> Found this by pure accident. The story is at:
>
> http://www.globalknowledge.org/worldbank/gender-law/current/0022.html
>
> I had no idea we litcritters were so influential. Today World Bank
> seminars, tomorrow the world!
If this summary is anything close to accurate, then I'd have to say that my view of Spivak has just dropped a couple of notches.
Statements such as "women are the power in tribal groups" are dangerous simplifications - while it is useful to hear an antidote to the normal portrayal of 'Third World' women as helpless victims of their male oppressors within the 'tribal' systems, this certainly goes too far - what are these 'tribal groups' that can be homogenised like this? What is the nature of women's power in them? My step-mother-in-law's position in the 'tribal' society she came from wasn't particularly powerful (not that her position in 'non-tribal' society is much better).
And what does Spivak going to the Bank and speaking to them like this mean for all the people across the world who are campaigning against Bank policies? Who is she speaking for? Why doesn't she denounce them to their faces as the Bank of US capitalist power? Instead, it seems she provided them with a different 'approach' to cloud their actions in.
All in all, rather dissapointing, but not entirely unexpected.
Peter -- Peter van Heusden : pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk : PGP key available Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower. - Karl Marx
NOTE: I do not speak for the HGMP or the MRC.