one's own positionality. I rely on her thought because it allows me to bridge different forms of differences and different historically created subject positions. Arendt in fact argues that we can realise 'our "sameness", our common humanity, by being faithful to "What" and "Who" we are, that is by upholding the plurality of our individual and collective identities’ (Markus 1989:126). This allows for a plurality of voices and of representation and at the same time brings to the fore our common humanity: 'l'essere umano £ identitä e differenza in circolo tra loro' [being human is identity and difference in circulation] (Sottosopra 1996:4). It allows for, indeed encourages, different political agendas between women.
Encountering and representing 'others'
I clarify what I mean by engendering knowledge in order to position myself in the field, to explain the partiality of my representation and the situational nature of my interpretation. Who is the thinking subject of my knowledge and how it colours my representations is a fundamental issue. The debate on engendering knowledge is lively and has taken many different turns. But I feel uneasy with some of the questions that researchers are asking in engaging in a dialogue with non-western women. It is often asked: who can talk of feminism in a non-white, non-western context? As Mohanty argues, western feminists tend to 'construct themselves as the normative referent in such a binary analytic' (1991b: 56). She states that any feminist analysis that represents 'third world women' 20 in terms that take 'western' as a point of reference and deals with 'women' as if they comprised a homogenous, monolithic group is predicated on the notion of an asymmetrical power relation between western and non-western worlds. It is in this very process of constructing and representing 'third world difference', Mohanty argues, that 'power is exercised in much of recent western feminist discourse, and this power needs to be defined and named' (1991b:54).
Mohanty does not just counterpose monolithic western feminism but rather critiques the strategies used to codify 'others' as non-westem. We should acknowledge a diversity of positions, not only between western and non-westem women's political agendas, but also within western and non-westem theoretical thought. Failing to admit such internal diversities means we foreclose important
20 'Third World’ is a contested term. I use it following Mohanty, Russo and Torres (1991:Preface).
questions (see Mohanty, Russo and Torres 1991). My emphasis on the pensiero della differenza should be understood in these terms.
To talk about gender equality and to affirm sexual difference are quite different discourses and projects. Gender has become an abused and polyvalent term which risks losing its specificity. A focus on women per se does not necessarily imply a shift in symbolic representation. As Keesing admitted in a self-reflective account of his shifting theoretical orientation during his 30 years of research among the Kwaio (Solomon Islands), although he spoke with women and recorded their life histories, 'it was their [men's] rendering of the cultural tradition that I took to be canonical' (1993a:61).
But what did I take to be canonical? When I speak of my perspective as a feminist and how this has informed my fieldwork and my relations with Drueulu women (and thus with Drueulu men), my discourse and practice are interpreted by the academic milieu within a western frame of reference. The issue of power relations between men and women, and between women themselves, has also been central in the Italian debate.21 In the Italian context, authority within women's groups is considered compatible with women's mutual trust.
The practice of 'entrustment' thus emerges from the acknowledgment of disparities among women, a notion which has brought to the fore issues of power and of oppression of women by other women. Again the distinction lies between power and authority, between a frame of reference where values, aspirations and relationships are male-informed and a new emerging frame, called 'simbolico femminile' [female symbolic] (see de Lauretis 1990b and Diotima 1995). The
accusation of being a bourgeois movement stems from the difficulty of acknowledging authority, without associating it with domination, hierarchy (The Milan Women's Bookstore Collective 1990 [1987]:133).
It is very hard to communicate this different perspective because it seems indifferent to the issues either of power (of which I am aware and concerned) or intellectual naivete. Issues of power must always be kept in mind, but without a guilt syndrome, which is highly unproductive. If we want to avoid essentialization of otherness then we should also be avoiding the trap of essentializing being white and westerner instead of 'misurarsi con quello ehe
21 The objection o f western thought 'that any "plus" [gain] emerging in human interactions would be destined to become the object o f private appropriation for the purpose o f dominating others' (The Milan Women's Bookstore Collective 1990 [1987]: 121) is an a priori assumption which cannot be dismissed but, as this system was historically established not by women but against them, it can be reformulated.
Vessere occidentale ha prodotto' [to measure oneself with what being a westerner has produced] (Paini 1994b:22).
As Russo aptly argues, 'while we cannot change who we are racially, ethnically, or nationally, we can change to whom and what we remain loyal' (1991:309). Not every dialogue between a white woman and a non-white woman should be lumped together under the rubric of matronizing. Dualisms of 'us' and 'them' are a simplistic way to conceive ethnic and gender constructions in doing fieldwork and in writing ethnographies:
how can one re-create without re-circulating domination? (Trinh T. Minh-ha 1991:15)
Further, assuming a westem/non-westem dichotomy means considering both the western and the non-western as monolithic and framed around an Anglo- American notion of cultural identity and gender relations, with which I feel uneasy. Western feminist models of woman's emancipation cannot be exported all over the world; female freedom22 moves from different standpoints. This approach, which stresses partiality over 'homologization', leaves room for different representations of self and of 'woman'. It is a new way of being in the world but its content will be fulfilled by different women differently.
Braidotti writes that gendered subjectivity is engendered not in the anatomical body but through language (1992:187), and she avoids imposing her feminist agenda on other women. She states:
The desire to become and to speak as women does not entail the imposition of a specific propositional content of women's speech. What is being empowered is women’s entitlement to speak, not the propositional content of their utterances (1992:188).
Thus we should be careful not to impose a 'genderized universality' in Braidotti's terms (1992). To advocate a gendered subjectivity, otherwise, could be as dangerous and as essentialist as the monolithic construction of the male subject that it challenges.
My use of the notion of 'boundaries of difference' should be read in this light, as the way people reformulate the status of identity/othemess in different historical contexts. But boundaries are negotiated between women and men, 22 Following de Lauretis I use 'female freedom' for 'libertd femminile' in spite o f the biological connotations (1990b:21). The Italian adjective femminile covers both English 'feminine' and 'female'.
between the community and the outsider. Where do I stand in this replotting of the borders?