21 October,2022 06:57 AM IST | Mumbai | Rosalyn D`mello
To say ‘third world feminism’ is to situate political ideology beyond the Anglo-Saxon world and to recognise the contributions of feminists of colour. Representation pic
Since I've been thinking about art criticism as the consequence of metabolising art, thus prioritising the body's emotional and physiological registers, it was important for me to be transparent about my position. In fact, I believe it should be standard practice for any form of authorship. I think it is an act of consideration towards the reader or viewer, allowing for transparency. I wanted to summon the brownness of my body within the viewer's imagination and to also suggest that I do not âbelong' to this context in which the work is being shown but come from elsewhere, and so observe things differently.
To mark my feminism as third world was to say that this is the lens through which I engage with the politics of the everyday. But the curators did not âget' the various nuances crouched within the âthird world' signpost. They were justifiably worried about how it didn't translate well into either German or Italian, the primary language of the audiences here. I was told that âthird world' was an outmoded descriptor. My partner agreed that the âfirst world' no longer thought it polite to either refer to themselves or be referred as such. I could see how it might be embarrassing for someone to announce their privilege. But their discomfort seemed to me to be unable to accommodate my political desire to visibilise the distorted nature of our lived experience on account of the privileges one either enjoyed or didn't, depending on whether one's identity was framed by being either coloniser or colonised. For the first world to admit they remain first world would mean to acknowledge that their wealth and status have been the consequence of colonialism.
I've always maintained âthird world' as part of my biography because I am invested in perpetuating the legacy of feminists of colour whose advocacy disrupted the whiteness of second-wave feminism. To say âthird world feminism' is to situate political ideology beyond the Anglo-Saxon world and to recognise the immense contributions of feminists of colour who come from previously colonised or colonised spaces or even the margins of political discourse. To me, the term has always felt not only legitimate but validating and visibilising. When I encountered the curators' reluctance, I suddenly began to doubt myself. I wondered if I had missed a memo about the term being retired and momentarily forgot that they were functioning like white feminists, oblivious to the wealth of feminist discourse across the spectrum of colour and queerness. Their intentions were not dubious in any way. They were just ignorant of the legacy I have been coding my practice within.
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Nonetheless, I did a quick search online to re-examine whether I needed to update my definition of the term. I came across an abstract of a paper by Ipshita Chanda that echoed my intuition about what the term encompasses: âThe âThird World' is defined in relation to colonialism and postcolonial world systems, keeping in view the common bases of gendered exploitation and oppression as well as the specificities of diverse histories, pre-colonial structures, and colonial policies.' Another description on the Amherst College website resonated with me: Third World feminism posits that women's activisms in the Third World do not originate from the ideologies of the First World and specifically centres Third World women's radicalism in their local/national contexts and struggles.
At the time I was so absorbed between childcare, full-time work commitments, recovering from COVID and trying to be functional that I couldn't find in me the energy to challenge their reservations. I would have liked to have referred them to the historic anthology This Bridge Called My Back that celebrates this position, and particularly to Gloria Anzaldua's Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to 3rd World Women Writers, which for sure must have been translated into multiple languages. Instead, I tried to negotiate. I first proposed âfeminist of colour' but felt dissatisfied with the term because it didn't sufficiently pin down my recent immigrant status. I wanted it to be known that I come from a different context. Finally, the curator proposed âfeminist from India'. I agreed to this compromise, too weak-willed from COVID.
Since then, I've been thinking about what it means to be offered a platform but to have someone still dictate the parameters of your identity. It is a form of discursive violence, too familiar to third world feminists like me.
Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.