ABSTRACT
Debates between Black and white feminists regarding the questions of race, power, and ‘imperialism’ during the eighties have concentrated our minds on the developing diversity of the feminist discourse. These debates, in challenging certainties of earlier feminism, have allowed both the movement and the discourse to become self-critical and therefore more aware of its own rootedness in the structures of power in society. Most of these debates, however, have focused on the relationship of Black and white women in the Western world. The inclusion of the ‘Third World’ has occurred in very particular ways. This article hopes to address the question of the relationship of the feminist movement of the West with that of the Third World. It argues that Western feminism has related to the ‘East’ in ways that can be called ‘Orientalist’. This is due to the fact that Western feminists have continued to depend upon Orientalist literature for their understanding of the East. Further, because of their participation in the international hierarchies of knowledges and power, Western Black women have continued to speak for their sisters of the Third World.
