Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Recent U.S. elections emerged in disagreements about feminism and feminist leadership. I will discuss the opposing discourse and further contextualize it within a framework of liberal feminism’s unexamined global racism and imperialism. The enthusiastic supporters of neo-liberal and corporate womanism, misunderstood as feminism, serve as the “handmaiden of U.S. Imperialism” by ignoring the incalculable harm of U.S. militaristic and imperialist policies. In pursuit of their immediate and self-serving agenda, liberal feminist not only fail to challenge the racism embedded in the “uncivilized barbaric others” narratives used to justify continuing western imperialistic aggressions and policies against the globally powerless but also in seeing its connection to the oppressive systems and policies targeting Black and Brown communities within the U.S. Thus, I argue that a global intersectional analysis that does not include an understanding of historic and ongoing global hierarchies deeply embedded in unexamined racism and classism along with a lack of lived experiences is not just limited but harmful as it ignores the plight and inhumane conditions face by the racialized global communities caused by social, economic, and political realities and inequalities created and maintained by the globally powerful. I will discuss the urgent need for decolonizing feminism, pedagogy, scholarship and social justice activism to develop an transnational intersectional solidarity with the oppressed to promote a feminist sociopolitical engagement that focuses on liberation for all.