Post-colonial feminisms have questioned the concept of a universal sisterhood for decades. One of its critics is Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1955–), an Indian-American, post-colonial feminist theorist. In her work, Mohanty suggests that the concept of a universal sisterhood occludes variations in women’s experiences of oppression and ways of life. She criticizes western feminism for casting third world women as objects in their own lives rather than subjects. Instead, Mohanty suggests an international solidarity between groups of women from different circumstances, where women’s various experiences are taken into account. The present study aims to examine the possibility of a trans-contextual feminist ethic based on the questions posed by Mohanty’s work in her book Feminism Without Borders. Since Mohanty is no ethicist, the study will also use resources from the work of Seyla Benhabib (1950–), a Turkish-American philosopher. She places herself in the Kantian tradition and in close relation to Habermas discursive ethics, but she also takes a feminist approach to ethics. This study first evaluates the resources found in Mohanty’s work, which are not enough to construct a basis for a trans-contextual feminist ethics. Thereafter, resources are sought in Benhabib’s works Situating the Self and The Claims of Culture and in her discursive ethics, her views on universalism, her concepts of “the concrete other” and “the generalized other”, and her views on cultures. This examination shows that the resources in the material under scrutiny are not enough to build a basis for a trans-contextual feminist ethic. Questions still remain which might be answered in the wider work of Benhabib or Mohanty, but the material at hand leaves questions about how Mohanty’s vision could be realized in spite of several practical and theoretical problems related to who is associated with which group and the tension between particular experiences and a trans-cultural ethic, none of which are satisfactorily addressed in either Mohanty or Benhabib. In discussing Benhabib, there is also a problem with the two principles of her ethics (i.e. universal respect and egalitarian reciprocity) and their justification. Benhabib herself claims them to be self-explanatory, but this study suggests, with support from other ethicists, that this is not sufficient justification.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-530712 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Ekelund, Emelie |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Teologiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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