Postcolonial Solidarities * Chandra Talpade Mohanty

In her landmark essay Under Western Eyes (1984), Chandra Talpade Mohanty offers a powerful critique of how Western feminist scholarship has often constructed “Third World women” as a homogenous, passive, and victimized group, stripped of historical, cultural, and political specificity. Rather than rejecting feminism altogether, Mohanty calls for a transnational feminist framework grounded in anticolonial critique and committed to building what she terms “feminist solidarity across borders.” This solidarity is not based on abstract empathy or moral universalism, but on a situated, intersectional analysis that understands how race, gender, class, sexuality, and colonial histories shape the lived realities of women in different global contexts. By rejecting the tendency of Western feminisms to universalize their own experiences, Mohanty insists on the importance of decolonizing theory and centering the voices of women in the Global South. Her notion of “feminism without borders” envisions alliances that are not predicated on sameness, but on the political potential of difference — as a space for ethical engagement and co-resistance. Through this lens, feminist struggle becomes a shared, though asymmetrical, project of liberation, rooted in accountability, mutual transformation, and epistemic justice. Mohanty’s work continues to inspire feminist scholars, activists, and educators committed to dismantling global hierarchies of power and knowledge.

postcolonial feminism, transnational solidarity, decolonial theory, feminist critique, global south, intersectionality, situated knowledge