ABSTRACT
We are living in a period of profound challenges to traditional Western epistemology and political theory. These challenges, couched in the language of postmodernist theory and in post-colonialist critiques, reflect the rapid transformation of the economic and political structure of the world order-the impact of transnational capital, the ever more comprehensive integration of resources, labor and markets, the pervasiveness of media and consumer images. The interdependent world system is based on the exploitation of oppressed groups; but that system at the same time calls forth oppositional cultural forms which give voice to the conditions of subaltern groups. White male bourgeois dominance is being challenged by people of color, women, and other oppressed groups, who assert the validity of their own knowledge and demand social justice and equality in numerous political and social struggles. In the intellectual sphere, this shifting world system has led to a shattering of Western metanarratives, and to the variety of stances of postmodernist and cultural identity theory. A major theoretical challenge to traditional Western knowledge systems is emerging from feminist theory, which has been increasingly influenced by both postmodernist and cultural identity theory. Feminist theory, like other contemporary approaches, validates difference, challenges universal claims to truth, and seeks to create social transformation in a world of shifting and uncertain meanings.
