Chandra Mohanty's Feminism Without Borders represents a fitting conclusion to a semester of feminist theory, as it recapitulates (not without variation) many of the themes that dominate other pieces of third wave feminist writing. Mohanty celebrates difference with the vigor of bell hooks and Audre Lorde, but rather than situate it within a specifically American (and therefore race- and class-dominated) context, she frames it in global terms and emphasizes a postcolonial sensitivity toward the historical and cultural significance of difference. Her militant anti-capitalism also echoes hooks's and Lorde's critiques, and her insistence that feminism should be "without borders" rather than "borderless" echoes the strict writings of Marx himself when he outlines a specifically international (rather than cosmopolitan) model for global Communism in Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. She develops her theory so as to maximize its actual applicability to real socio-political situations (much like Butler does when her theory embeds itself in the contemporary international debate on gender policy in Undoing Gender), providing postcolonial feminist analytics that safeguards against the types of dangerous generalization she outlines in the first chapter. Her book embodies the spirit of postcolonial and metacritical feminism, distilling the useful and applicable aspects of a larger body of scholarship into a single text that revolves around praxis.
One new strain of critique that Mohanty actively engages (which is not as evident in the other works I've mentioned thus far) is a constant an concerted reappraisal of the academy as an institution. Although Robyn Wiegman celebrates academic self-criticism in her essay "What Ails Feminist Criticism? A Second Opinion", she does not actively engage in actual critique herself (which is perfectly fine, as her argument lies elsewhere); Mohanty foregrounds the problem of academic self-criticism, however, devoting quite a bit of thought to the tension between the validation afforded marginalized peoples' studies programs by their position within the academy and the constant pressure for them to de-radicalize. She argues that many women's or ethnic studies programs have become nothing more than token programs, protective facades that prove that an institution is not racist or sexist, and the "race industry" that has developed around the proliferation of such programs is invested in the "management" of racial or ethnic scholarship; in other words, the academy has developed an entire technology for the assimilation of dissenting scholarship and the maintenance of the existing institutional structure because "diversity is always and can only be added on" (Mohanty 211). The narrative of assimilation that Mohanty creates provides justification for her adamant anti-capitalism, as the this problem can only be resolved by revolution and not reform, by the complete restructuring of the institution rather than a change within the existing structure.
This critique of the academy is incredibly compelling, and it is quite likely that the only way for marginalized people's studies programs to avoid this program of forced complicity is a radical overhaul of the institution. Rather than functioning hierarchically and as a cohesive unit, the academy must foster critical dissent within itself, creating an environment of populist politics and knowledge production. The development of women's and ethnic studies (along with the accompanying blurring of disciplinary boundaries) was a good first step toward academic change, but they represented a change in academic focus rather than a methodological shift in scholarship. The work of critical theorists has been around for long enough now that the academy should have had time to change its pedagogical and administrative techniques in order to match such a dramatic shift in the philosophical paradigm. It has thus far failed to do so, however, and a radical revision of academic structure and praxis is long overdue.
what should the academy and teachers do under this platform? mindlessly vindictive against tradition...students being taught to be victims, victims even of teaching... school loses its role in cultural reproduction (indoctrination for social cohesion). what happens if we have a more 'realistic' vision of school which says says its role is to provide a) social benefits to those in it, b) achieve cultural integration, c) less paternalistic control over youth than other means
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