Appropriation, re-appropriation, offloading, offsetting
By: Soumaya Mestiri, a young Tunisian philosopher, author of “Décoloniser le féminisme. Une approche transculturelle”, Vrin, 2016.
Published in October 2021 in Multitudes vol 84 (3), 2021.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.3917/mult.084.0122
In her article “Appropriation, re-appropriation, offloading, offsetting”, Soumaya Mestiri argues that decolonial feminism should aim at de-centring modern and liberal thought, ideologies and identities. Decolonising feminism is not about the peripheral identities becoming mainstream – becoming the centre – it is more about developing and acknowledging multiple and parallel fields of struggle. Mestiri calls for a threefold practice of transgression: first, re-appropriation of “what modernity deprived us of” – namely, the imposed focus on the individual over the community, on the needs of the single over the group. Because the Islamic tradition subordinates the single to the community, the rhetoric of modernity maintains that there is no space for emancipation within Islam. In this interpretation, the feminist struggle is inconceivable within the Muslim tradition. As Abdelkebir Khatibi and Maria Lugones frame it, the dictate of modernity opened a “fracture” in the hearts and minds of all those not-yet-modern Muslims, spreading a sense of unworthiness and inappropriateness among them vis-à-vis modern Western citizens (Mestiri, 2021:124). Nonetheless, Mestiri points out that such a painful fracture is a precious opportunity to reconsider the richness of poverty, the bliss of awkwardness and the advantage of having a non-liberal perspective. Where the individual as a supreme standard is absent, she argues, decolonial feminism flourishes. Decolonial feminism considers people’s multiple attachments to geography, community, ethnicity, religion, politics, gender, class and others. Accepting the relevance and plurality of belonging also means developing solidarity toward other people’s attachments and considering them valid. Furthermore, decolonial feminism has a certain light-heartedness, because it has offloaded the weight of neoliberal structure, the dogmas of efficacy, competition and profit. Finally, Mestiri’s feminism refuses comparison with mainstream, colonial, white Western feminism. Indeed, it supports disobedience and seeks to chart its own path.
Mestiri looks critically at the notion of “empowerment” and connects it to what she calls the “folklorization” of Southern and Arab Muslim women. The process of “folklorization” is a powerful tool to disempower women, projecting an image of folks, non-modern, weak, powerless individuals with no control over their existence or the world around them, as passive subjects of History. Folklorisation, says Mestiri, is also a means to disempower and de-politicise women. Indeed, NGOs that support and promote empowerment also contribute to the systematic depoliticization of indigenous people. Mestiri criticises the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) in Tunisia as it claims to empower country women while fetishising them by promoting ancient rural techniques, art and handicrafts. Today, Western feminist developmental programmes focus on empowering non-Western women through “care”, which means making women more skilled to perform “care” jobs at home or within the society. Of course, such programmes support women’s empowerment in the name of “sisterhood”, among other things. Mestiri criticises sisterhood as a global, neo-liberal enterprise that minimises the differences among races, classes and cultures under an all-encompassing label. The problem is that feminism does not necessarily imply a common purpose. Mestiri explains that decolonial cosmopolitan feminism in Tunisia must help women from the interior regions fight against the post-colonial state, which exploits its lands and people, instead of supporting them against macho culture.
I enjoyed Mestiri’s article on the transgressive nature of decolonial feminism because it highlights the core aspects of decoloniality, via a dynamic approach of turning, returning and de-turning. Indeed, the decolonial perspective revolves around coloniality to analyse it, discover its mechanisms of power, and see it in its oppressive entirety. Decolonisation also represents a movement of a comeback, of returning to the community, to the group, to an understanding of the fracture caused by modernity and by the normalisation of colonial practices. Finally, decolonisation advocates for the need to de-turn or divert perspective from neoliberal logic, which entails the fragmentation of people’s agency and the preference for the will of the white individual over that of the less white. Mestiri’s achievement lies in showing that decolonial feminism aims to challenge the monoculture of mainstream feminism, in which emancipation, freedom and autonomy have acquired specific and fixed, non-negotiable meanings.
I think that Mestiri’s work on decolonial feminism is particularly relevant for three reasons: first, she describes decoloniality as an inclusive, anti-modern perspective, which is neither conservative nor reactionary. Decolonial feminism criticises both Orientalism and colonial feminism, which imposes Western frames without discussing them. Simultaneously, decolonising also means revisiting one’s own tradition, such as Islam. Mestiri describes decolonial feminism as a constant struggle to denounce both the colonial and the traditional oppressions, both of which reduce the individual to a subject. At the same time, Mestiri connects feminist struggles through the aspect of vulnerability, a common human condition that can truly develop solidarity. Finally, Mestiri believes that intersectionality is only successful within the frame of decoloniality. Indeed, she points out that intersectionality is not an idea but a system, a work-frame. Adopting the logic of intersectionality does not mean acknowledging a plurality of oppressions for the sake of accuracy. It means contesting the system instead, as by opposing the liberal legal model (as the civil code in Tunisia) that rejects the notion of “identity” because it is complex and multidimensional, only keeping the non-problematic notions of “individual” and “citizen”. Being intersectional, assesses Mestiri, is not an exercise in identitarian cherry-picking: it is about a return to the roots of oppression for all women, and addressing and denouncing them.
Reviewed by: Alessandra Bonci
To all contributions of the ALMA Reviews Blog
