Local Contexts, Local Theory

Feminist movements had as their imperative, the redress of the political, economic and social asymmetries experienced by women. Within the literature in the West, a wave model has been popularly used to describe both the kinetic chronology as well as the

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3. LOCAL CONTEXTS, LOCAL THEORY Revisiting Standpoint Theory through Situated Ethnographic Vignettes

INTRODUCTION

Feminist movements had as their imperative, the redress of the political, economic and social asymmetries experienced by women. Within the literature in the West, a wave model has been popularly used to describe both the kinetic chronology as well as the gestation of the earlier movement from those of the latter. Feminist theory can be seen as having emerged from feminist movements, as the questioning and examination of the materiality of women’s lives came to be mirrored in the scrutiny at the level of discourse. Feminist scholarship in turn worked to unveil how women’s experiences, and even (the construction and understanding of) ‘woman’ herself, comes to be discursively (and variously) articulated. While earlier first and second wave feminist critiques were concerned with the under-representation of women and women’s experiences within the social sciences (and the natural sciences), later strains of more reflexive and situated feminisms were suitably self-conscious and cognisant of the homogenising and hegemonic effect of the theories of Western feminist scholars when confronted with the realities of women in non-Western contexts. This essay is positioned from a theoretical rather than an activist stance, and while some writers in the academy might still feel a lingering sense of guilt at ‘doing’ theory rather than practice, it is felt that while theory and practice are distinct, they are to be seen as one reciprocally feeding into the other. A good case in point is standpoint feminism or standpoint epistemology, which is critical social theory maintained as having as its starting-point, the lived experience of real women and their lived contexts. But of course all women are real women, in real-life contexts. More important is the exigency of knowing which of the very many real women out there we are referring to- for whatever it is we are saying. This taking note of ‘which woman’ is thus, core, and feminists have quite rightly scrutinised and indeed criticised the tendency of dominant groups to unthinkingly universalise their own values and practices (Lawson, 1999: 25), and the feminists from within the dominant groups have also not escaped this scrutiny and criticism. That said, the essay does not claim to be definitive and is, rather, poised to offer some thoughts to the discussions around standpoint theory. It does this by drawing

J. Etim (Ed.), Introduction to Gender Studies in Eastern and Southern Africa, 41–64. © 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

M. NAIDU

on several of my earlier studies and ethnographies that sought to provide some insights around the specificity of Black African women’s experiences within South Africa. Given the positioned framework of this piece, it is not possible to go into great detail with the rich data collected in the ethnographies mentioned, nor the individual methodological approaches adopted, which are published elsewhere (see Naidu, 2009a; Naidu, 2

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