ABSTRACT
To try to define oneself intellectually and politically as a Third World feminist is not an easy task. It is an unsettled and unsettling identity, but is also an identity that often feels forced to give an account of itself. Many feminists from Third World contexts confront voices that are eager to convert any feminist criticism they make of their culture into a mere symptom of their “lack of respect for their culture,” rooted in the “Westernization” that they seem to have caught like a disease. It is not just that mothers and mother-cultures raise their daughters with contradictory messages, but that they often seem unaware of these contradictions. All three features are evident in many of the cultural conflicts between Western colonizing powers and Third World nationalisms that involved issues pertaining to women’s roles and female sexuality. National cultures, in many parts of the world, seem susceptible to seeing themselves as unchanging continuities stretching back into a distant past.
