrism in feminism.
I will present three different views on the problem of knowing the Other from non-
white feminist philosophers. In “Have We Got a Theory for You!” Lugones questions
whether theorizing about Others actually results in any understanding of them. Her aim in
this article is to provide suggestions as to how theory might be done in a non-imperialistic,
non-ethnocentric and non-disrespectful way. Lugones argues that because WAW have more
privilege, “they have less knowledge about others than others have of them” (1995, 388).
This power imbalance, and the resulting reverse epistemological power-imbalance suggests
to Lugones that any cooperation will increase the vulnerability of WOC. If WAW are
motivated by duty or obligation, this may lead to a form of paternalism and inappropriate
self-righteousness (Lugones & Spelman 1995, 389). These difficulties that present
themselves to the WAW who wishes to achieve understanding of (and perhaps even
solidarity with) WOC paint a bleak picture of the actual possibilities for doing so. These
concerns presented by Lugones lead me to ask whether actual understanding of the Other is at
all possible, especially considering feminist epistemological insights that claim there is no
“view from nowhere” but only local perspectives. Indeed, the epistemic privilege implicitly
invoked by Lugones suggests that there can only be views and perspectives from certain
places, which may limit the very ability to understand something completely on its own
terms. Certainly, this is a valid claim, but may be more relevant for an analysis of some
degree of necessary ethnocentrism. Unfortunately, Lugones does not discuss what kind of

41
Frye refers to racism, but I have chosen to relay her comments about what I have called latent ethnocentrism,
because I wish to distinguish her insights about white feminists’ trouble with connecting with WOC feminists
from overt, purposeful racism.

42
epistemic privilege on oppression that education may produce, which I find may be a valid
claim on knowledge about understanding the Other.
bell hooks, in contrast, presents an entirely optimistic stance on the problem of
knowing the Other. Certainly, she acknowledges that without “adequate concrete knowledge
of and contact with the non-white ‘Other’,” mainstream feminist theory can be “threatening
and potentially disruptive” for feminism (hooks, 1990d, 26). She does believe, and in fact
encourages everyone to “break with white supremacy as an epistemological standpoint by
which [we] come to know the world” (hooks 1995, 150). The way to do this, according to
hooks, is to engage in a politics of accountability so that the acknowledgement of the way
power structures privileges and oppresses makes one accountable to change the oppressive
structures that one benefits from (hooks 2013, 30), engage in decolonizing one’s
consciousness in order to move beyond the epistemological structures that make the ideology
of domination seem like norm (hooks 2013, 193), and to practice love, which hooks defines
as a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility and trust that culminates as
the ability to resist (hooks 2013, 195). hooks does not take lightly the amount of work that
overcoming the ‘something rotten’ would entail, and believes – if complete knowledge of the
Other is not possible – that WAW’s adequate knowledge of, and collaboration with, WOC is
possible.
Narayan develops a middle-position concerning the adequacy that is possible in terms
of mutual understanding and collaboration between WAW and WOC in feminism. In an
article on the difficulties of understanding one another in a global feminist context, called
“Working Together Across Difference: Some Considerations on Emotions and Political
Practice” (1988), she acknowledges that some understanding is possible – because if not – the
prospect of adequate collaboration and solidarity is impossible (1988, 35). Using analogies of
one’s own predicament to understand others’ can be way to bridge the gap (1988, 44). She
argues, however, that it is more difficult for WAW to understand WOC than the other way
around. Being subjected to one form of oppression does not automatically make one
perceptive to other forms of oppression, and people may mistakenly think that they
understand what it is like to be subjected to other forms of oppression. Therefore, the
understanding of Others is always risky. The reality that “such an understanding, despite
great effort and interest, is likely to be incomplete or limited,” means that WOC can justify
their claim to knowing more about the ways the axes that oppress them work and are
connected (Narayan 2004, 221). She compares this state to men, who strive yet falter to see
what many women see: “It is a commonplace that even sympathetic men will often fail to

43
perceive subtle instances of sexist behavior or discourse” (Narayan 2004, 220). To explain,
she discusses the mistaken ways Western feminists often attempt to understand women in
post-colonial nations.
For instance, when trying to understand women in post-colonial nations, Narayan
identifies two prevalent mistakes by WAW in her essay “Minds of Their Own: Choices,
Autonomy, Cultural Practices, and Other Women” (2001). These are the “prisoner of
patriarchy” model where the belief is that patriarchal violence is coercively imposed upon
women, and the “dupe of patriarchy” model where the belief is that patriarchal violence is
self-imposed because NWW are brainwashed by their culture, or because they know of no
other ways of life. These mistakes come from two different ethical impulses that are
motivated by the prospect of “objectively or rationally come to terms with the situation of the
Other woman” (Narayan 2001, 418–419). In the former model, the ethical impulse is one of
imaginatively replacing the self in the position of the Other’s experiences and the oppressive
practices befalling her. This ethical impulse makes the error of imagining the Other’s needs,
responses and thought-processes to be like one’s own would be in the hypothetical situation.
In the latter model, the ethical impulse attempts to incorporate the Other’s situated reality –
her “circumstances, commitments and context” – into an imagined hypothetical. This second
ethical impulse mistakenly imagines the Other as wholeheartedly committed to her situated
position in the world. In other words, this impulse mistakes the Other’s uncritical acceptance
of the “values and practices of her culture,” for instance, that women must be submissive or
should not go to school.
In either case, whether the attempt to understand the Other is tainted by the prisoner-
impulse or the dupe-impulse, there is an epistemological form of imperialism that is at play in
imagination that goes beyond what I have called necessary ethnocentrism. Narayan calls this
the “imperialism of imagination,” where the prisoner-model assumes a totalizing sameness
based on gender, and the dupe-model assumes a totalizing difference of the Other, a
totalization based on culture. The attempt at “attending to differences” among women of
different cultures and ethnicities invoke essentialist binaries either way. If not universal
generalizations about all women, culture-specific essentialist generalizations are used in order
to understand the Other woman. These culture-specific essentialist generalizations depend on
“totalizing categories such as “Western culture,” “Non-western cultures,” “Western women,”
and “Third-world women,” and so forth” (Narayan 1998, 87). Again here we can use the
master’s tools-metaphor in order to understand that a reversal of the structure does not
change or dismantle the structure itself. The move from assuming total difference to

44
assuming total sameness does not dismantle the latent ethnocentric epistemological structure.
The attempt to treat the effect eludes a treatment of the cause of ethnocentrism in thought;
both models imagine the Other as “monolithic in their responses” instead of recognizing the
plurality and variation with which people respond to their situations (Narayan 2001, 419).
These include the many ways of not uncritically “bargaining with patriarchy” rather than as
prisoners or dupes (Narayan 2001, 421). The mistakes made by Western women when
attempting to understand women in post-colonial nations often neglect to appreciate the
multifaceted nature of agency, the often striking awareness that women have that they live in
a patriarchy that treats them unjustly, as well as the negotiating power a woman might have
in her position in society. Adopting some forms of gendered practices that may be
oppressive, may in particular contexts offer respite from sexism, racism or imperialism.
WAW who wish not to be, but who end up being ethnocentric all the same do so
because they adhere to epistemological structures that uphold white supremacy and
imperialism, such as the West/rest dualism, which often times are necessary to communicate
in common uses of language. This adherence, as well as the insight “epistemic privilege,”
means that the inequality in directions of understanding has had consequences for the
difficulty of achieving feminist recognition in a patriarchal society at large, but also, claims
Lugones, hooks and Narayan, within feminist struggle too. Although Narayan is the only one
who explicitly links the validity of her claims to Marxist Standpoint feminism, I find that all
three rely on this theory to sustain their claims. hooks argues that the lived experience of
black women is a ‘special vantage point’ as the lowest ranking group in society with no Other
to oppress, challenges the classist, sexist, racist social structure and its ideology – and that
this lived experience gives a different world view from those with privilege that can critique
the current hegemony and create a counter-hegemony (hooks 2000a, 16). Therefore, in order
to defend their claims, I will defend the epistemic validity of the epistemic privilege of the
marginalized. If the thesis of epistemic privilege is a valid foundation, the problem of
knowing the Other extends beyond the sphere of necessary ethnocentrism, and into the
sphere of latent ethnocentrism, where one might be able to do something about it.

2.3.2 The Bias Paradox in Feminist Standpoint Theory

The foundational premise of hooks’ and Narayan’s arguments on the difficulty faced by
WAW to connect epistemically with their Other is based on an insight from standpoint
feminism, namely that oppressed groups have an epistemic privilege that privileged groups
do not. The point of this section is to investigate the validity of their foundational premise,

45
namely, epistemic privilege. The thesis of epistemic privilege is a major part of convincing
those who are not Others along axes of race and culture to believe their charges of
ethnocentrism. It is epistemic privilege that makes it possible for WOC and NWW to bring to
the table something that WAW feminists have not been able to figure out on their own.
The thesis of epistemic privilege comes from feminist standpoint theory, which is
influenced by Marxist philosophy. On this view, since all knowledge is situated and partial,
the claim to objectivity in traditional scientific methodology is problematic. Sandra Harding
states that the situatedness of the subjects of knowledge has long been seen as a problem in
the scientific community, who would rather the subject of knowledge be completely removed
from the object of knowledge. Standpoint theory, she claims, has managed to make a
resource out of this problem of social situatedness of knowledge claims in order to maximize
objectivity, differentiating between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ objectivity (1993, 69). Thinking from
“marginal lines” will question the “adequacy of the conceptual frameworks that the natural
and social sciences have designed to explain (for themselves) themselves and the world
around them,” and in this sense the marginalized and underprivileged in society are
epistemically privileged, for perceiving that which traditional scientific methodology does
not (1993, 63). Maximizing objectivity is done by acquiring scientific problems and research
agendas from the people who are marginalized instead of the dominant groups, who tend to
occupy positions of power in the scientific community (1993, 62).42
Not all epistemologists are on board with the thesis of epistemic privilege and
Standpoint theory. Some, like Janet Richards, a political philosophy professor and author of
“Why Feminist Epistemology Isn’t” (1995), argues that there is no apparent reason to ‘simply
believe’ what people tell us, if the information cannot be arrived at by impartial standards:

The idea that any group’s knowledge claims cannot be properly assessed by the standards of another
group is itself the epistemological theory being advocated, opposed to the one the inquirer now holds,
and therefore cannot be invoked as any part of an argument that her present view should change. (1995,
397)

Richard finds that it would require a ‘leap of faith’ for the inquirer to simply believe the
Other based on their supposed epistemic privilege, since there is no other reasonable

42
For Harding, feminist philosophy needs objectivity, preferably the reconceptualized standpoint one, but
cannot succumb to a state where it is equally true that “women’s uteruses wander around in their bodies when
they take math courses” (1993, 61). Feminist empiricists like Helen Longino (1993) argue for a more traditional
idea of objectivity, but agree that there is no “view from nowhere” beyond social reality to locate objectivity.

46
evidence to support the epistemic privilege of another group of people above the inquirer.43
Richards argues that feminists need to build their arguments on the same traditionally
acclaimed reason and scientific evidence that has prevailed since the Ancient Greeks in
Western academia, and reveal where “that traditional standards of evidence and argument in
science and ethics themselves did not support traditional conclusions about women” (1995,
388–389). In the context of this thesis, Richards’s text provides a serious question to the
validity of hooks’ and Narayan’s claims, which are in large part legitimized by hooks’ self-
proclaimed ‘special vantage point,’ and Narayan’s use of Marxist feminist epistemology.
Although Richards’ perspective does not acknowledge situated knowledges, but
adheres to traditional scientific methodology where reason and knowledge is available to
anyone and everyone regardless of who one is, Richards certainly brings forth a compelling
objection. Should we simply believe WOC and NWW because they are less privileged? Her
problem with epistemic privilege has been identified and discussed by feminist
epistemologists, and is not a problem that is in any way overlooked. According to Kristina
Rolin in “The Bias Paradox in Feminist Standpoint Epistemology” (2006) this problem is
called the “bias paradox.”44 In Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? (1991), Sandra Harding
explains that two apparently contradictory terms are held: The one is that oppressed groups
have epistemic privilege that is “less partial and distorted” than other social positions (1991,
121). The other is that all knowledge claims are socially situated, and none are impartial
(1991, 11). The first claim relies on an assumption that there exists some standard by which
to differentiate epistemic privilege from more partial and distorted perspectives, which
undermines the second claim (Rolin 2006, 125). This is exactly the nature of Richards’
objection, for she cannot see how else the validity of knowledge claims would be assessed.45
I will turn to Narayan’s account of epistemic privilege to defend the validity of hooks’
and Narayan’s claims. It is necessary to note, as does Rolin, that a standpoint is a “collective
achievement – not an individually grounded perspective” (2006, 135), which means that
epistemic privilege is not something I personally can have about anything other than being
me. Narayan gives an account of epistemic privilege that might not convince Richards, but

43
Unfortunately, Richards’ does not look toward other philosophical theories that argue for situated
knowledges, such as Marxist ideas about epistemic privilege of the lower classes. It seems to be the feminism of
the epistemological framework that makes situated knowledges hard to stomach.
44
Rolin credits the name of the “bias paradox” to Louise Antony and Helen Longino.
45
Harding and Rolin also propose solutions of their own to this problem. Harding’s solution is based on a
differentiation between cultural and epistemic relativism in order to save epistemic privilege from epistemic
relativism. Rolin does not think this is an adequate solution, and proposes contextualism in contrast to
foundtaionalism as a middle way between objectivity and epistemological relativism.

47
perhaps lessen the threat of epistemic privilege against her foundationalist view. Epistemic
privilege does not, Narayan argues, make knowledge claims from WOC indisputable, or that
WAW should trust their accounts blindly, as if for no good reason other than attempting to
refrain from latent ethnocentrism. First of four points, she argues that epistemic privilege
does not mean that WOC have better knowledge about the causes of their oppression, the
structural features of oppression, its origins or how it is maintained, because this kind of
knowledge would entail some form of education and ways to engage in theoretical analysis
(1988, 36). I find that Narayan’s account of epistemic privilege is strengthened by the
acknowledgement of education as a privileged epistemic state. Oppressed groups often do not
have access to theory in this way, but they do have “immediate knowledge of everyday life
under oppression” where emotions are a significant part of that knowledge (1988, 36).
Narayan does not underestimate the kind of knowledge that comes from first-hand experience
and emotional content, because this kind of knowledge may serve to shatter the neat,
explanatory paradigms of outsiders” (1988, 36).46
Second, Narayan argues epistemic privilege does not seclude WAW from
understanding the experiences of, or sharing in the insights or knowledge of WOC. Rather,
the point is that ‘outsiders’ are often forced to attain familiarity with what it is like to be an
‘insider’ for optimal living in a society that is governed by ‘insiders.’ In “The Project of
Feminist Epistemology: Perspectives from a Nonwestern Feminist” (2004) Narayan calls this
“the dark side” of epistemic privilege. This pressure is unilateral in that inverse pressures are
not exerted on members of the dominant group to acquire fluency in the practices of
marginalized groups. Narayan invokes the example of how colonized peoples had to learn the
language of the colonizer to survive, but it was not expected of the colonizer to learn the
language of the colonized. The oppressed groups learn to operate with multiple practices and
in multiple contexts, which gives them this epistemic advantage that provides critical insight
into the nature of the practices (2004, 221). This insight supports Lugones’ claim that WOC
know more about WAW than the other way around. She compares WOC’s epistemic
privilege inversely to what she calls the “blind-spots” of outsiders (1988, 40).47 Narayan
argues that this “double vision” of the ‘outsiders’ is also a disability, because this way of
living is often the culmination of attempting to reconcile two or more incompatible

46
Oppression may also be internalized, and people may not recognize their experiences as forms of oppression.
In this case, we may be talking about people who do not use feminism as a methodology to systemically analyze
their experiences in collective contexts.
47
W.E.B. Du Bois, a central figure in Black American race theory, argued that Black people have a dual
consciousness because they have to navigate White, dominant spaces as well as their own, marginal spaces
(1903, 215).

48
frameworks with differing perspectives on social reality (2004, 222). Epistemic privilege,
then, should not be understood merely as privilege, but also as a disadvantage that people of
oppressed groups have to exert extra effort to navigate in their everyday lives.
Third, Narayan thinks that despite epistemic privilege, an oppressed group’s
knowledge of their oppression may be mistaken – just like any other knowledge about
experience. Different members of the group may even have different experiences and
interpretations regarding their oppression, that do not always align neatly. She is open for the
possibility that ‘outsiders’ may contribute valuable insight about an oppression they do not
share, although she is skeptical that this is often the case. Epistemic privilege does not
exclude the possibly that the oppressed group’s knowledge of their oppression is
‘incorrigible,’ but may even obscure the “nature of the specific form of oppression” so that
“an outsider may see more clearly what is going on” (Narayan 1988, 37). Like being caught
in the whirlwind of a tornado makes one confused and unable to see clearly – one knows that
one is caught in a tornado, but one cannot see what is going on or what way the tornado is
going – only someone standing on a hill far away will be able to make out what is going on.
Narayan provides nuance to the thesis of epistemic privilege that may soothe the
inquirer who is afraid she will have to forsake all other evidence and blindly trust those who
claim that there is an ethnocentrism problem in feminism. Rather, it acknowledges what
hooks calls the “particular knowledge that comes from suffering” (hooks 1991, 182). People
who do not experience oppression may not be able to remark it when it happens to others,
and by extension, when they take part in upholding oppressive structures. Narayan’s nuanced
explanation of epistemic privilege may, however, pose a problem for hooks’ appeal to her
‘special vantage point’ as a Black woman. If epistemic privilege is the first-hand knowledge
of oppression, it is a rocky foundation upon which to build an entire theory of interlocking
axes of oppression and ‘ideology of domination,’ since epistemic privilege does not give
more insight into the causes of oppression, and may well be mistaken if based solely on her
identity and position within power structures. In the next section, I will examine an objection
to the ‘authority of experience’ that epistemic privilege grants, and demonstrate that hooks’
defense justifies the premise on which she constructs her theory.

2.3.3 The Essentialist Silencing Problem

In Essentially Speaking (1989), Diana Fuss challenges the validity of epistemic privilege,
although she does not refer to it as such. Fuss argues that individuals who are members of
oppressed groups often invoke the “authority of experience” to silence others who are not “in

49
the know” (1989, 115). In the examples Fuss gives, those not “in the know” are members of
privileged groups. Fuss’ objection is that the “authority of experience” necessarily invokes
essentialism: “I am Black, therefore – because of this essence – I know what racism is better
than you, who are White” (Fuss 1989, 115). She argues that this kind of logic erroneously
conflates experience with truth and identity with knowledge (1989, 113), and that this
conflation silences those who do not share those experiences (1989, 115). She holds that
knowledge is available to everyone, and that experience should not be conflated with truth
(1989, 117–118). In other words, Fuss’ argument can be taken as an attack on the thesis of
epistemic privilege based on the claim that certain knowledge is unavailable to certain people
according to their identity. This allocation of knowledge rests, in part, on an essentialist
account of identity and encroaches on what Rolin calls a foundationalist view that holds that
since the Truth is neutral, it can be acquired by anyone irrespective of identity. In arguing
against the essentialism of identity, and for the availability of knowledge for everyone in
discursive practices (which seem like excellent feminist and inclusive principles), she ends up
producing a false narrative where WAW are marginal to WOC because they are silenced. I
call this problem of the authority of experience “the essentialist silencing problem.”
In her essay “Essentialism and Experience” (1991), hooks criticizes Fuss for failing to
take the epistemic privilege of members of oppressed groups seriously, and for criticizing
members of oppressed groups’ claim to knowledge without what Narayan would call enough
humility and caution (Narayan 1988, 37). hooks argues that it is problematic that Fuss
presents several examples of members of marginalized groups employing essentialism of
identity and experience to assert their positions, without acknowledging how discursive
practices “have already been determined by politics of race, sex, and class domination”
(hooks 1991, 175). It is necessary to remember, hooks holds, that these identity-essentialist
entitlements are always already at work in the discourse before people speak. Fuss
mistakenly assumes that the meeting-ground for discourse, as well as the truth being sought,
is impartial. This is surprising if one considers that Fuss also writes that traditional feminism
has an essentialist problem because it has posited “a universalizing and hegemonizing notion
of global sisterhood” (Fuss 1989, 94). She is, at once, both aware of and unaware of the
ethnocentric problem in feminism, because she critically acknowledges it while also ending
up perpetuating Eurocentric attitudes in her text. In some ways, the Fuss-hooks discussion is
a new context and setting for the Lévi-Strauss-Derrida discussion. What Fuss should have
done, I think, especially in a text that invokes the works of people of color and Black
intellectuals in the United States, is acknowledge how dominant groups continuously assert

50
and benefit from their privileges in discourse. Like Lévi-Strauss, she should have seen the
context of her own situatedness in relation to her Others. The episteme-politic with the
metaphysical inheritance of the norm and the aversion to its divergents create epistemic
milieus in which epistemic claims are political. Like hooks writes, “[t]he politics of race and
gender within white supremacist patriarchy grants [white males] this “authority” without their
having to name the desire for it” (hooks 1991, 175). When Fuss rhetorically asks if the
experience of oppression “confer special jurisdiction over the right to speak about that
oppression” (Fuss 1989, 113), she does not believe the thesis of epistemic privilege, but is
instead concerned about the identity essentialism it invokes.
hooks’ point is that epistemic privilege exists because the epistemic structures are not
neutral, that identity essentialism has already been invoked by the axes of oppression, and
that already grant authority to the perspectives of dominant groups. Essentialism that is
invoked under the authority of experience, is not an essentialism that marginalized group
members bring to the discourse, hooks holds. The binary oppositions are not created by the
marginalized, but are already operating in the service of the concerns of the dominant groups.
The “authority of experience” is an instance of the use of essentialism as a master’s tool for
temporary relief from those oppressive structures. (hooks 1991, 176). Fuss does not
acknowledge that essentialism is already there, perpetuated by dominant groups who take
themselves as the norm. I find that, by Fuss’ reaction, when the politics of essentialist
exclusion is used by people of dominant groups it is less disruptive to the existing power
structures than when used by people of marginalized groups. By her choice of examples and
missing insight of the falsity of the perceived neutral landscape of oppressions in regards to
the invocations of the authority of experience, Fuss ends up presenting an argument that
aligns with structures that reinforce the status quo of latent epistemic ethnocentrism.
Despite hooks’ criticism of Fuss, hooks is definitely aware of dangers associated with
‘authority of experience,’ but not for the same reasons as Fuss. She too understands what
Narayan writes about epistemic privilege being different from a perspective that incorporates
the structures of oppression, and their interlocking feature. It does not follow, for hooks, that
any person affected by multiple axes of oppression would necessarily come to perceive the
interlocking workings of the imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy as source of
these oppressions. Neither does it follow for hooks that because someone has ferociously
studied oppression, they would understand what it is actually like to be on the receiving end
of it. It is a different form of knowledge. Therefore, hooks coins the term ‘privileged
standpoint,’ which is a “unique mixture of experiential and analytical ways of knowing”

51
(1991, 182). The experiential way of knowing, she does not call authority of experience, but
passion of experience and remembrance, which encompasses lived reality and suffering in
particular (hooks 1991, 182). My understanding of hooks is that she does not base her
‘special vantage point,’ nor her ‘privileged standpoint’ on an essential quality of her identity,
but finds them to be products of the ideology of domination that she attempts to dismantle.48
I find that this ‘privileged standpoint,’ since it encompasses epistemic privilege,
authority of experience, and analytical ways of knowing, is a solution that achieves more
epistemic validity than epistemic privilege alone. Therefore, the foundations for her argument
for the interlocking axes of oppression-thesis can be defended against Richards’ objection to
feminist philosophy, as well as the bias paradox, and Fuss’ essentialist silencing problem,
while also remaining consistent with Narayan’s account of epistemic privilege. I conclude
that hooks’ defense justifies the premise on which she constructs her theory. I think that one
reason for the epistemic privilege and the privileged standpoint of WOC and NWW is that
their perspectives are less invested in upholding what I have called the episteme-politic,
which is imbued with political agendas to uphold the hegemonic norm from which their
identities diverge.
In this subchapter I have argued that a problem for feminism is the “something rotten”
that occurs when attempting to understand others while affected by epistemic blind-spots.
This problem occurs as an effect of the episteme-politic, i.e. the mutually reinforcing effects
of language and political agendas in our epistemological framework. I have demonstrated the
validity of epistemic privilege as a tool for Narayan and hooks and on which hooks builds her
interlocking axes-model. I have considered two objections, namely, the bias paradox and the
essentialist silencing problem. I have discussed Narayan’s nuancing of epistemic privilege,
and hooks’ improved concept, the ‘privileged standpoint’ to defend their appeal to epistemic
privilege. I conclude that the thesis of epistemic privilege is important in order to assert the
claim that there is latent ethnocentrism in the form of Eurocentrism in feminism.

2.4 Conclusion
In this chapter, I have discussed how Western ethnocentrism (Eurocentrism) is implicated in
epistemological tools used in feminism. In first subchapter, I discussed how the
epistemological affects the political. The tools we have, such as our language, which presents

48
In feminist poststructuralist terms, the ‘special vantage point’ is the consequence of how the polis has
produced the subject, and that the subject is produced with specific sensitivities because of their politically
marginalized positions. It is the peripheral that supports the center, and has access to the multiplicity and nuance
that the center denies.

52
things in dualistic terms, affect the way we understand the world and choose to act.
Metaphors and language makes it hard to talk about things and occurrences that are not
represented by the language we have made that disregards those aspects of life (Rooney
1991, 94). hooks refuses the axes-metaphor of oppression where axes are separable from one
another, because the separation of sexism from racism serves fortifies the ‘ideology of
domination.’ The insight on how the epistemological affects the political is hardly new and
innovative in feminist epistemology. Nevertheless, I have demonstrated how the
epistemological foundations of dualism to a large extend shapes people’s understanding of
the world and how oppression works. In the second sub-chapter, I have discussed how in a
feminist context the political also affects the epistemological in return. I argue that the
epistemic tools available to us, such as dualisms and metaphysical heritage, are imbued with
political agendas that have epistemological effects. I have employed Narayan’s discussion on
seemingly innocent terms to demonstrate how our epistemological framework is structured to
fortify the status quo of global power balances that favor the male and the Western. From the
first two subchapters, I could claim that our language and the political agendas of the
hegemonic norm exist in a mutually reinforcing relation that I called the episteme-politic. In
the third sub-chapter I discussed the ‘something rotten’ that makes it difficult even for well-
meaning WAW feminists to overcome latent ethnocentrism and know their Other. I defended
the thesis of epistemic privilege – on which hooks and Narayan base their charge of
ethnocentrism in feminism – from the bias paradox and the essentialist silencing problem.
I have hoped to demonstrate that ethnocentrism is a central issue for feminism. Take
the metaphor of the many-legged stool that I presented alongside hooks’ interlocking-axes
model. Without dismantling the source of sexism, I do not think feminism can get rid of
sexism without also concerning itself with other interlocking stool-leg-axes such as racism
and imperialism. From Narayan’s and hooks’ accounts on epistemic privilege, I take that
knowledge is available to everyone – but not in a neutral way. Therefore, WOC may be able
to perceive latent ethnocentrism in the statements and actions of well-meaning WAW
feminists. These blind-spots mean that mainstream Western feminism and WAW as a group
are more vulnerable to latent, structural ethnocentrism than less privileged groups. Latent
ethnocentrism is difficult to overcome, because of the reciprocally affective system of the
episteme-politic.

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3 The Political Prong of the Ethnocentrism Charge
Identity is political
- Uma Narayan

In this chapter I will look at some of the effects of what I in chapter two identified as the
episteme-politic that can make it difficult to pinpoint latent ethnocentrism in feminism. In
this chapter I will discuss some solutions to ethnocentrism in feminism that have been put
forth as part of feminist politics, and analyze some of the issues that follow. I will argue that
the episteme-politic make it difficult to overcome the Othering of WOC, even when pursuing
political strategies that specifically target WOC. First, I will consider identity politics as one
of these solutions. I will discuss identity politics in relation to rights discourse, and argue that
identity politics share some of the same problems in overcoming ethnocentrism that rights
discourse encounters when trying to formulate gender-neutral legislation that merely ends up
privileging the already dominant. Second, I will consider intersectionality as an attempt to
grapple with the issues of identity politics. Intersectionality attempts to account for the
multiplicity of identity by creating a framework that casts light on the kinds of overlapping
oppression that WOC face. I agree with criticisms of intersectionality that claim that it
repeats, albeit on a more sophisticated level, the framework of identity politics, and that the
focus on WOC and difference contributes to the re-centering of WAW as Self or norm.
Finally, I consider transnational feminism as an attempt at non-ethnocentric feminism on a
global scale. I argue that among the three attempted solutions that I analyze, one faction of
transnational feminism, which I call the cultural contextualists, has potential toward non-
ethnocentrism because it is based more on desire than identity. The reasons for this stance is
that transnational feminism avoids some of the most central issues faced by the alternatives,
because it is less focused on identity and more focused on non-ideal strategies for resistance
to imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Nonetheless, this faction does not
manage to discard the master’s tools. In the following chapter, I will consider possibilities of
epistemic reform or revolution to discard the master’s tools.

3.1 Identity Politics

In a chapter on identity in the recent anthology Critical Terms for the Study of Gender,
Raewyn Connell traces the first uses of the term ‘identity politics’ to a form of political
mobilization in the 1980s in the United States that center on people’s membership in groups
that “assert the distinctiveness, dignity and distinctive needs” of the members in that group
(2014, 162). The practice of identity politics, however, precedes the term. Connell cites the

54
women’s movements and the Black Power movement in the United States as examples of
identity politics – groups that claim to represent the interests of a particular group of people,
instead of universalist claims on behalf of all people, such as socialism or liberalism.
Although both of these kinds of politics may advocate political equality and social justice,
identity politics additionally asserts claims for respect.49 The need for respect is usually
associated with the oppression of a group that resists their oppression by embracing their
identity, taking pride in it, and demanding respect from others (Connell 2014, 162–164). This
claiming of an oppressed identity usually involves the revaluation of something that is
usually devalued and marginalized, such as Blackness, culture, gender or sexuality.
The issue with identity politics is that it depends on forming group identities in
contrast to other groups. The celebration of difference as a valuable political principle
requires the categorization of identity into groups that suppress internal difference, which
reproduces the epistemological models and structures that justified identity-based oppression
in the first place. It is the very homogenization of Western/European identity that justifies
colonialism, and the very homogenization and dichotomization of gendered identities that
justifies sexism. This process was examined and discussed in the previous chapter of this
thesis. Identity politics tends to wield the power available to it by essentialist notions of
identity. According to Connell, “the problem here is that a claim to identity, far from being a
liberatory act, may be buying into a system of social control” (2014, 167). The issue of one’s
identity being part of the system of oppression is of central concern to hooks and Narayan;
they are both worried about the effects of homogenizing identity, whether it is the dominators
or the resistors that do so.

3.1.1 Identity Politics Is the Use of Masters’ Tools

Even in her earlier texts, hooks is reserved about identity politics, and at the most charitable,
recognizes identity politics as a necessary stage in emancipation development (1990d, 19).
She understands identity politics as a form of racial integration into a system and structure
that is upheld by the oppression of those whom are now integrated. The celebration of black
or Othered identity such as Afrocentricity, tends to perpetuate a “unitary model of self and
identity” that hooks finds is misleading (1995, 241–243). She finds that the romanticizing of
African identity and culture is based mostly on a reactionary rejection of Eurocentrism that
accepts the essentialist terms of Othering. For instance, the formation of separate black
feminist groups such as the Combahee River Collective, which was a response to racism in

49
The claim for respect is what Nancy Fraser (1995) calls “struggles for recognition.”

55
white feminist groups, only served to segregate feminists in a way that repeated the systems
of racism they intended to work against. Not only did this way of separating from other
feminist groups fortify the barrier of understanding between women, she argues, but it
resulted in black women acting as the very Other they criticized white feminists for having
made them (1981, 150–151). This separation also made winners out of WAW of higher
classes by the use of slogans such as “organize around your own oppression,” she holds. This
slogan made for an excuse for indifference toward less privileged masses of women – similar
to the feminist emphasizing “common oppression” that resulted in ethnocentric feminism
(2000a, 6). The first objection to identity politics as a solution to feminism’s ethnocentrism-
problem is that identity politics leads to the exacerbation of ethnocentrism by dividing
feminists into racialized groups.
The second objection to identity politics as a solution to feminism’s ethnocentrism-
problem is that identity politics accepts and does not resist the identities created to uphold an
oppressive system. Instead of engaging in identity politics, hooks destabilizes racialized
identity in order to find those parts of the self that are not tied to race. “Language is a place of
struggle,” is a phrase she repeats five times in two pages in her book Yearning (hooks 1990d,
145–146). She is motivated by a way to resist oppression that does not ‘succumb,’ so to
speak, to identity politics, which she recognizes as a reiteration of the very binaries that
supports her oppression. The reason why it is difficult for hooks not to ‘succumb’ to identity
politics is the belief, held by many African Americans, that without a common, unified notion
of blackness, the ground for organized resistance is unstable (hooks 1990d, 249). For
instance, hooks holds that when black liberation is defined by measuring access to
opportunities and privileges that many white people enjoy – as it was defined by much of the
civil rights movement – this vision of equality conflated black liberation with the imitation of
whites. Even the more radical 1960s Black Power movement, which disagreed with this
vision of liberation, was not particularly “distinctive or revolutionary” in so far as they
connoted authority and power with masculinity (hooks 1990d, 15–16). Gendered metaphors
were not challenged, even within these emancipatory movements, which connected freedom
with manhood and the oppression of black men with castration and emasculation (hooks
1990d, 58). The idea that one’s liberation is bound up in another group’s oppression
undermines the struggle for freedom because the struggle continues to be tied up with the
structures of domination that support the status quo. When an emancipatory movement
borrows or appropriates visions of liberation from the status of the dominators, there is a limit
to how much change can be implemented, even if the liberation movements are successful.

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Therefore, hooks does not believe that the upholding of the very racialized identity that was
used by the West to support their capitalist and imperial system can also be the source of her
freedom. Rather, it shapes liberation struggle in such a way that perpetuates Western
ethnocentrism by buying into the essentialist and homogenized identities that are important
tools for oppression.
The third objection to identity politics is that it reproduces a political logic from the
political structure it resists. To state this third objection, I find that there are many similarities
between identity politics and nationalist struggle, which is based on the mythical common
identity of a people. In the chapter “Contesting Cultures” in Dislocating Cultures / Identities,
Traditions, And Third World Feminism (1997a), Narayan provides an explanation for why
emancipation politics such as identity politics risk buying into and reproducing the systems of
oppression they resist. Narayan has an explanation for what hooks found was a failure to re-
envision liberation in the civil rights movements. According to Narayan, a political logic is
inherited from the previous political system. In this way, the colonial discourse has become
part of what shapes nationalist agendas, in much the same way as ethnocentrism in feminism
is a repetition of imperialist attitudes:

The position of ‘the Indian woman’ as someone to be ‘spoken for,’ in both British feminist and Indian
nationalist discourse, provides a clear example of how challenges to the political status quo often repeat
and replicate aspects of its ‘political logic.’ (Narayan 1997a, 19)

When Indian nationalism reiterates the colonial discourse, it partakes in the system of
domination it sets out to resist. Elements of the inherited political logic resound in the
obsessive focus on national homogenous identity, which is based on an anti-Western attitude
that results in a reinforcement of patriarchy. This reinforcement mirrors the system of
domination used by Western imperialism, where one’s privilege and freedom is based on the
oppression of others. Indian nationalism reiterates this inherited political logic by repeating
structures of domination against women. The focus on identities as political modes of
oppression – Indian, Western, manhood and womanhood – replicates aspects of the political
logic that is necessary to the very oppression identity politics seeks to resist, whether these
are African American or Indian nationalist.
Narayan’s discussion on the Indian post-colonial liberation project shows that identity
politics – politics that homogenizes the identity of the group it represents – can lead to
competition between emancipation struggles, instead of a collective overthrowing of the
system of domination. When Narayan writes about the competing concerns of two types of
emancipation projects in post-colonial states – feminist and nationalist struggle – she does not

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use the language of identity politics. Nevertheless, I find that her analysis of nationalist
liberation projects and colonial imperialist powers are a form of identity politics in a different
kind of context. In this case, identity politics, which is usually the name for movements
within a society, is used as a justificatory rhetoric in the friction between the colonizer and
the colonized. In post-colonial states, the status of women tends to be enmeshed in
discussions of nationalism and anti-colonialism. According to Narayan, this enmeshment
leaves women’s issues “vulnerable to co-optation by both colonialist and nationalist agendas”
(Narayan 1997a, 18). Patriarchal nationalism ends up representing mostly the interests of
Indian men, leaving (some) Indian women conflicted between their feminist and nationalist
liberation goals for fear that feminist agendas will support Western prejudices about the
superiority of Western culture (Narayan 2004, 216). Women’s movements and nationalism
often butt heads in an effort to secure freedom and equality for their group representations
against oppressive powers.
When feminist groups in India are charged with being inappropriately “Western” by
nationalist groups, and charged with posing a threat to the national identity, nationalist groups
are perpetuating colonial notions of an ahistorical Indian culture (Narayan 1997a, 21).
Narayan references Indian political theorist Partha Chatterjee in her analysis of feminism and
nationalism,50 who in his article “The Nation and Its Women,” (1997) argues that nationalist
discourse often prioritizes nationalist unity against the colonizer. Chatterjee’s research shows
that the patriarchal model is used in anti-colonial resistance as a way of asserting a unified,
national identity. The feminine is connected to tradition and to a spiritual, pre-colonial
identity of the nation, whereas the masculine is connected to the modern and the developed.
As long as women are bearers of pre-colonial identity, men need not be concerned with
preserving national identity (Chatterjee 1997, 242–245). Nationalism in this case, much like
feminism’s ethnocentric problem and the homogenizing issue in identity politics, cannot
seem to be a movement that adequately represents all the members of its group. Although
hook’s analysis concerns racism and Narayan’s concerns anti-colonial nationalism, in both
cases the ideas of freedom used in emancipation movements are shaped by the preceding
systems these movements are resisting. The appeal to a romanticized past and a celebration of
homogenous identity in resistance functions in much the same way that identity politics
celebrates marginalized identity. Narayan’s political logic observation is the third point
against identity politics as a strategy that can successfully treat the ethnocentrism problem in

50
Pages 18, 28 and 176 in Contesting Cultures (1997a).

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feminism. Identity politics is way of resistance that applies the very political logic that
sustains identity-based oppression. Therefore, it may not be an effective strategy.
Much like mainstream feminism’s identity politics against patriarchy, black feminist
and Indian nationalist use of identity politics to claim equal rights, emancipation and
inclusion in the mainstream, ends up using the master’s tools that produce their identity as
Other in relation to the norm. This norm/Other-relation is part of the political logic that was
inherited from the ‘ideology of domination.’ The insight here is that feminism never happens
in a vacuum, but always in a society with a specific history and inherited political logic. The
particularities of our contexts serve both as limitations and as possibilities, but make it
extremely difficult – if not impossible – to achieve a ‘total reinvention’ away from our
previous systems. Somewhat ominously, Narayan states:

We need to remember that many political projects that ought to redefine and empower marginalized
groups constructed their own forms of exclusion and marginalization. (Narayan 1997, 37)

Although this statement may be accurate for Indian nationalism, it is also accurate for
ethnocentrism in feminism. By using the language that serves the privileged, and Others
diverging identity qualifiers such as black, native and female, it is not particularly feasible
that resistance toward the system that homogenizes identity for the purpose of categorical
subjugation will be successful in the long haul. hooks and Narayan articulate this fear that
identity politics buys into an ethnocentric framework that privileges the Western, white male.
Although hooks and Narayan do not directly argue against the use of identity politics,
or consider the use of identity politics as a way to address the ethnocentrism problem in
feminism, I have found that their texts provide reasons why identity politics will not suffice
as a remedy for feminism’s ethnocentrism problem. I have provided three points that I have
found in their texts to support this argument. First, identity politics can pit different forms of
oppression against one another. This drawback relates to the system of the axes of
oppression, where the price of liberation for one group is the contribution to the continued
oppression of another group. This trade-off between the liberation of one’s group and the
liberation of others’ groups is how the ‘ideology of oppression’ that privileges the
White/Western and the male maintains itself, and as long as it is maintained, the apparent
liberation of one’s group will be limited. Second, language contributes to the limitation of
identity, which is recognized as an important factor in maintaining identities for the sake of
continued oppression. Rejecting the racialized identity that was part of the system of
oppression and that ties freedom to masculinity and whiteness is at odds with identity

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politics. Third, identity politics it reproduces a political logic from the political structure it
resists. These movements inherit their political logic from the oppressive system, which
becomes apparent when these movements use identity as a mode of resistance. Thus far, it
seems wise to reject identity politics altogether. In the next section, I will provide a defense
of identity politics in order to illustrate what costs might be associated with abolishing
identity politics.

3.1.2 Defense of Identity Politics as a Successful Method of Resistance

Despite hooks’ and Narayan’s arguments, that make valid and cautionary points against
identity politics, the importance of identity politics for liberation movements should not be
taken lightly. Indeed, both hooks and Narayan recognize that identity has often been a source
of great strength for oppressed peoples, and something around which to harness continued
resistance, self-value and self-respect in a system that provides none. Besides important roles
in overcoming internalized oppression and consciousness raising, identity politics has been
useful in claiming rights for marginalized groups, for instance, the right to be represented and
respected in society and government. Other examples include, women’s right to vote,
Indians’ right to independence and self-rule (from the British Empire), or affirmative action,
i.e. the right of the group to equal opportunity in society. In an essay called “Alchemy or
Fool’s Gold? Assessing Feminist Doubts About Rights” (1997), Elizabeth Kiss invokes the
masters’ tools-paradigm (in direct reference to Audre Lorde) to question feminist appeals to
rights, and defends the importance of claiming rights for liberation movements, who might
not otherwise have gained those rights if not for identity politics. She argues that feminist
appeal to rights was a way of using the masters’ tools against the masters with mixed
successes: “ours is an age less of rights triumphant than of continuing and massive wrongs”
(1997, 1). In her text, Kiss writes to defend feminism’s claim to rights.
Kiss argues that rights based on identity claims has transformed, if not dismantled
structures of domination (Kiss 1997, 19n1).51 Often rights are defined in ways that prevent a
marginalized group from enjoying or exercising them, such as when laws and rights are
written in gender-neutral language that implicitly excludes women. Health care that does not
include reproductive medical coverage for women is an example of this problem (Kiss 1997,

51
The three objections against which Kiss defends rights-discourse correspond well with three paradoxes that
Wendy Brown identifies for the use of rights in her text “Suffering: The Paradoxes of Rights” (2000). Brown’s
paradoxes demonstrate that the first two objections in Kiss’ text are not so easily defended by appealing to the
correct and adequate use of rights, even if these did not implicitly exclude women and were articulated in a way
that acknowledge underlying social inequalities, because overarching marginalizing systems stay intact. In
regards to the third objection, Brown argues that identity specifications risk re-Othering the subordinated.

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12–13). These problems illustrate the need for identity politics to claim rights that do not
overlook them. In defense of feminist identity right-claims, Kiss argues that the issues with
rights are addressable, that they must be formulated in inclusive manners, and be properly
enforced to ensure their accessibility. She urges feminists to understand the privilege of
rights, and the horrendous situations of those who have none. It is a privileged position not to
care about having rights (Kiss 1997, 17).52 The lesson from Kiss is not to underestimate the
importance of identity politics and the work that has gone into claiming rights for
marginalized groups.
She does not take too seriously, however, the objection that rights undermine “moral
radical challenges” to structures of domination. This objection is the fear that rights-discourse
will “impede efforts to envision feminist goals,” and “constrain or distort the substance of
feminist aspirations” (Kiss 1997, 17). I find that this final objection echoes Narayan’s
inherited political logic-thesis and hooks’ skepticism about the use of the language of the
oppressor in identity politics – which precludes the search for new, possibly emancipatory
black identities. For instance, homogenized identity in identity politics risks representing one
part of the group. The use of identities inherited from systems of oppression continues to be
implicated in those systems of oppression, and the focus on identity unobjectionably accepts
the identity constructions inherent to systems of oppression. This acceptance then obscures
visions for alternative social organization that might not be based on identity qualifiers.
In “Feminism and Post-Identity Politics: The Problem of Agency” (2010), political
philosopher McNay takes issue with the FPS stance, to which hooks and Narayan are
sympathetic, that identity politics limits the aims of emancipatory struggle, constraining
political imagination (McNay 2010, 512). Her stance is that their political identities are not
something people have chosen, but that will continue to take part in determining who we are,
and how others perceive and react to us in the political world. McNay argues that FPS
accounts of post-identity politics that want to destabilize identity and “certainties of the self”
in order to imagine modes of being beyond restrictive identities disregard the
phenomenological accounts of experience that are tied to identity qualifiers such as being a
woman or being black. For McNay the phenomenology of experience is central to feminism’s
ability to analyze oppression based on identity, which is necessary for building political

52
Instead, Kiss argues that problems with gaining formal rights are that they leave “underlying social
inequalities intact” and “obscure[s] women’s continuing subordination by appearing to grant women a dramatic
moral victory” (1997, 14). As Kiss rightly acknowledges, the limits to rights-discourse is that rights were made
to protect against the state, not against structures of domination (1997, 7). This objection articulates the Marxist
idea that the overarching system concedes a superficial victory to the marginalized, to appease resistance to the
system so that it may stay intact.

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consciousness, which in turn is necessary for political agency. McNay fears that FPS
accounts of post-identity politics are not sensitive to the phenomenological accounts of
experience of what it is like to embody identity qualifiers within systems of oppression that
target those identity qualifiers. FPS53 are informed by the possibilities of endless reiteration
to create radical new and unanticipated meaning, and want feminism to be open to a
transformation of identity beyond the restrictions of identity politics so as to subvert the
structures of oppression that are based on restrictive categorical qualifiers of identity. For
McNay the “critique of identity is overstated” (McNay 2010, 512), which I find resonates
with the sentiments from black women feminists who argue for the importance of and
empowering feature of black identity (hooks, 1990d).
McNay highlights some points that prove problematic for FPS ways of conceiving the
‘new’ in search for a post-oppression world, and where she finds identity politics is the
solution. Her point can be used in the question of ethnocentrism in feminism: It is not enough
simply to say that we have thought of a non-ethnocentric feminism that we will implement
from here on out. McNay writes that her caution toward FPS is […]

not to question the iconoclastic force of the “newly thinkable” on the race occasions when it arises, but
the emergence of the radically new is almost always mediated through, and therefore constrained by,
the confines of embodied existence and understanding. If political praxis is to transcend these confines
in order to intervene more creatively in the world, then their limiting effects must be explored and
understood rather than dismissed in favour of the postulation of an inchoate potentiality. (2010, 516)

She is skeptical, firstly, of the actual ability to think something so radically new that it does
not rely on the political logic of the ‘ideology of domination.’ She argues that rather than
leaping into the unknown hoping that the new system of power will be better than the last, it
is better to fully understand the limiting effects of the political systems that already exists –
and, which is implied – work to change that which we know. Most severely, post-identity
politics risks not being connected to embodied experiences since it wishes to overcome the
identity that frames those experiences (McNay 2010, 520). McNay certainly has a point,
namely that when we imagine new possibilities for egalitarian politics, and by extension new
possibilities for identity – we cannot leave our history behind when we strive to establish a
better future. McNay’s point illustrates that there is a tension between asserting one’s identity
as something to be respected and represented on equal par with the norm-identity – the white
male – and the abandoning of the identity that is tied up in systems of oppression. The former
option risks buying into the structure of the hegemonic norm, which may end up perpetuating

53
The FPS McNay invokes in her text are Wendy Brown and Linda Zerilli.

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one’s identity as Other to the norm in an ever-ethnocentric system, but the latter risks
relinquishing one’s claims to respect and representation in a way that can ‘speak the language
of the oppressor’ and assert one’s position in a way that can be understood by most people.
Although McNay argues for the relevance of identity politics on phenomenological
grounds, her defense of identity politics as central to emancipatory projects is somewhat
consistent with FPS and postmodernist analysis of the power of resistance in identity. Michel
Foucault, for instance, argued that power is not hierarchical, and not only repressive, but also
available to the marginalized – that the naming of the oppressed such as black and woman
gave them a place from where to resist (Foucault 1990 [1976]). Judith Butler similarly writes
in “Imitation and Gender Insubordination” (1993) that the term ‘lesbian’ can be both
oppressive and a form of resistance against hegemony due to the plurality of the signifier,
which may suggest that although power is oppressive, it can also (perhaps simultaneously) be
subversive. Identity can both be emancipatory and empowering and constraining and
oppressive (Butler 1993, 307). I think that much like Kiss, McNay does not take the
substantive objection seriously enough. Identity categorizations do not simply shape our
experiences, but they are political and also the serve agendas of the homogenizing norm.
Thus I think there is something to be said about the power of destabilizing identity, that could
revolutionize systems of power so that systemic oppression does not occur on the basis of
identity. hooks articulates this aspiration when she writes that the eradication of essentialism
is “a serious challenge to racism” (hooks 1990d, 28). She argues that identity has been
construed as universal and has been overly determined in mass culture and consciousness,
and wants to open for less restrictive modes of constructing the self and asserting agency.
It is tempting to disregard identity politics and the rights-discourse and national
liberation movements associated with it as something that has not aided feminism’s
ethnocentric problem, especially because it reproduces the political logic of the oppressor and
impedes feminist imagination. A valuable feature of identity politics, however, is that it
speaks the language of the oppressor, provides strength and belonging to those who are
marginalized, and provides a way in which non-ethnocentric feminist progress can be
measured. Feminist efforts against ethnocentrism have attempted to remake identity politics
into something that retains the valuable features without the drawbacks that hooks and
Narayan have articulated, namely, the possibility of competition for liberation between
different identity groups, homogenization of marginalized identity, and repeating the political
logic of the system identity politics aims to resist. Although identity politics has been
incredibly useful for feminist struggle, I find that it has unfortunately not succeeded in

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establishing long-lasting solutions to feminism’s ethnocentrism problem, for which one might
need to conceive something ‘new’ to overcome the political logic of imperialist white
supremacist capitalist patriarchy. hooks writes that it is “one of the most significant forms of
power held by the weak” to deny the identity that one receives from the oppressor (hooks
2000a, 92). Intersectionality has been an attempt at that. In the next subchapter I consider
intersectionality as another possible solution to the ethnocentrism problem.

3.2 Intersectionality
One proposed solution to the problem of homogenizing identity in identity politics is
intersectionality. Neither hooks nor Narayan discuss intersectionality at length, or even use
the term much in their works. Intersectionality is a term that has enjoyed popularity over the
past few decades among feminists who wish to create a broad, inclusive, non-ethnocentric
mainstream feminism. At first glance it appears to tackle the problems with identity politics
as well as retaining its benefits, a ‘best of both worlds’ solution to ethnocentric feminism.
Intersectionality has functioned and does function as a tool to recognize the different forms
oppression may take, even simultaneously, such as race, class, gender, sexuality, etc. It is
often taken by feminists as “the primary rubric for theorizing difference,” that is,
accommodating the voices of other groups of women than WAW. In this subchapter I will
discuss intersectionality, give a genealogy of the concept, and explain why it has been
recognized as a good method for non-ethnocentric feminism. I will explore some criticisms
of intersectionality, most notably from Jasbir Puar (2011), who argues that intersectionality
re-Others WOC. I conclude that intersectionality may not have come much further than
identity politics in terms of achieving non-ethnocentrism in feminism, despite its popularity.

3.2.1 Crenshaw’s Intersectionality

Intersectionality is often attributed to law professor and scholar of critical race theory
Kimberlé Crenshaw’s piece titled “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A
Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist
Politics” (1989), where she uses the intersection-metaphor to describe the multiple axes of
oppression that WOC have to navigate. By looking at the case of black women in particular,
Crenshaw exposes the view that hooks takes issue with, namely the implicit connotation of
‘woman’ with whiteness and ‘black’ with maleness that ignores the position of WOC and
demarcate neat boundaries between sexist and racist axes of oppression. Especially in
feminist literature, hooks finds that these implicit connotations are present:

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 When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked
about the focus tends to be on white women. No where is this more evident than in the vast body of
feminist literature. (1981, 7)

Even when identity-terms such as woman and back are used for purposes of ending sexist
oppression, hooks argues that there remains a sexist-racist attitude against black women, who
fail to be represented in this language (hooks 1981, 8). Intersectionality can be a remedy for
identity politics in this regard, by evading homogenizing views on identity, by emphasizing
that certain identities are not adequately represented by the severing and categorization of
their multifaceted identities.
For political and legal purposes, intersectionality has provided a way to see how
WOC have been left unrepresented by feminist and anti-racist identity politics. In her article
“Intersectionality and Identity Politics: Learning from Violence Against Women of Color”
(1997), Crenshaw recognizes the impact of identity politics on explaining as social and
systematic what was previously and otherwise seen as isolated and individual. She analyzes
how WOC inhabit at least two subordinate groups in society, whose political agendas often
conflict by looking at the case of battered black women. For these black women, their choice
of whether to pursue legal help or not turns into a choice between fighting for women’s rights
to be free from violence, and protecting the black community from furthering stereotypes
connecting blackness with criminality and violent behavior, and black men in particular from
further police involvement and possible brutality. Crenshaw’s main claim is that black
women experience racism and sexism differently from those who often determine the
parameters of anti-sexist and anti-racist struggles, who tend to be WAW and black men.
Black women’s resistance is not adequately covered by separate sexist and racist
organization. Instead, one might say they suffer from racist sexism and sexist racism. In her
chapter titled “Reflections on Race and Sex” in Yearning (1990d), hooks explains that racism
for black women was sexualized in a way that it mostly was not for black men. The slave
experience was for black women fraught with sexual violence in ways that it was not for
black men.54 When anti-racist struggle bases itself on sexism, which is very much part of
racism too, hooks argues that anti-racist struggle becomes a self-negating process where no
real progress is made. Crenshaw is acutely aware that “prevailing structures of domination

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Moreover, the systematic rape of black women by white men was also a way to dominate black men by
asserting domination over the women that black men were supposed to be able to dominate. This systematic
rape of the black woman was “a gesture of symbolic castration” of the black man. In these two ways – the
sexualized racism of black women, and the use of rape of the black woman to dominate the black man – sexism
was very much integral to racism (hooks 1990d, 57).

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shape various discourses of resistance,” as I discussed in relation to identity politics, and aims
to address this by pointing out that black women’s lives cannot be adequately understood by
looking at race or gender experiences separately. She considers her theory of intersectionality
to be a provisional concept providing a connection between the political and postmodern
theory. She admits that her theory employs the axes-model where race and gender are
separate categories, but hopes that by focusing on the intersections of these axes that the
categories will be destabilized (Crenshaw 1997, 178–180). From Crenshaw, intersectionality
does not rectify all the problems with identity politics, but it is a move in the right direction
by including intersectional axes of oppression as possibilities for analysis.

3.2.2 The Popularity of Intersectionality

The concept of intersectionality in feminism extends far beyond Crenshaw’s texts and
definitions. In the past decades, “the use of the concept intersectionality has practically
exploded in European and North American gender research,” celebrated as one of the “more
important latest inventions in feminist theory” (Carbin & Edenheim 2013, 233–234). In
“Intersectionality and Its Discontents” (2017), Jennifer Nash points out that one of the issues
with intersectionality is that no-one, even the advocates, seem to agree on what it is: a
methodology, an orientation, critical inquiry, a practice, a concern toward social inequality,
social context and complicity, or a theory. Intersectionality is also cited as a space “for those
whose injuries law refuses to recognize” (2017, 124), such as the injuries experienced by
black women in line with Crenshaw’s analysis. Others, such as Sharon Krause highlight
intersectionality in a global perspective, where many different structural dimensions of power
work simultaneously to open and constrict possibilities for people, such as “transnational
migration patterns, systems of humanitarian aid, environmental degradation, and global
health disparities” (Krause 2011, 107). Often, in the mainstream, intersectionality is used
simply to promote diversity (Nash 2017, 124). Nash considers that these differences may be a
result of the fact that intersectionality is a malleable concept that can be constantly remade, or
that it is not yet a fully grown politics.
In light of its popularity as well as its opaqueness, I ask why intersectionality is so
popular and yet so hard to understand and to do right. It seems to be that something so
popular would be popular in part due to its easy applicability, and not maintain its popularity
despite being so difficult to get right. In “The intersectional turn in feminist theory: A dream
of a common language?” (2013), FPS Sara Edenheim and Maria Carbin provide some
explanation. The all-inclusiveness of intersectionality, something around which all feminisms

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can or should agree, might be achieved through a degree of “theoretical vagueness” in an
attempt to provide common ground for different kinds of feminism, so as to remove points of
precision on which feminists could argue (Carbin & Edenheim 2013, 237).55 This resonates
with hooks’ critique of the danger of feminism’s plurality, whereby not attributing a fixed
meaning to feminism means that it can be stripped of its specific meaning, personalized to
individual women’s’ needs, and co-opted by conservatives and neoliberals as something
apolitical (hooks 2000a, 25). This vagueness is the cost of intersectionality’s universalizing
appeal. By providing a framework where everyone can identify with ‘their’ categories –
because everyone enjoys intersectional identities – intersectionality’s popularity is easily
asserted, too, because of its relatability.
The popularity and misapplication of intersectionality has led black scholars to think
that intersectionality is used to cover up feminist ethnocentrism. Nash locates a trend among
advocates of intersectionality, where they (Vivian May, Patricia Hill Collins, Sirma Bilge and
Anna Carastathis) claim that intersectionality is often misunderstood and misapplied in praxis
(Nash 2017, 118–119). For instance, Nash explains, work by black feminist intellectuals are
included in university syllabi, but often very limitedly. This trend leads to the worry that
black feminists are not taken seriously, but used a legitimization tactic for those very
establishment departments against the threat of racism, instead of included with the purpose
of doing real intersectional work. Nash seems skeptical to the institutions’ embracement of
intersectionality while these institutions simultaneously do not welcome to the same extent
other challenges to mainstream feminism such as transnationalism or decoloniality (Nash
2017, 127). She worries that intersectionality is something that one may wear as a self-
congratulatory cloak without really doing intersectional work and practicing less ethnocentric
feminism. Nash is skeptical of the argument that there exists a hidden or not yet fully
discovered ‘correct’ intersectionality that will solve these issues (Nash 2017, 119). Although
intersectionality has enjoyed popularity and been embraced by mainstream feminism, I will
argue that it has not solved the ethnocentrism problem in feminism. In the following text, I
consider Jasbir Puar’s criticism against the intersectionality, which she argues contributes to
upholding false categorical differences between women.

3.2.3 Puar’s Objection to Intersectionality

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Carbin and Edenheim (2013) argue that intersectionality fails to provide common ground for structuralist,
liberal and poststructuralist feminism.

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Unfortunately, according to Nash, intersectionality is not easy to criticize, since any critique
of intersectionality is often dismissed as something that reproduces “racist logics” (2017,
121). This finding corresponds well with Carbin and Edenheim, who find that there is very
little feminist criticism of intersectionality (2013, 240). In this section I discuss one very
influential criticism of intersectionality, which I think demonstrates how intersectionality has
not solved ethnocentrism in feminism, and inherited some problems from identity politics.
Post-colonial and queer theorist Jasbir Puar’s criticism against intersectionality is that
intersectionality re-Others WOC and re-centers WAW. She recognizes the importance of
considering different factors of oppression such as race, class, and gender, but finds that,
despite the good intentions behind intersectionality, its discursive effects reverts the focus
back onto white women as norm:

But, precisely in the act of performing this intervention, it also produces an ironic reification of sexual
difference as a/the foundational one that needs to be disrupted – that is to say, sexual and gender
difference is understood as the constant from which there are variants. […] the centrality of the subject
positioning of white women has been re-secured through the way in which intersectionality has been
deployed. (Puar 2011)

In this objection to intersectionality as a solution to feminism’s latent ethnocentrism, Puar

argues that an ironic feature of intersectional theory is that the focus on variety and difference
ultimately implies a certain center from which there is difference, and that the center is
reinforced as the “neutral” white woman. Because of this reverse effect of intersectionality,
an Other is unintentionally (re)produced. This Other is the WOC, which is ironic because
intersectionality is “meant to alleviate such othering.” Even though feminists have theorized
about difference for decades, difference “continues to be a “difference from”, that is, the
difference from ‘white woman.’” Intersectionality fails to be a “discours[e] of inclusion that
destabilizes the WOC as a prosthetic capacity to white women” (Puar 2011).56
Puar’s critique illustrates a paradox: even when WOC are included in feminist
analysis, as is the case with intersectionality, WOC are still being Othered. How is this so?
Intersectionality is perhaps misapplied and used to cover latent ethnocentrism instead of treat
it, and if it were applied correctly, WOC would not continue to be Othered. Or,
intersectionality, like identity politics, is based on identity categories – albeit on a more

56
Puar suggests ‘assemblage’ as a solution toward which intersectionality could appeal to. Assemblage is an
ontological framework developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Assemblage, from the French term
‘Agencement,’ meaning “design, layout, organization, arrangement and relations – the focus being not on
content but on relations, relations of patterns,” because connections are what provide meaning. (Puar 2013, 380–
381). Her appeal to Deleuzian philosophy signals that she uses a framework where power in society is no longer
disciplinary (regulating and fixing the subject in space/the body), but controlling (modulating and regulating
movement and becoming). Intersectionality, when opposed to assemblage, is for Puar a framework that operates
with an outdated understanding of disciplinary power and social reality instead of assemblages of modulation.

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sophisticated level – and inhibits feminist direction away from an identity base. In either
case, intersectionality is based on variations of deviant identity. Perhaps intersectionality
falters as a cure for feminism’s ethnocentrism problem because it is an attempt to include
WOC in a politico-epistemological system that is already ethnocentric, without serious
attempts to change that very system that bases itself on exclusions of the Other.57 In this
system, the more one is similar to the hegemonic norm and able to Other Others, one is
recognized as being a rational, autonomous human being with agency.58
With my analysis of the appeal and issues with intersectionality, I hoped to show that
there are very similar problems with intersectionality as there are with identity politics.
Perhaps intersectionality – at least in practice – has become nothing more than a more
detailed and sophisticated form of identity politics. Judith Butler argues that engaging in the
very narratives that have oppressed women, which both identity politics and intersectionality
make a point of doing, is to not come very far away from those damaging narratives:

If there is a fear that, by no longer being able to take for granted the subject, its gender, its sex, or its
materiality, feminism will founder, it might be wise to consider the political consequences of keeping
in their place the very premises that have tried to secure our subordination from the start. (1995, 54)

By repeating the same meanings that were used in the oppression we are trying to resist,
Butler argues that we have not come very far. The issue, for Butler, is that we are stuck
‘imitating’ things such as gender or race in order to reproduce their meaning, and that this has
political consequences that include reinforcing the structures that the ‘ideology of
domination’ depend on. This insight from Butler reminds me of Lorde’s text again, when she
states that it is “an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with
the master’s concerns” (Lorde 2003 [1983], 27). In term of feminist envisioning, I ask what it
would look like if feminists were to cease using the master’s tools and continue to be
occupied with the master’s concerns, so to speak. I ask whether there are any other tools with
which feminists can make non-ethnocentric feminism, and how feminists would be able to

57
According to Fuss, identity always owes its unity to the Other, its non-identity, whom it excludes and
represses but in this way also includes its non-identity by depending on it (Fuss 1989, 103). In patriarchy, men
gain subject-status against women as a sexually differenced Other, who were presumed not autonomous or
rational. Yeğenoğlu points out that by taking on the role as the colonizer in the East, Western women were able
to “achieve the desired subject status against a devalued cultural difference” instead of sexual difference.
Subject-status, by this model, is a status one achieves by imitating the “sovereign masculine” that identifies the
male as norm and universal, based on mechanisms of exclusion (Yeğenoğlu 1998, 107).
58
See for instance Virginia Held (1993 & 2006), Eva F. Kittay (1999), and Joan Tronto (1993) for an analysis
of the inadequacy of ethical theories that presume masculinist qualities in ‘rational agents’ who are repeatedly
identified as the White/Western middle-class, grown male, instead of seeing people as contextually situated,
relational and interdependent.

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extend their vision beyond the master’s concerns. In the next section I consider the tension
between negating identity qualifiers and needing to uphold them.

3.2.4 Letting Identity Go or Not

The risk of discarding identity qualifiers such as race, nationality and gender, seems also to
risk having to discard the theoretical framework for recognizing axes of oppression that
correspond with those identity qualifiers, such as racism and sexism. Neutral language often
often leads to the perpetuation of, and implicit acceptance of the status quo and white
supremacy (hooks 1990d, 52). There is therefore a tension for the aspirations of achieving
non-ethnocentric feminism between the capacity to grapple with structures of oppression
based on identity qualifiers on the one hand, and the fact that these identities are given
meaning as a consequence of those structures of oppression, on the other.
It is strongly alluring to envision a world without the significance of identity
qualifiers, where identity qualifiers such as skin color or gender have no more meaning than
the size of one’s shoes. hooks refers to Martin Luther King, one of the leaders of the Civil
Rights movement in the 1960s in the US to explain this allure:

Early on in his work for civil rights, long before his consciousness had been deeply radicalized by
resistance to militarism and global Western imperialism, Martin Luther King imagined a beloved
community where race would be transcended, forgotten, where no one would see skin color. This
dream has not been realized. From its inception it was a flawed vision. The flaw, however, was not the
imaging of a beloved community; it was the insistence that such a community could exist only if we
erased and forgot racial difference. (hooks 1995, 263)

hooks’ lesson from Martin Luther King was that eradicating all racial difference would not
lead to emancipation, although that is often what we envision the non-ethnocentric goal to be.
It is not enough to simply ‘forget’ our racial differences. Rather, I interpret her stance in
favor of creating loving spaces where differences are not Othered for the sake of a norm. She
is not particularly loyal to the preconceived notions of identity that exist in the system of
domination, and argues that opposition and resistance must be followed by becoming anew
(hooks 1990d, 15). Political solidarity, she finds, cannot be achieved by adhering to the terms
set by the ideology of domination (hooks 1986, 129). Her point is rather, that being ‘just
human’ often means being like the norm and imitating the middle/upper-class White male,
and surrendering one’s identities, beliefs and values in favor of the dominating Eurocentric
culture (hooks 1995, 226). It is for this reason that hooks believes that “unlearning white
supremacist attitudes and values” means that the category whiteness must be deconstructed

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too (hooks 1995, 150).59 Non-ethnocentrism in feminism needs to get rid of identity while
also not getting rid of identity.
Some feminist philosophers like Sara Edenheim argues that feminism should shift its
focus away from identity and create a politics of desire. Feminist politics of desire asks the
question, “what do we want rather than who we are” and find solidarity based on desire
(Edenheim 2015, 143). hooks acknowledges the skepticism many feel against the critique of
identity, because it is tied to the fear of losing the voice that is necessary to invoke justice:

Should we not be suspicious of postmodern critiques of the “subject” when they surface at a historical
moment when many subjugated people feel themselves coming to voice for the first time. (1990d, 28)

Her response to this tension between critique of identities and the oppressions based upon it
is to engage a double strategy: invoking the authority of experience, i.e. epistemic privilege,
while also adhering to the critique of essentialism (hooks 1990d, 29). Although identity
politics and intersectionality do a good job of using identity as a source of power in
resistance, there is still a need to forego identity in order to remove the condition – not only
the symptoms – of the structure of the axes of oppression. These are the tensions that arise in
when using the identity politics and intersectionality as political strategies to overcome
ethnocentrism in feminism. In chapter four of this thesis, Reform and Revolution, I will
consider this tension in greater detail.
Narayan, while also critical of essentialist identity with respect to cultural and
national identities, argues in contrast not only that identity can be a powerful source of
resistance, but that masters’ tools can be very useful for emancipation. The implications of
this argument is that the masters’ tools should not be discarded simply because they happen
to be the masters’ tools, and that Lorde’s paradigm might not be relevant for all elements of
the liberation struggle. Her insight is among other things influenced by the perspectives of
“Third World feminist political struggles” that there are several “master’s houses,” some not
Western but local or both. Some tools, like cultural relativism, is not seen as a Western
master’s tool, but is a local masters’ tool to justify oppressive sexist practices in the name of
cultural preservation (Narayan 1998, 101–102). Narayan holds that masters’ tools can be
central for feminism that aspires toward non-ethnocentrism. Doctrines of equality and rights,
she holds, rather than being pure “products of Western imperialism” were often also

59
Sara Ahmed (2004) works toward deconstructing the white identity category in whiteness studies. She argues
that whiteness is invisible for those who are white, who often conflate good practice with white practice, and
falsely believe that their whiteness is transcendable even in cases that involve racism.

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important products of such struggles against Western imperialism. In the next section, I
consider transnational feminism as a third possible solution for non-ethnocentric feminism.

3.3 Transnational Feminism

The third effort at establishing a form of feminism that achieves non-ethnocentrism that I
evaluate in this thesis is transnational feminism. Transnational feminism can be a way of
tackling ethnocentrism in feminism with an eye for global contexts, with less focus on
individual identity. Transnational feminism is the attempt at figuring out cooperation between
localities of feminist projects, at doing feminist collaboration across national and cultural
borders. Several problems reappear in this political effort, because often Western feminists
do not meet their ‘Others’ in ways that are free from imperialist assumptions. In this
subchapter, I rely on Narayan to explain how latent ethnocentrism occurs in transnational
feminism. Next, I look at two factions within transnational feminism that I call cultural
abstractionists and cultural contextualists, who have different stances on the role of ideal
theory in transnational feminism. I argue that cultural contextualists are more successful
toward non-ethnocentrism, but paradoxically, they rely on the master’s tools to do so. I
consider Narayan’s attempt at a middle-ground, before I conclude that cultural contextualists
teach us that a concern with purity politics can be just as reliant on ideas related to Western
metaphysics, and also be a form of the master’s tool. In the following chapter, I will consider
what feminism might do about being implicated in the episteme-politic.

3.3.1 Othering in Transnational Feminism

In this section I examine potential ethnocentrisms in transnational feminism by discussing
Narayan’s argument that Othering can occur by establishing sameness, not only difference.
In an article called “Transnational feminisms in question,” Breny Mendoza (2002) holds that
transnational feminism is the collective response to a capitalist globalist world and a
developing global mass culture, where corporations have breached the confines of the nation
state and its borders. On the one hand, it reflects the work of the UN and NGOs that relates
nationalist feminist organizations beyond nationalist borders, and research on globalization’s
effect on women in different countries. Post-colonial influences in this work highlights the
social construction and “artificiality” of nations and patriarchy (Mendoza 2002, 296). On the
other hand, this collective response takes the shape of virtual connections and communication
between feminists at grassroots level, as a form of unprecedented transnational solidarity
against capitalism, racism and sexism (Mendoza 2002, 297–299).

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 Mendoza attributes the origins of transnational feminism to the idea of global
sisterhood, which in the 1970s and 80s was a popular idea with First World, white, middle-
class feminists that was supposed to unite all women against a common patriarchal
oppression. Unfortunately, this idea presumed that there was a common experience of
oppression for women around the world, which was based on a Western experience of
patriarchal oppression. Although it aspires to operate in non-ethnocentric ways, transnational
feminism is also to some extent implicated in the desire for a global feminist political
solidarity beyond divisions such as class, race, sexuality and national boundaries (Mendoza
2002, 296). Unfortunately, even though one acknowledges the economic, cultural and
political dominance of the West60 and refute illusions of commonality between Western and
nonwestern women, the trap is assuming in reverse an inherent inequality between Western
and nonwestern women. This reverse assumption, while often made in good will, positions
Western feminists as “saviors” who rely on homogenized notions of culture and an
assumption that Western women can teach nonwestern women the tools they need for
emancipation (Mendoza 2002, 300). Painfully aware that rhetoric such as saving,
enlightening and caring for colonized peoples were part of Western justification for
colonization, Narayan underscores nonwestern skepticism against Western feminist
benevolence (1995, 135). Not to mention, many of the issues that women in nonwestern
countries face, such as poverty and civil unrest, are direct consequences of Western
colonization. In other words, there is still a Western ethnocentrism at play in transnational
feminism that operates with the implicit ethnocentric assumption that women are better off in
Western culture, which is morally superior.
Narayan argues that although many transnational feminists and feminists with a
global perspective wish to be sensitive to ethnocentrism, they avoid making essentialist
accounts of ‘woman,’ but do this by making essentialist accounts of cultures instead
(Narayan 1998, 87). Although it is a well-meaning analytical shift, the ethnocentrism-
problem is simply shifted, not resolved. Narayan writes that these “culture-specific
essentialist generalizations differ from universalistic essentialist generalizations only in
degree or scope, not in kind” (1998, 87). Instead of gender essentialism, it is now cultural
essentialism, which nevertheless produces the same binary constructs between Western

60
I will add that the West is not the only group of countries that have engaged in colonial and imperialist
endeavors, neither historically nor in the present. China, for instance, has a long-standing history of imperialism
and has in the 21st century played a major role in capitalist global expansion in large parts of Africa. hooks
argues that feminists should not obscure the “colonizing relationship of the East” by the strong post-colonial
focus on Western imperialism, and that many nonwesterners perpetuate “the same kind of contempt and
disrespect for blackness that is most frequently associated with white western imperialism” (hooks 1990d, 93).

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culture and Other cultures (Narayan 1998, 88). Gender essentialism is closely related to
cultural imperialism because privileged women, in this case middle and upper-class White
Anglo-American women “tend to construct their “cultural Others” in their own image, taking
their particular locations and problems to be those of others (Narayan 1998, 89). Narayan’s
point here is that although cultural imperialism often sustains itself by an insistence on
difference – positing the West, i.e. the Self as masculine in contrast to the colonized feminine
for instance, or the civilized versus the uncivilized – it can also sustain itself by an insistence
on sameness. When cultural differences are dichotomized, gender becomes essentialist. I find
that this is another example of the master’s tool paradigm, where feminists concerned about
making gender generalizations, and who attempt a non-ethnocentric method of
understanding, end up making essentialist classifications of non-Western women all the
same. In this instance, the issue is that reversing a structure does not change or challenge the
structure. If WAWs insists on difference or sameness, they are still insisting on a relation to
themselves that posits them at the center of discourse – a Self with which to compare and be
different from or the same as – and that makes essentialist claims on NWW, and, I posit, on
WOC within multicultural Western societies like the United States. In the next section, I
examine how this affects transnational feminism.

3.3.2 Cultural Abstractionists

One issue of contention in transnational feminism is whether Western attempts at
collaboration with nonwestern feminists are a repetition and a perpetuation of Western
imperialism in the form of Western ‘savior’ syndrome. In this section I discuss how this
might occur in transnational feminism. I will illustrate the tension between liberation and
respect for culture in transnational feminism. I will then argue that choice between
universalism and cultural relativism is a Eurocentric dilemma.
One faction of WAW feminists concerned with transnational feminism have tried to
grapple with the tension between what they find to be universalism and cultural relativism. I
find that this way of framing the problem is a way of re-centering WAW. In this faction of
transnational feminism, which I call the cultural abstractionists, the WAW asks herself
whether or not she should get involved in the injustice that concerns women in other cultures.
This is a question rarely posed in reverse, of whether NWW should get involved in the
injustices Western women face. Although there can be several reasons for this skewed
balance, such as extreme poverty and limited resources, this unequal distribution of concern
for nonwestern women may be a symptom of the fact that Western feminists’ role in

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transnational feminism is often encumbered by imperialist epistemological presumptions that
feature in what I in chapter two called the episteme-politic.
Not all cultural abstractionists argue for universalism, but most do. Some, like
Lorraine Code (2000) take a sympathetic stance toward cultural relativism, but most, like
Susan Okin (2000) and Martha Nussbaum (2005), can be classified as universalists and wish
to established fixed principles of justice that are valid above any cultural variants in order to
guard against cultural relativism, which for them seems to justify unjust cultural practices
that oppress women around the world. Western feminists who are interested in gender and
justice, may understandably be interested in justice for women everywhere, like Martha
Nussbaum argues in her article “Women and Cultural Universals” (2005). She is concerned
with cultural differences between women, and how feminist philosophy can tackle these
cultural differences. Specifically, she is concerned with how the Western feminist should
relate to the injustice suffered by women in different cultures and traditions. Nussbaum refers
to herself as a moderate universalist, in order to avoid (1) imperialistic versions of absolute
universalism, (2) cultural relativism, and (3) what she identifies as a moral collapse by
avoiding the issues entirely and focusing only on issues that directly concern us in our own
countries. In this article she develops what she calls The Capability Approach, which is a list
of foundational human needs for a good life, whichever version for whichever culture, and
can be used to measure injustice where it occurs (2005, 319).61 With this list, she hopes to
give incentive to change cultures and abandon traditions that inhibit justice, especially
traditions that lead to an unjust society for women. Her agenda implies that she, like Okin
finds that “‘respecting cultural differences’ has increasingly become a euphemism for
restricting or denying women’s human rights” (Okin 2000, 30). On this view, cultural
relativism is an overly accepting attitude toward unjust gender practices in other cultures that
results in moral arbitrariness and the loss of normativity.
My concerns about this view is that the dilemma that cultural abstractionists put forth
is a false dilemma. Firstly, I worry that they provide little space for social structures, and little
room to acknowledge that nobody makes completely free choices unencumbered by their
surrounding situations. In other words, one often has to choose between the lesser of two
evils in a particular context, rather than what might be considered morally correct in an

61
This list includes being able to live one’s life to its natural end, the ability to maintain one’s health, the
freedom of movement and safety from violence, basic education, freedom of expression, healthy emotional
development, the ability to plan one’s life, and affiliation with others. The list is on the one hand succinct, but
also comprehensive on the other for what any human being would need in order to live a good life, and is
elusive enough to incorporate many versions of the good life.

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abstract theory of principles of justice. My second concern is that, although I agree with
Nussbaum that traditions should not be maintained simply in virtue of their status as tradition
and must always be open to criticism and abandonment (Nussbaum 2005, 308), I am worried
about her seeming lack of attention toward the history of Western policies of eradicating
nonwestern cultural traditions. Many cultural traditions may play important roles for one’s
identity and be powerful for resistance strategies against imperialism. It seems that any
transnational feminist philosophy would be worse, not better, off by failing to make room for
the historical context that is the horrendous consequences of (attempted) eradications of
Othered cultural traditions. I am thinking for instance about the suppression of African
cultures by the transatlantic slave trade, or efforts to quell the culture and traditions of
indigenous populations in areas like Norway, particularly in the 1950s and 60s. In the next
section, I will examine alternatives for transnational feminism that does not involve the
dichotomy of having to choose between universalism and cultural relativism.

3.3.3 Cultural Contextualists

Philosophers such as Alison Jaggar (2005) and Serene Khader (2017) have argued for
intercultural dialogue and non-ideal theory as ways to tackle global injustice in non-
ethnocentric ways. I categorize them as cultural contextualists. I find that Khader’s
distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory is helpful to understand why the Western
focus on ideal situations. The ideal theories of that cultural abstractionists does not leave
much room for what Narayan called “negotiating power” for women in nonwestern cultures
(and probably Western cultures too) that live in patriarchal societies.
While I can certainly understand the cultural abstractionist position against a theory
of normativity that has no limits and permits all, I am not so sure that any feminist, whether
Western or not is interested in this position. Is it therefore a position worth refuting? The
second faction of transnational feminists, the cultural contextualists, are less concerned with
the tension between cultural relativism and moral universalism. If cultural relativism is not
such a danger, we may not need moral universalism – these are some of the implications of
Khader’s work. Instead of choosing a position in the abstractionist framework, Khader
argues that Western feminists concerned with transnationalism often practice ethnocentrism
under the guise of moral universalism. Rather, she holds, transnational feminism is better off
“recognizing the non-ideal character of transnational feminist praxis” (2017, 20). Her main
argument is that Western transnational feminists encounter this tension between moral
universalism and cultural relativism because of “colonial epistemic habits” that tends to value

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Western culture as approximating an ideal, which implicitly devalues other cultures and
neglects to consider properly the effects of colonialism (2017, 15). Certainly, the effects of
colonialism would complicate the notion that Western states have attained this approximate
ideal on its own without relying on its technological and economic development on the work
of colonized others, as well as complicate the overly simplistic view that nonwestern cultures
are not as successful at economic or moral development. Khader articulates the choice for
Western feminists between cultural relativism and moral universalism as an unproductive
way of framing transnational feminist concerns. The problem, she finds, is not that Western
feminists are ethnocentric, but that their “colonial epistemic habits” preclude them from
asking the right kinds of normative questions. It is not that Nussbaum’s Capability Approach
is incorrect in terms of laying out some form of humanist ideal toward which we should all
strive. Rather, it is that cultural abstractionists miss the point that there is no getting to the
ideal except through the non-ideal that we are currently situated in.
In chapter two of this thesis, I used Narayan’s argument that Western feminists often
understand nonwestern women as dupes of patriarchy or prisoners of patriarchy to argue that
part of the explanation of latent ethnocentrism in feminism is the epistemological problem of
knowing the Other. Instead of attempting to understand the nonwestern women by framing
them as either a dupe or a prisoner, Narayan suggests revising the notion of autonomy in a
way that is conducive for a better understanding of the Other woman. Central to this revised
notion of autonomy, which I briefly mentioned in chapter two, is that nonwestern women –
often being well aware of patriarchy and Western global dominance – find ways to negotiate
for themselves in their non-ideal situations by accepting some non-ideal practices and
resisting others. An all-encompassing rejection of all unjust practices in one’s society, even if
this might be a rightful rejection, is rarely conducive to success or happiness in one’s own life
within this society. Missing the point about negotiating power and foregoing to analytically
separate practices from culture is what Khader calls the “culturalist category error” (2017,
13). This error is conflating a practice, which might be unjust toward women, with an entire
culture and by extension obscures the negotiating tactics of the Other woman from Western
feminist view. This error is not considerate of practices as strategies for change, or interested
in evaluating the effectiveness of these strategies, but evaluates practices based on whether
they fit with visions of ideal gender justice.
hooks argued that organizing around one’s own oppression divides feminists and
serves to maintain the status quo power balance. Both the cultural abstractionist and the
cultural contextualist factions of transnational feminism attempt to create some sort of

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togetherness between women around the globe and suggest ways in which to grapple with the
politico-epistemic difficulties of relating to the Other without repeating ethnocentrism and
perpetuating oppression while they seek to dismantle oppression. I find that the cultural
contextualists more successfully approach this goal because they are less focused on identity
and culture. They do not see culture as homogenous or ‘fixable’ but focus instead on separate
practices within their contexts, which is more conducive for what Jaggar calls “intercultural
dialogue about global justice” (2005, 70). Interpreting global sexism as a white woman’s
burden creates what Khader calls “epistemic impediments for Western transnational
feminists” where the objective is to save nonwestern women from their own cultures (2017,
16). When giving help is linked to some sense of moral superiority, this form of good-will is
ethnocentric in kind and does not come from political solidarity.
Khader explains that Okin’s insistence on the injustice of the gendered headscarf
practice is an example of Western feminists missing the point by being overly concerned
about cultural relativism. She compares Okin’s objection against headscarf practice to
objections against affirmative action (Khader 2017, 14). Affirmative action is a non-ideal
strategy put in place to approach an ideal, namely, the color-blind society. The headscarf can
be both oppressive, and emancipatory. Many meanings have been attributed to it: being
upper-class, national resistance against colonialism, piety, affirming cultural heritage as an
immigrant in a new country, female gender, oppression – certainly – but also liberation from
obsession with such things as beauty standards, which comprise parts of the surrounding non-
ideal situation. By illustrating the effectiveness of the use of the masters’ tools, Khader
makes an excellent argument for the view that the masters’ tools are the tools that we have at
hand. She also argues that the masters’ tools, such as headscarf practices or affirmative action
– which are tools based on the very identity qualifiers whose significance they wish to
diminish – are not incompatible with visions of the ideal. Khader’s position as cultural
contextualist is not against feminist envisioning of justice, but is concerned that ideal theory –
in this thesis exemplified by Nussbaum’s Capability Approach – tells us little about how to
get to the ideal, and is particularly little knowledgeable about how to get there from
nonwestern contexts, which might require a separate road. It is ethnocentric to assume that
the road from A to Z in the West is similar to the road from A to Z in nonwestern societies, or
that even the road toward the ideal must be ideal, especially without considering also the
effects colonialization and ongoing imperialism has and has had on gender relations. In this
way we can read Khader as arguing that the masters’ tools can dismantle the masters’ house.

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3.3.4 Against Purity Politics
The subversive success of the cultural contextualists, I think, is that they negate any claim on
ideal, or pure politics. All three approaches grapple with what Khader makes explicit for
transnational feminism, namely, the attempt to get to an ideal situation of non-ethnocentrism
in feminism from a non-ideal situation requires non-ideal tools, even tools that are useful for
the establishment of ethnocentric practices. The view that an act toward non-ethnocentrism
should be one hundred percent morally correct, just, or free from implications in the masters’
tools indicates a concern for purity that reflects the disdain for difference that upholds the
‘ideology of domination.’ Identity politics relies on identities created to oppress people of
color in order to claim their rights. Similarly, intersectionality analyses the overlapping of
identity categories in order to examine diversity within group identities and advocate for
overlapping identities. The cultural contextualists in transnational feminism promote other
non-ideal strategies as solutions to grapple with non-ideal situations.
I find that feminist philosopher Alexis Shotwell can provide an answer to thinking
about unsatisfactory strategies in non-ideal situations for feminism that aspires toward non-
ethnocentrism. In Purity Politics (2016), Shotwell explores the harmful effects of concerns
for purity in political and epistemological spheres when finding ways to create futures that
are “radically divergent from this suffering-filled present” (Shotwell 2016, 18). She finds that
human beings are always already implicated in the suffering of others, and so any attempt at
morality must start with this premise. Her frequent use of Heideggerian language concerning
temporality, historicity and being in the world underscores her view on the significance of the
past to the present, and that when it comes to oppression, there is no moving forward without
bringing the past into the future. In other words, ethnocentrism in feminism is not an issue
that can be solved once and for all before moving forward with non-ethnocentrism. Neither is
there such a thing as ‘pure’ or perfect kinds of resistance (Shotwell 2016, 196). This may
entail, I think, that there is no resistance completely free from the masters’ tools. In other
words, to expect feminism to be a pure politics is to adhere to and perpetuate the obsession
with purity that is constitutive of oppressive systems of classification and logocentrism.
Shotwell’s stance against purity in resistance and activism should not, I posit, be
interpreted as an invitation to use all kinds of masters’ tools and refrain from critically
examining feminist strategies for change. Rather, her stance against purity is consistent with
the understanding that we – everyone – are always already implicated in systems of
oppression and do not, even in activism against oppression, remove ourselves from our
complicity (Shotwell 2016, 204). Her argument supports my stance that there is no

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unproblematic form of resistance against imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
That being said, we can still evaluate different strategies for non-ethnocentric feminism
relative to one another. By understanding anti-purity not as accepting of essentialism or
universalism, but accepting of non-ideal strategies using masters’ tools as tools-at-hand for
resistance, cultural contextualists manage to bypass several issues with identity as discussed
earlier in this chapter, as well as overcome the unfruitful choice between universalism and
cultural relativism in other areas of transnational feminism. Cultural contextualists are able to
do this by adhering to a politics of non-purity, which they find are unproductive to non-
ethnocentric feminism, and easily conflates Western thought with universalism. It is not the
end-all solution to ethnocentrism in feminism, but it does what some FPS have proposed,
namely, it focuses more on what feminists in different localities want – and I add, when they
can benefit from cooperation – rather than who they are.
Although none of political solutions I have evaluated in this chapter are removed from
the episteme-politic, I find that the cultural contextualists in transnational feminism manages
somewhat to bypass issues related to identity, simply by not engaging the axes-model of
oppression that is tightly bound to identity categories. Transnational feminism starts by
engaging our non-ideal reality, by interrogating global power dynamics, poverty and
international capitalism and its relevance for women and people of color in all sorts of local
communities. Cultural contextualists embrace ambiguity, and acknowledge that a practice
may be both oppressive and a source of power for the oppressed. Transnational feminism is
also able to account for Narayan’s insight that there are several masters’ houses to dismantle,
which also means several arsenals of masters’ tools that may be at hand. In this regard,
transnational feminism provides a framework with which to theorize which masters’ houses
are being challenged by which tools. For instance, although wearing the veil can be a way of
acquiescing to patriarchal rule in Muslim countries, or used for negotiating more freedom in
other arenas of society, it can also be a way of resisting Western imperialism. This does not
mean that they are not affected by the ‘ideology of domination,’ or that the episteme-politic is
not a problem for cultural contextualists, but that they manage to create short-term solutions
that nonetheless provide respite to immediate problems now, even though I acknowledge that
this is treating a symptom, not a cause, and that these problems also require long-term
solutions. What we learn from cultural contextualists, is nonetheless, that the road from the
non-ideal to the ideal is through the non-ideal, and that perhaps our concern with absolute
anti-master’s tool purity is misguided.

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 3.4 Conclusion
In this chapter, I have analyzed three feminist attempts toward non-ethnocentrism within
feminism, namely, identity politics, intersectionality and transnational feminism. I conclude
that despite being implicated in the masters’ tools, all three can be seen as non-ideal
strategies in non-ideal worlds. All three attempts are implicated in the masters’ tools, and
therefore do not hold up to a strict interpretation of Lorde’s paradigm, that the masters’ tools
will never dismantle the masters’ house. Certainly, ethnocentrism is still a problem for
feminism. In chapter two of this thesis, I determined that what hooks calls the ‘ideology of
domination’ depends on a hierarchal structure that privileges what it positions as norm; the
West, the white and the male. Feminism internally is not immune to this ideology of
domination, evident by how identity politics and intersectionality operate in ways that
reinforce the hegemonic norm from which Others deviate – even in the process of claiming
rights and recognition. I suggested that the cultural contextualists in transnational feminism,
may be more conducive toward non-ethnocentric feminism than the other two attempts,
because the focus is less on identity and more on desire. It seems to me that a central part of
non-ethnocentrism and feminist resistance to imperialist white supremacist capitalist
patriarchy should look at ways that do not appropriate essentialist homogenizations of
identity that were rhetorically used to justify oppression, even for resistance purposes.
I think that hooks makes an excellent point when she reminds us that a concern for
blackness is actually a concern about whiteness because it is an oppositional identity and a
non-identity used to create a white Self. The implication is, which has become clear in this
chapter, is that how to tackle ethnocentrism in feminism is also a question about hegemonic
neutrality, i.e., the hierarchical position of the identity-norm of what is Western, white, and
male. In the next chapter I delve deeper into the discussion on ‘Letting Identity Go or Not’
where I question if using tools that are not imbued with the master’s agenda is possible, and
whether one can reform the masters’ tools, or whether it is feasible to discard them all in an
epistemic revolution. This dilemma between reform or revolution a reoccurring one for
feminists. The downside of a politics of desire, negotiation tactics and transnational feminist
co-operation in non-ideal conditions is that there is no long-term challenging of the
hegemonic norm and episteme-politic, i.e., the reciprocally reinforcing mechanism between
our understanding and the political agendas to maintain the norm. In the next chapter, I
investigate whether it is preferable, or even possible, to achieve non-ethnocentrism in
feminism by discarding the masters’ tools that ground the episteme-politic in which feminism
is implicated.

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4 Reform and Revolution
In this final chapter I will consider two possible strategies of working toward non-
ethnocentric feminism. Although there have been several similarities between bell hooks and
Uma Narayan, at this juncture the two part ways. hooks leans toward revolution and Narayan
toward reform. In this chapter I attempt to push forward still, to grapple with how feminism
and philosophy might solve the ethnocentric problem. Revolution is the ‘baby out with the
bathwater’ approach, because even the baby is contaminated by the “something rotten.”
Reform is an approach that focuses on maintaining what works and attempting to rinse it of
what does not work, and is the belief that tools are not imbued with the master’s agenda on a
constitutional and necessary level, but can be used for multiple agendas. On this view, the
tools might be separated from those who wield them.62 Using the tools will risk implicating
feminism in the episteme-politic that perpetuates Western ethnocentrism. Negating the tools
will risk standing alone without any tools.
In this chapter I consider hooks’ arguments for revolution, and discuss some
limitations with this strategy from Jacques Derrida’s poststructuralism, which is at once
optimistic and restricting about radically new futures. I consider Narayan’s reformist practice
of reconceptualization, and consider her attempt at reconceptualization. I discuss some
limitations to reformist strategy, and suggest adequate reconceptualization as a way to
include a little bit of revolution in reform. I end this chapter by destabilizing the distinction
between revolution and reform, and question whether feminism can overcome ethnocentrism.

4.1 hooks’ Radical Revolution

hooks believes in the possibility of a non-ethnocentric feminism, and she believes that the
way to get to a non-ethnocentric feminist society is by revolution, not reform. She holds that
revolution is less likely to be co-opted by other non-feminist agendas, that revolution remains
focused on long-term goals that deal with causes of interlocking oppression, not symptoms.
The revolution she proposes is an epistemic revolution, where language is key for feminist
struggle that strives to be non-ethnocentric. I find that there are many similarities between
hooks and Derrida, who are both concerned with the ‘to come’ of radical openness and
possibilities for a different future, which might give rise to non-ethnocentric feminism.

62
The debate between Butler and Benhabib in Feminist Contentions (1995) is a good example of a debate that
can be analyzed as a discussion on whether or not to use the master’s tools, or how to go about using them, i.e.,
revolution or reform. Butler and Benhabib do not, unfortunately, discuss feminist ethnocentrism.

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 In advocating revolutionary feminism, hooks juxtaposes revolution to reform, which
she argues is more easily co-opted by other political agendas such as conservatism and
liberalism (hooks 2000a, 9). For hooks, feminism becomes meaningless when any political
perspective can claim to be feminist:

The ‘anything goes’ approach to the definition of the word has rendered it practically meaningless.
What is meant by “anything goes” is usually that any woman who wants social equality with men
regardless of her political perspective (she can be a conservative right-winger or a nationalist
communist) can label herself a feminist. (hooks 2000a, 25)

Reformism suits everyone! Bourgeois order, capitalism, phallocentrism are ready to integrate as many
feminists as will be necessary. Since these women are becoming men, in the end it will only mean a
few more men. The difference between the sexes is not whether one does or doesn’t have a penis, it is
whether or not one is an integral part of a phallic masculine economy. (hooks 2000a, 8)

Reformism runs the risk of giving the illusion that change is happening, while really
providing ways for imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy to sustain itself despite
dissent. For the political status quo, reformism is a strategy of appeasement to change what is
necessary to maintain the integral structure and balance of power intact. As a radical feminist
committed to revolution, hooks’ position is sympathetic to those who challenge identity
categories as a way to challenge the structure that imperialist white supremacist capitalist
patriarchy is built on.
Reformist feminism, hooks argues, is less likely to remain fixed on its long-term
goals. Some, like Sandra Harding (1973) have argued that many reforms over time may
slowly all together constitute a revolutionary change of society, and that feminist successes
have mostly been achieved by reform. hooks nevertheless insists that although several
women have gained significant benefits by reformist feminism, she concedes, but the overall
system of domination has not been dismantled. A reformist feminist focus is concerned with
improving women’s lives within the ‘ideology of domination’ rather than transforming
society, a long-term goal that hooks accuses reformists of losing sight (hooks 2000a, 159–
160). According to hooks, reformist feminism loses sight of feminist consciousness-raising,
and capitalist exploitation of labor and its link to sexism and racism. It has not prompted
feminists toward socialist visions of society, or feminist imagination toward other still visions
of just political systems. Perhaps most tellingly, and as a consequence of the global political
structures, hooks finds that reformist feminism does not bring feminists and others to
reorganize society from an understanding that everyone irrespective of identity or class has
“acted in complicity with the existing oppressive system” (hooks 2000a, 164). Because
reformist feminists are more interested in smaller adjustments than larger overhauls, they

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may think more highly of the existing systems that do exist, and be less willing to accept
responsibility for their own involvement in oppression.
hooks positions herself as a radical feminist revolutionary, but she is not advocating a
violent or military revolution in the form political revolutions often take. The revolution she
envisions is based on an epistemological shift, and love. Love, for hooks, is not feeling
romantic. In her book, All about love: new visions (2001 [2000]) hooks outlines love as a
praxis that involves care, duty, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust. She envisions an
epistemological revolution that ends in a cultural transformation away from dualisms and
systems of domination (hooks 2000a, 165). The revolutionary response to the link between
ethnocentrism in feminism and feminism’s use of the masters’ tools is to abandon all that can
be taken to be master’s tools, implicated in the language and politics of the episteme-politic.63
hooks’ own solution is to define one’s own terms (hooks 2000a, 47). In this sense, she is
requesting a way in which to climb out of the reciprocal effects in the trench-circle of
episteme-politic that I identified in chapter two of this thesis. hooks’ revolution is not simply
about changing the world ‘out there’ but also about changing one’s way of knowing it:
“Perhaps it is the knowledge that everyone must change, not just those we label enemies or
oppressors, that has so far served to check our revolutionary impulses” (hooks 2000a, 166).
I find that her revolutionary stance has much in common with FPS who, because of
the mechanisms of reiteration and différance, optimistically believe that the future can hold
radically different realities – realities where identity qualifiers have no or little meaning, are
not involved in axes of oppression, or even where there do not exist axes of oppression. This
potential and radically different reality would not be a color-blind society, or a society where
difference does not exist, but a society where oppression based on those differences did not
take place, or was impossible as structure. Revolution means breaking out of the episteme-
politic, and establishing a radical openness to a new epistemological way of being that is not
determined by the previous system. Because FPS hold that the subject is produced through
the polis (Elam 1994, 70), it could be produced differently than it has been so far, and into an
epistemic framework where there is no imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

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One example of this strategy is the l’écriture feminin as expressed by the French Feminist intellectual
tradition by thinkers such as Luce Iragaray, Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva. This tradition claims to be
overcoming or transcending dichotomous thinking in a radical way, or at least attempting to. As “social
structures change, so too does the range of possible human experience” (Bunz et. al. 2017, 151) – and so
perhaps we will be open to experience the Other in ways that are not constitutive to and marginal to the Self.
L’écriture feminin concerns mainly the question of gender difference, and not cultural, racial and national
difference, or wealth disparity.

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 What hooks and Derrida have in common is a concern for the “radical openness” as
well as a concern for love as a way to get there. For hooks, the margins can be a space for
radical openness, where new terms can be established. Derrida takes the idea of “radical
openness” from Nietzsche, and argues that concern with the future is a condition of
experience. The ‘radical openness’ comes from Derrida’s notion of the future (l’avenir) to
come (à venir). This ‘to come’ is in reference linguistically, to the dual instability of meaning
in language that is the critique of Western logocentrism: At once a surplus of meaning as well
as an incompleteness of meaning, which demonstrates that meaning cannot be arrested. This
incompleteness of meaning is caused by temporality, because there is always another
iteration ‘to come,’ and another way the concept will be used and interpreted.64 It is this
radical opening ‘to come’ that gives feminist revolutionaries the optimistic hopefulness that
all of the old tools imbued with ethnocentrism and patriarchy may be traded in for something
better, even though one cannot be certain what that may be just yet, it is still ‘to come.’

4.2 Revolution Disillusion

There are some issues with the revolutionary solution that I will discuss here. In chapter two,
I argued that the centering of the norm and devaluing the differences that support the
maintenance of the hegemonic norm is inherited from the theorizing of difference from
Western philosophy. The imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy provides a
ready-made structure of devaluing difference, which feminism shows signs of appropriating
when it attempts to separate other axes of oppression from sexism. In investigating why, I
turn to poststructuralist philosophy, which has been one of the most ardent critics of Western
metaphysics. First, I argue that hooks does not stand apart from that which she criticizes, the
metaphysical heritage in feminist thought. By referring to Derrida’s reflections on the
bricoleur, I discuss the difficulties of separating oneself from our metaphysical heritage.
Second, I remark that revolution does not remove one from that which one critiques. Third, I
use poststructuralism to show that we cannot move toward non-ethnocentrism without still
grappling with the ethnocentrism that has been. In other words, there is no ‘getting over it’

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Derrida briefly references the Ancient Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus in the preface to “The Reason of the
Strongest” to illustrate the ‘to come’ in iteration (Derrida 2005, xii). According to mythology, Echo follows
Narcissus into the woods, and because Hera has taken away her voice, she can only repeat back what has been
said. Nevertheless, she finds a way to communicate, because meaning is never fixed: At one point, Narcissus,
noticing that he is being followed in the woods, shouts, “Is anyone here?” upon which Echo’s response is
“Here!” (Graves 1955, 287). Her iteration is also a response. Echo is able to answer Narcissus despite her
disability. She turns the meaning of Narcissus’s “here?” which is an uncertain question and an expression of
fear into her own meaning – an exclamation of her love and presence. Several other examples of the
incompleteness of meaning and iterations ensue.

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even though it is urgent to overcome ethnocentrism. Finally, I find that revolution is like
différance, whereby intention does not determine the outcome. Anything can happen, and
revolution is risky business. The revolution is not loyal to its revolutionaries.
hooks is not alone in asserting that Western binaries are connected to ethnocentrism.65
Ethnocentrism, based in Western philosophy, is according to Derrida an example of the use
of binary opposition. In having a center of ethnology there is also a margin of ethnology,
namely the Other66 (Derrida 1978, 284). Certainly, hooks’ accusation that dichotomies are a
part of the Western philosophical foundation that haunts the feminist project is familiar
territory for feminist philosophers. She claims that “most people are socialized to think in
terms of opposition rather than compatibility” and effectively and faultily compartmentalize
the struggles; on the one hand against sexism and on the other against racism (hooks 2000a,
31). For hooks, it thus seems to be that we are able to think in terms of non-opposition.
Although hooks advocates a development of consciousness to dualistic thinking, I question
whether it really is that easy to overcome dualistic thinking in a Western philosophical
context such as this analysis of feminism and patriarchy.
Perhaps it is too strong of an interpretation to think that she challenges us to move
beyond thinking in terms of non-difference altogether. Compatibility, as hook mentions, is
not the same as non-difference. In this way, hooks may be read as challenging hard-core
différance: our thought and modes of understanding are built up by differences in play, but
perhaps some differences may be compatible, not in opposition to one another, like pieces of
a puzzle. One issue for hooks, however, is that in attempting to evade a dualism, one ends up
producing another set of differentiated concepts. On the one hand, hooks does not accept
these concepts and terms that make the interlocking oppressions hard to grasp. On the other
hand, she uses these very concepts in order to create an improved definition of systematic

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Chandra Mohanty succinctly outlines the history of postmodern and poststructuralist philosophers such as
Derrida, Said, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, and Gilles Deleuze, who have exposed ethnocentrism in Western
humanism by the interrogation of epistemological claims. This ethnocentrism and anthropomorphism is
underlying, and therefore has needed to be exposed because “constitutes a hegemonic humanistic problematic
that repeatedly confirms and legitimates (western) Man’s centrality.” This ethnocentrism is harmful because it
leads to the valuation of whiteness (Western qualifier) and maleness (masculine qualifier) over others. Along
with feminists influenced by postmodern and poststructuralist philosophy such as Luce Irigaray, Sarah Kofman,
Hélène Cixous, these thinkers have uncovered “the political interests that underlie the binary logic of humanistic
discourse and ideology” (Mohanty 1988, 81). They do this uncovering by revealing that established centers,
which appear primary – such as Truth, Identity and Universality – are actually secondary to and derived from
that which appears to be secondary, such as error, difference, temporality, anarchy. This apparent universal is
how norms are established, such as white supremacy, which implicitly establishes whiteness and maleness in the
center of Western humanist philosophy – by an epistemological and political marginalization of others,
including women and people of color and nonwestern cultures.
66
In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel argues that Othering is a fundamental aspect of consciousness. Hegel’s
argument may correspond well with what I have posited as necessary ethnocentrism.

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oppression in society that is supposed to cover all aspects of the ‘ideology of domination.’
The problem with this strategy is that any new definition will also be either be too vague –
such as the simple articulation of the ‘ideology of domination’ – or too narrow but based on
the very axes she is trying to expose, such as her articulation of the imperialist white
supremacist capitalist patriarchy. This narrow definition does not show the interlocking, as
opposed to the compiled feature of a number of different forms of oppression. This somewhat
ironic problem is not a problem only for hooks. This is a problem identified by Nietzsche and
developed by poststructuralists and pertains a central issue for the philosophy of language,
especially in continental philosophy. Although hooks may be aware of this problem, probable
due to her curiosity toward postmodernism, and even poststructuralism,67 she makes no effort
to grapple with this problem. The answer may be that hooks wants to do politics, and that
acknowledging the incompleteness of one’s own proposed solution is not an effective
political strategy where competition is fierce and the cards of the imperialist white
supremacist capitalist patriarchy are already stacked against you.
Although hooks may be critical of Western dualism, the exhaustive-inclusion problem
is indicative of her being more immersed in and dependent on Western philosophy than she
would like. In order to illustrate this claim, I will account for our dependence on essentialism,
and what it means for hooks’ problem. When hooks attempts to construct a new, non-
exclusive and therefore inclusive definition of the ‘ideology of domination’ – when she
attempts to overcome the language of the episteme-politic that functions as a divide-and-
conquer mechanism and separates domination into axes such as sexism and racism – she ends
up basing her new definition on a new set of exclusive terms despite her intentions to develop
a more inclusive and holistic understanding of oppression. This is because, as Diana Fuss
argues, deconstruction employs essentialism to displace essence (Fuss 1989, xii). hooks’
attempt to displace the categorical axes of oppression with a more inclusive, holistic analysis,
ends up as a concept that combines the notion of the categorical axes to express the
imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. I find that her definition, which is based
on categorical combination of what she finds are concepts that misconfigure reality, is an
excellent example of Derrida’s bricoleur-analogy.
The bricoleur-analogy is Lévi-Strauss’ metaphor for his critique of positivism in The
Savage Mind (1966). Derrida criticizes Lévi-Strauss for ethnocentrically excluding the value-
systems of other cultures in an attempt to include all culture-systems. Although Derrida

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hooks’ postmodern interest is particularly evident in the chapter “Postmodern Blackness” in Yearning (1990).

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critiques Lévi-Strauss’ use of binary opposition, he cannot escape it himself. He does,
however, reject the reality of the engineer, which is the metaphorical expression for the
creation of something entirely new (Derrida 1978, 287). Derrida contends that only the
bricoleur exists, because we cannot create things from tools we do not have readily available.
The engineer, for Derrida, is useful only insofar as it contrasts the concept of the bricoleur,
giving an idea of what the bricoleur is (Derrida 1978, 279). hooks has reassembled old
concepts into a new one in an attempt to reveal that the different axes of oppression are not as
differential as they first appear. In doing this, she nevertheless becomes the bricoleur, who
reassembles the tools at her disposal, but does not create something entirely new – she does
not permanently escape, transcend or evade the structure of metaphysical dualism that created
the exhaustive inclusion problem in the first place.
The bricoleur is the explanation for why poststructuralism cannot transcend
metaphysics, and why the idea of total epistemic revolution for feminism may be difficult.
Judith Butler articulates this difficulty:

[…] the postmodern ought not to be confused with the new; after all, the pursuit of the “new” is the
preoccupation of high modernism; if anything, the postmodern casts doubt upon the possibility of a ‘new’
that is not in some way already implicated in the ‘old’. (1995, 39)

The bricoleur is a metaphor for how the ‘new’ is already implicated in the ‘old.’ The
bricoleur is a constructionist. Deconstruction is temporary, and to fix a new understanding
like hooks does, one needs to be a constructionist, which entails what Fuss calls “production
and organization of differences” [Fuss’ italics] (Fuss 1989, 2). Perhaps it would be more
correct to say the re-production and re-organization of differences, which is what hooks does
to create her improved definition of the source of oppression.
Despite being affected by the exhaustive inclusion problem, I find that hooks’
definition is indeed an improved one, because it offers a different understanding of
oppression that benefits the feminist project. Besides, anything other would be to hold hooks
to impossible standards. According to Fuss, this problem of being always already68
implicated in metaphysics has been acknowledged by poststructuralists:

Derrida would, of course, be quick to agree that despite the dislocating effects of deconstruction’s
strategies of reversal/displacement we can never get beyond metaphysics, and therefore, […] we can
never truly get beyond essentialism. This is why we should not be surprised to see certain metaphysical
holds operative in Derrida’s own work, supporting even his relentless pursuit of binary oppositions and
phenomenological essences. (1989, 13)

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Even this formulation is an example of how metaphysics is present in poststructuralism: “The danger (and the
usefulness) of “always already” is that it implies essence, it hints at an irreducible core that requires no further
investigation” (Fuss 1989, 17).

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Derrida may work to deconstruct this dichotomous understanding of properties, but his
deconstruction is nonetheless dependent on essentialism to do so. hooks’ improved concept is
a very ambitious concept that attempts to “arrest” all of the culprits at once, and expose them
as the one and the same that they are. In order to do that, however, and to be understood,
hooks is dependent on the language created by Western dualism in order to name the culprit:
imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, thereby also accepting the surrounding
structures of difference in place to give that name meaning. This means that the tools
available to us, as bricoleurs, are tools imbued with the structures of which they were
created, to support the established norm from which Others deviate. They are master’s tools.
My second remark about revolution, is that when Derrida invokes the ‘to come,’ he
doesn’t mean a near, predictable future. It is not a future that will become the present. He
talks about the unknown ‘to come’ which he also calls out as messianic (Derrida 2005, 86). It
is not anything like a regulative ideal – a goal that may be unattainable and yet useful for us
toward which to strive. When Derrida elaborates on the political consequences of
deconstruction, he demonstrates that justice is an aporia. Derrida scholar John Caputo
describes the aporia as “a perplexing and complex undecidability that brings us up short and
forces us to choose in this concrete and complex, knotted and undecidable situation” (Caputo
1997, 148). A feminism that is completely ethnocentrism-free may be a regulative ideal
toward which to strive, but in order to do feminism without ethnocentrism in the present, it is
necessary to aporetically follow rules that ensure inclusive, variable representation such as is
the case with identity politics and intersectionality, while in the same moment denounce the
very methods by which identity politics and intersectionality operate and measure their
successes.69 Non-ethnocentric feminism would be a feminism that does not care about the
cultural and ethnic differences between women, because it recognizes that arbitrary
favoritism is unjust and should not be relevant – but also a feminism that takes cultural and
ethnic differences into consideration in order to counter-balance or counter-weigh latent
ethnocentrism. Because this aporetic feminism is composed of mutually exclusive parts, it
will, like deferred meaning, perhaps never exist in full. That is why it is ‘to come.’
When Derrida criticizes Lévi-Strauss, he points out that Lévi-Strauss deploys
concepts that he has already destabilized and deconstructed. He employs the nature/culture
dichotomy even though he has exposed, by the incest prohibition, that there is no truth-value

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From my analysis on the possibilities for non-ethnocentric feminism in the present, there are many similarities
to Derrida’s analysis on the aporetic structure of democracy, democracy ’to come’ and democracy’
autoimmunization, which Derrida develops in “The Reason of the Strongest” (2005).

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to this dichotomy. Even though Lévi-Strauss has “exposed their limits,” he still treats them as
“tools which can still be of use,” employed to “destroy the old machinery to which they
belong and of which they themselves are pieces” as if he, Lévi-Strauss can “separate method
from truth” (Derrida 1978, 284). The similarities to the master’s tools paradigm for
ethnocentric feminism is striking. I have argued that some of the political initiatives to
overcome ethnocentrism in feminism, while effective on several levels, still struggle to
succeed due to the implications of the episteme-politic. The methods at work in identity
politics and intersectionality are very much intertwined with the discourse that structures
oppression the ‘ideology of domination.’ Radical openness does not simply erase all of that.
This aporia is present when feminism deals with its ethnocentrism problem, and this
tension is palpable in the works of black and post-colonial feminist philosophers such as
hooks and Narayan. For instance, hooks and Narayan charge feminism for being ethnocentric
while at the same time destabilizing identities and dualisms on which they builds their claims.
They both invoke epistemic privilege that gives WOC a ‘special vantage point’ from which
to see ethnocentrism in feminism, while also arguing against essentialist notions of identity.
This tension in their work may make it seem that their arguments are not valid, and that
hooks and Narayan subscribe to different forms of argumentation when it favors their views,
and not when it counters their views. It is this tension, however, that is the aporetic structure
that makes radical openness possible, ‘to come,’ but not present.
Third, the ‘to come’ is not simply future-oriented. Certainly, any philosopher must be
willing to admit that it is possible that the unthinkable and the unknowable could happen in
the future, so why discount a post-racial, post-gender, post-capitalist society with no
hegemonic norms simply because it is different from our current way of life? While this
future possibility will always remain useful for feminist progress, the ‘to come’ is also
strongly related to the past. When FPS and hooks appeal to the radical openness of the future
‘to come,’ they open themselves to criticisms from feminist philosophers and theorists such
as McNay and Mohanty, who in her book Feminism Without Borders (2003) argues that “the
postmodern critique of essentialist notions of identity has been the dissolution of the category
of race” which comes at the cost of the recognition of racism (Mohanty 2003, 106–107).
Certainly, this is not something hooks supports, and may be the reason why she is ambivalent
in her embrace of postmodernism. These criticisms, however, are only valid when one does
not include with equal weight the significance of inheritance in one’s appeal to the ‘to come.’
Derrida’s analysis of Lévi-Strauss’ bricoleur and engineer dualism explains this
inconsistency, and shows that if all the tools at hand are the master’s tools, then those are the

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tools that exist – take them or leave them. The engineer supposedly creates her tools “out of
nothing,” but exists only as a contrast to the bricoleur, who is real and can actually create
things, but only from the already existing (Derrida 1978, 285). Therefore, the bricoleur is
connected to the past, because the tools-at-hand are inherited tools, perhaps intended for
different purposes than what the bricoleur uses them for. Inheritance is aporetic, Rosalyn
Diprose explains in an essay on Derrida and the future ‘to come,’ because it is not simply that
meaning is constituted in a play of difference, but meaning is also inherited. Diprose writes
that “experience is the experience of meaning and this meaning is inherited” (Diprose 2006,
436). Inheritance is not free from whatever ethnocentric or patriarchal connotations and
implications that is inherited. The aporetic feature of heritage means, however, much like the
bricoleur, that a new assembling can in certain moments make selective changes to meaning
in subversive and playful ways.
What radical openness can do, is not to skip over one’s heritage in an attempt to make
the future present more quickly, but to invoke a sense of urgency, of restlessness and
resistance, and a need for working toward the promise of what might be. The ‘to come’ is not
about erasing the past or pretending that we have already overcome the past such as
colonialism and imperialism, racism. Iterability, one might say the very limitation that makes
possible destabilizing meaning and subversive action, is very determined by the past. This
complication is also why bricolage is possible, and why it is possible to use tools in ways
they were not meant. In this sense, it seems that total epistemic revolution may not be
possible, if every discourse is actually inherited. So, are there no tools that are not masters’
tools? Perhaps this is the limitation that conditions the possibility of emancipation work in
philosophy, namely, that the tools at hand are the master’s tools. I am not willing to contrast
Derrida to Lorde, and argue that for Derrida the master’s tools can dismantle the master’s
house. Rather, Derrida saw that Lévi-Strauss’ use of the tools he denounced, even when he
denounced them, still upheld the old epistemic machinery. The deconstruction of the
categories did not preclude their use. Similarly, it is not that Derrida is not using master’s
tools – indeed there is a lot of metaphysics in poststructuralism – but he advocates an
awareness and a responsibility, and a recognition that the tools aren’t innocent, but inherited
and always already implicated in oppression. Derrida calls drawing on heritage a necessary
and “infinite task of deconstruction,” because heritage itself is what “allow[s] one to
challenge the limits that this heritage has imposed up to now” (Derrida & Roudinesco 2004,
19). This task is what Derrida ascribes to philosophy, namely, a “constant movement of
liberation: to do everything to recognize but also to pass, without necessarily betraying, its

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own ethnocentric or geographic limit.” There is no moving forward without bringing the past
along, even when invoking radical openness.
Finally, the drawbacks of revolutions in any case are relevant in this feminist case as
well. Revolutions are often uncontrollable, and the ones behind the revolution may not
survive the revolution, and the original intent behind the revolution may be buried beneath
the struggle to revive order and stability. Once revolution has taken hold, anything can
happen. Many feminist philosophers in favor of opening for the possibility of radical change
do a good job of arguing for the necessity of radical change, but fail to give a proper account
of how to get there, or what radical openness might look like. What is the world like in a post
radical change? On the one hand, this might be a risk feminism ought to take. On the other
hand, feminists have fought hard and suffered to gain the rights and liberties we have today,
and perhaps risking all of that for radical change is ill-founded. In this sense, radical opening
is not necessarily something that will serve justice, or the interests of non-ethnocentric
feminism. Therefore, total revolution – throwing the baby out with the bathwater – may not
even be possible because there is such a strong relevancy of heritage in radical openness, and
if it was, it would be incredibly risky to gamble the feminist victories already made with the
master’s tools such as inclusive citizenship, democratic representation, identity politics and
intersectionality for something totally unknown and in the end perhaps even worse. In the
next section, I consider reform as an alternative to revolution.

4.3 Narayan’s Reform

For non-ethnocentric aspirations for feminism, as advocated by black and post-colonial
feminists, there is a tension between inclusion in the system and a rejection of it altogether. In
this section, I use Narayan to illustrate a proponent of the non-ethnocentric feminism who
advocates reform. Narayan wants to reconceptualize citizenship, because it justifies the
oppression and maltreatment of non-citizens. I will outline her use of reconceptualization of
citizenship as a method of feminist reform in a post-colonial framework in order to give an
example of reformist reconceptualization and a defense of reformist feminism.
Narayan presents an alternative to radical, revolutionary feminism. I take her to be a
reformist feminist, because of her work on reconceptualization. In her essay “Towards a
Feminist Vision of Citizenship: Rethinking the Implications of Dignity, Political
Participation, and Nationality” (1997b), Narayan develops ways to improve citizenship in
ways that are less sexist and ethnocentric, instead of scrapping the entire notion. Narayan
acknowledges that citizenship has been used not so much to provide equality among citizens

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as it has been used to exclude the poor, the women, and the colonized from enjoying a
privileged status. She could, on those grounds – which she also acknowledges70 – have
argued that the idea of citizenship has created more inequality than equality, and that it is a
concept that is rooted in the ‘ideology of domination,’ which feminists would be wise to
reject, especially if feminists are concerned about ethnocentrism. Despite these qualms with
citizenship, Narayan’s view is that reconstructing citizenship is worthwhile rather than
abolishing it altogether.
Citizenship has, she writes, “connoted respect, dignity, status-equality, self-
government and the rights associated with these values,” (Narayan 1997b, 48) such as the
right to vote, inherit wealth, travel freely, and not have other infringe upon one’s freedom.
Citizenship has to do with freedom and justice, the rights to exercise political power, and
rights to basic forms of economic security and share in social heritage. Narayan underlines
that getting rid of citizenship would mean getting rid of the securities that citizenship brings
with it. Therefore, instead of total revolution, Narayan suggests making citizenship more
inclusive or in some other way extending political concern to non-citizens who live in the
territory of the state such as migrant women, who are often vulnerable members of society
(Narayan 1997b, 48–49). This change is not simply a matter of extending inclusion to non-
citizens, but a matter also of changing the meaning of citizenship. In this regard, Narayan
shares with hooks the idea that inclusion by itself is not the answer to the problem of
Othering. She is nonetheless hopeful that reconstruction, or reconceptualization of citizenship
– although it may be a tool that was used in an exclusionary manner – can keep the benefits
and get rid of the drawbacks. She envisions a type of citizenship that is no longer based on
identity qualifiers such as sex, wealth, cultural heritage, nationality (in the ethnic sense) or
skin color, a citizenship that upholds no ‘norm’ in society.
In order to achieve a transformed, more inclusive form of citizenship, Narayan argues
that welfare in society is key (Narayan 1997b, 55). Citizenship and rights were formed as a
protection against the state and assumed that autonomy and independence warranted this
protection for people who were “fully cooperative.” Unchanged, citizenship is concerned
only with need negative rights – rights from the interference of the state – whereas positive
rights such as welfare is more relevant for those Narayan wants to include in citizenship
(Narayan 1997b, 53). She wants to reduce the “barriers of inclusion” that citizenship takes

70
Narayan writes that citizenship defines whose interests count, which relies as much on excluding as it does
including people. The value of citizenship is created by excluding others, i.e. slaves, women and the poor
(Narayan 1997b, 49–50).

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part in by reducing wealth disparities, ensuring affordable quality education and childcare
and ensuring equal job opportunities. Replacing the focus on the relation between state and
citizen with a focus on what the public owes the public and non-citizens within the state she
believes will be the best ways to increase voter participation and diverse representation in
democratic institutions (Narayan 1997b, 58–61). This example of reform, such as
reconceptualization of citizenship, illustrates its useful quality – it is very much visualized
and concrete in its goals. Despite the tangible allure of reformist feminism, I find that it is
difficult to find feminist reformation politics of resistance that does not in some form or
another circle back to the agendas of the dominant groups. It is difficult to see how
citizenship can be totally transformed into something that does not perpetuate the harmful
exclusionary effects of citizenship at one level or another.

4.4 Adequate Reform

Reform is the attempt to salvage – so to speak – one’s inherited tools and build on what one
already has in order to tackle feminism’s ethnocentrism problem. In this section I consider
and suggest that reform’s strength lies in its urgency. First, I remark that reformists work
steadfastly. They use master’s tools to make changes to the master’s house, so as to be heard,
even though they are implicated in maintaining the master’s house. Last, I propose the notion
of adequate reconceptualization as a hooksian strategy to maintain long-term focus while
demanding urgency for non-ideal situations now.
Narayan’s solution is to examine whose agendas are being served by the use of
certain epistemic tools and to engage in reconceptualization and the creation of new concepts
to transform existing concepts and notions into versions that serve non-ethnocentric feminist
agendas. This is very much an exorcism, where one believes that the tools can be purged of
the master’s agendas, and that one can keep the baby and throw out the ethnocentric
bathwater. The reform alternative has an advantage over revolution, although it is not as
alluring, because it is able to keep, without endangering, the rights and political gains
women, people of color, and former colonies have fought hard for and won. These rights and
political gains, such as affirmative action, quotas and cultural recognition, are often achieved
by accepting and exploiting the master’s tools, such as racialized identities. On this view, the
risk of revolution seems ill-founded because it seems to risk gambling away these costly
advances. Although revolutionaries are skeptical to the amount of actual change that reform
can bring, reformists prefer to work steadfastly toward making feminism less ethnocentric,
and believe that many small efforts over time will eventually lead to greater change.

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 Nationalist anti-colonial movements are more like reform than revolution because
they use the master’s tools for emancipation. Narayan’s point about political logic
demonstrates the use of master’s tools in nationalist anti-colonial struggles. As if to provide
an example to Narayan’s political logic paradigm, Derrida describes Nelson Mandela’s anti-
apartheid arguments for South Africa as a recycling of British argumentation (Derrida &
Roudinesco 2004, 19):

The paradox is indeed that we are liberating ourselves from ethnocentrism, and eventually from
Eurocentrism, in the name of philosophy and its European filiation. (Derrida & Roudinesco 2004, 18)

What Derrida is doing by pointing out the Eurocentrism involved in the liberation from
ethnocentrism is reminding his readers of the relevance of heritage for the future. The only
way to speak to the ‘master’ or the oppressor in a way that it can understand, it is using the
language of the oppressor. Like Narayan points out, the master doesn’t learn the language of
the subjugated, but the subjugated must learn the language of the dominators, and to navigate
in their world as well as her own dominated world (Narayan 2004, 221). Using master’s tools
allows resistors to employ colonial discourse against the colonizer, by using terms they
understand such as rights, civilization, liberty. Reformism takes up the battle of confronting
and challenging the episteme-politic that links reason with masculinity, woman with
whiteness, and conceptually separates axes of oppression from one another as if they are
separable politically as well. While the revolutionaries dream, the reformists do.
Reconceptualization as a reformist strategy is nevertheless a limited endeavor and no
simple feat. Reconceptualization, such as Narayan’s citizenship-project, is no guarantee
against latent ethnocentrism. I think that reformist feminists interested in striving toward a
non-ethnocentric feminism therefore needs something like a notion of adequate
reconceptualization. I mean to emphasize the need not simply for reconceptualization in the
direction of less ethnocentrism, but for reconceptualization that provokes enough change so
that little residue of ethnocentrism is left. Certainly, this is no easy feat, but I believe it
challenges the reformist to recognize the depths and strength of ethnocentric heritages in for
example terms such as citizenship or one’s identity qualifiers. I make this point because I
think Lorde’s master’s tools-paradigm can be read from a reformist perspective as well as a
revolutionary one, because she concludes her appeal by urging feminists to confront the
“terror and loathing” of difference within, to “[s]ee whose face it wears” (2003, 38). The
insistence on adequate reconceptualization can incite discussion on whether

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reconceptualizing work has gone far enough beyond ethnocentric and oppressive stakes to be
useful for feminism in a ways that do not re-perpetuate ethnocentrism and oppression.
My suggestion of adequate reconceptualization is a somewhat of a hooksian
radicalization for reform. I hold that feminist efforts at reconceptualization must come with
an admittance that reconceptualization is not always or necessarily a thorough or substantial
reconfiguration away from its sexist or ethnocentric components. Perhaps a total dismissal of
sexism/ethnocentrism from terms such as ‘woman’ are impossible, but a level of adequacy or
substantiality would perhaps be within reach. I draw on philosophers like Khader (2017),
Shotwell (2016) and Rooney (1991) to make this point. On the one hand, Khader argues that
in a non-ideal, unjust world, practices as strategies toward gender justice do not look like the
ones we would use in a just world. From Narayan’s insight that there are several masters’
houses, I gather that there must also then be several masters’ arsenals. Adequate
reconceptualization may be the project that can grapple with which masters’ houses are being
challenged by which tools. Perhaps not all master’s tools are not equally harmful? Going well
with this point, Shotwell argues that feminists should not be concerned with purity politics,
which is very much an inheritance from what might be masters’ epistemology, namely, the
concern about truth value and logocentrism, the metaphysics of presence. Instead, doing
something to achieve a better world – in this thesis that concern has been achieving non-
ethnocentric feminism – might not be completely unproblematic, but it is still better than not
doing anything out of fear that action will invoke the master’s tools.
Rooney, on the other hand, serves as an excellent warning about reconceptualization,
and has motivated me to suggest the introduction of adequate reconceptualization. She points
out that we do not really know what a concept is without its heritage, and looks at the concept
‘reason’ in order to suggest that it cannot properly be separated from its political heritage and
the episteme-politic. The most hopeful element of reformation – reconstruction – is not
unproblematically applied. On what counts as an adequate difference between pre- and post-
reconceptualization is an entirely different research project, and a discussion, I think, yet to
be had among feminists, but which may prove very fruitful. In line with poststructural
philosophy, I doubt that establishing clear-cut principles to demarcate adequacy is beneficial
or even possible. Therefore, I think that adequacy may need to be discussed on a case-by-
case basis. I envision reconceptualization that is adequate, however, as having solidarity with
long-term revolutionary goals ‘to come,’ an insistence on openness toward the radically new
that might be better than our heritage, while demanding urgency for non-ideal situations now.

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 4.5 Reform and Revolution Are Two Sides of the Same Coin
Finally, I would like to cast doubt on the distinction between reform and revolution.
Although concerned with deconstruction and destabilizing the term, Derrida was also always
interested in genealogy of the term and its etymology, and concerned about heritage and past
iterations. Revolution means to overthrow a system of rule, but it also means an instance of
revolving, such as a spinning wheel or an orbit around an axis of rotation. In this second
meaning, there is no change of center. Perhaps this double meaning is an indication of the
limits of even revolution, because revolution rarely produces something radically new
without inheriting political logic from the former system. Reform also has several meanings.
In a political context, reform means making changes to something in order to improve it, such
as an institution or practice. In a technical context, it means to re-shape into something new
or past construction. Much like with revolution, there is a substantial part of whatever is
being reformed or revolved that remains. We cannot create the entirely new.
Whether reformist or revolutionary, the feminist who aspires toward non-ethnocentric
feminism has to grapple with feminism’s ethnocentric heritage. I think that feminism’s
ethnocentric heritage means that feminism must forego any claims to purity politics, while
also attempting to forego any traces of ethnocentric/Eurocentric epistemic habits. In other
words, in order to work toward non-ethnocentric feminism, feminism has to paradoxically
embrace its ethnocentric heritage in a double praxis that deconstructive philosophy has
recognized as aproetic. This aporetic structure is the limitation that makes possible, namely,
that one is never apart from what one criticizes, but that the critique is dependent on and
therefore also perpetuates that which is being criticized.
Does this mean that feminism will always be ethnocentric? I think that feminism is
not separate from the rest of world politics. Feminism is not set apart from the episteme-
politic, and so any effort to salvage feminism from ethnocentrism also has to grapple with the
episteme-politic and ‘colonial epistemic habits.’ The particular relevance of Western
ethnocentrism is important in the politico-epistemic framework, because Western
ethnocentrism has higher consequences for feminism’s ethnocentrism problem. Western
ethnocentrism aligns with the norm that is created by the combination of the axes of
oppression and aids in its perpetuation in a way that nonwestern ethnocentrism does not.
Nonwestern ethnocentrism may function as a counter-balance or resistance toward Western
ethnocentrism that may be fruitful for non-ethnocentric feminism. Nonwestern ethnocentrism
might be less of a problem for feminism than Western ethnocentrism, because Western
ethnocentrism may have effects that support imperialist white supremacist capitalism.

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5 Conclusion
In this thesis, I have been concerned about the ethnocentrism problem in feminism: whether
there is such a thing in feminism, and what philosophy might do about it. In order to
investigate ethnocentrism in feminism, I developed the idea of a structural form of latent
ethnocentrism which covers the space between forms of situated knowledge geared toward
the Self, and overt racism and fascism. I distinguished between an epistemological prong and
a political prong in the ethnocentrism charge against feminism, and used the works of bell
hooks and Uma Narayan to guide my investigation. Both of these counts figure into the
master’s tool paradigm by Audre Lorde. In the epistemological prong, I drew on hooks’
interlocking axes-model of oppression to look for answers on why the ethnocentrism problem
is important for feminism, and what its underlying epistemological causes are. Next, I drew
on Narayan’s destabilization of cultural dualisms to look for answers as to where these
dualisms come from and what agendas they might serve. I found a relation between language
that informs our understanding, and the political agendas that produce this language in order
to sustain the male and the Western norm as center. I called this circular and reciprocally
reinforcing mechanism the episteme-politic. I considered questions regarding the thesis of
epistemic privilege, on which hooks and Narayan had based their claims, and found that
Narayan’s and hooks’ nuanced versions of epistemic privilege were sufficient.
In the political prong, I looked toward attempted solutions for the ethnocentrism
problem in feminism. Again, I drew on the works of hooks and Narayan to guide my
investigation of identity politics, intersectionality, and transnational feminism. The issue is
that feminism needs categorical identities such as race, gender and nationality in order for
resistance work, but also aims to denounce them because the very structure of those
categorical identities is what makes this kind of identity-oppression possible in the first place.
Using the master’s tools is good for resisting, but may falls short of successful total
overturning. The denouncing of the structure of categorical identities acknowledges that the
danger of using the masters’ tools is building with the one hand and tearing down with the
other, a feminism that contradicts itself and ends up supporting the very oppressive structures
it claims to resist. Identity politics has been useful for raising awareness about groups that felt
left out in mainstream feminism, but unfortunately repeats the very homogenization within its
separate groups. Intersectionality was a proposed solution to this problem, and has been very
popular in feminism, but criticisms illuminate how intersectionality contributes to the focus
on difference that re-Others women of color and re-centers white western women.

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Transnational feminism risks producing white feminist saviors, but also holds potential for
intercultural dialogue and a theoretical framework that opens for the ambiguity that certain
practices may be emancipatory in one sense and oppressive in another. A faction in
transnational feminism that I call cultural contextualists provide a framework of which I am
hopeful, of grappling with problems in non-ideal situations.
In my concluding chapter, I compared the implications of hooks’ revolutionary
strategy and Narayan’s reformist strategy against ethnocentrism in feminism. I drew on
Jacques Derrida to analyze the limitations and possibilities of each. I concluded by
destabilizing the differences between the two strategies. I suggested that feminists like
Narayan could radicalize their reform strategy by introducing what I refer to as adequate
reconceptualization. From philosophy, we gain the insight that we are always already
implicated in that which we critique, even ethnocentrism.
The implications of my research are that, despite feminist desire to find a way to
dismantle the master’s house from without, since we are always already implicated in global
systems of oppression, this desire seems very much like a desire also for innocence and
purity politics. The purpose of the metaphor of the master’s tools has been to illustrates the
difference between resistance, which can be done by using the master’s tools, and successful
resistance, that is, dismantling of oppressive structures that according to Lorde’s paradigm
cannot be done from the inside. While striving to achieve a feminism that does reproduce
oppressive structures in other forms, such as ethnocentrism, I have encountered the following
maxim: no good deed goes unpunished. Any feminism that says it is pure is dangerous
because it blinds us to its harm; it is a myth. That being said, impure politics should not be a
scapegoat for accepting ethnocentric, racist or imperialist feminist practices and philosophy.
One may perhaps agree that until the radical openness ‘to come’ has come, until we find
ways to construct identities without Othering, we must grapple with being always already
implicated in ethnocentric politico-epistemic frameworks and that we have to be bricoleurs
who use the masters’ tools to attempt to dismantle the masters’ houses.
In this sense, there is no grand difference between reform and revolution. Feminists
surely can ascribe to both – all roads lead to Rome. And if that means, like Lorde says, that
we cannot create lasting change by using the master’s tools, but only beat the master
temporarily at his game, then the implications are that we simply cannot stop working at
beating the master temporarily. What we can hope to achieve by that is keeping the master at
bay, by constantly destabilizing the master’s house. The implications are that the
ethnocentrism problem in feminism must constantly be brought to the fore, and solutions,

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which will be non-ideal but urgent, must constantly be reproduced and re-invoked.
Epistemological developments must, I think, like many feminist epistemologists before me
have argued, be ethnically conscious. This follows from my finding that epistemology is not
removed from the political, and so I conclude that it is not removed from ethics either. Self-
criticism of the ethnocentrism problem in feminism needs to be given more attention in
mainstream feminism, and feminist philosophical discourse.
I would like to invoke the myth of Sisyphus, who according to Greek legend was
punished by the gods to spend eternity trying to place a large boulder on the top of a
mountain. This myth has been linked to the laborious and the futile. What if the objective of
Sisyphus was not to secure the boulder on top of the mountain, but simply to keep it off of
the mountain base? On this view, Sisyphus is more often successful than failed. Granted, the
implication of this view is that Sisyphus can never stop working if he is to keep up this
success. Feminism is not a self-defeating project, as one might assume if one believes in a
post-feminist world, because it will always have to be vigilant of its heritage, its future ‘to
come,’ and its being always already implicated in the episteme-politic. Because something
has been reconceptualized or deconstructed, it does not follow that it stays that way. This is
the case also for achieving non-ethnocentrism within feminism. Non-ethnocentrism in
feminism is not something that can be fixed at some point. It is rather something that needs to
be constantly reproduced. It is perhaps for this reason that hooks suggests love as praxis as a
solution in which we can “know ourselves beyond race, beyond the tenets of white
supremacist logic” (hooks 2013, 198). In this thesis I have attempted to show that non-
ethnocentric feminism is more easily said than done, but also very much urgent.

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