Conclusión

Generally speaking, there are parallel concerns between feminist theory and postcolonial discourses. As Ashcraft et al., (1995) have discussed, ‘feminist and post-colonial discourses both seek to reinstate the marginalized in the face of the dominant’ (p. 233). The parallel concerns of feminism and post-colonial discourses have motivated many theorists to study the intersection of the two and, in this way, a distinct body of knowledge has been produced by post-colonial

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feminists (Mohanty et al., 1991; Mohanty, 1991, 2003; Peterson, 1984, Katrak, 1989; Minh-Ha, 1989; Suleri, 1992; Oyewumi, 1997; Spivak, 1999).

Post-colonial feminists have tried to systematically explain and theorize the mechanisms through which western dominant culture historically has colonized other cultures and is still willing, implicitly or explicitly, to continue to do so. Most importantly, post-colonial feminists try to demonstrate the impacts of this colonial gaze on the everyday lives and experiences of “doubly colonized” women (Oyewumi, 1997). The notion of “double colonization”, as the ‘catch-phrase of post-colonial and feminist discourses in the 1980s’, refers to the fact that ‘women in formerly colonized societies were doubly-colonized by both imperial and patriarchal ideologies’ (Ashcraft at al., 1995, p. 233).

The term “Orientalism” introduced by Said2

According to Said (1997), the general basis of Orientalist thought is ‘an imaginative and yet drastically polarized geography dividing the world into two unequal parts, the larger, ‘different’ one called the Orient, the other, also known as ‘our’ world, called the Occident or the West’ (p. 4).

(1978), has been a major force behind the formation of post-colonial discourses (Emberley, 1993; Yegenoglu, 1998). Said referred to general definition of Orientalism as ‘a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and ‘the Occident’’ (p. 25).

As Said (1978) has argued, Orientalism is ‘a Western style for dominating, restricting, and having authority over the Orient’ (p. 3). Referring to the fact that ‘the relationship between the Orient and the Occident is a relationship of power, of domination, and of varying degrees of complex hegemony’ (p. 5), and demonstrating the way the Occident portrays a superior position for itself as advanced and civilized but depicts an inferior picture of the Orient as underdeveloped and uncivilized, Said (1978, 1997) has pinpointed to the relation between representation, knowledge, and power. He has stated that ‘the underlying theme of Orientalism is the affiliation of knowledge and power’ (Said, 1997, p. xiix). In this way, Said has demonstrated the close relationship between western knowledge and its wish to possess power (Yegenoglu,

2 _{Said did not discuss gender issues in his works. However, later on, feminists, particularly post-colonial feminists,}

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1998). In “Covering Islam”, Said (1997) discussed the way western coverage of Islam, which does not necessarily manifest truth or accuracy, is produced by the political influences of people in position of power. According to Said,

Underlying every interpretation of other cultures—especially of Islam—is the choice facing the individual scholar or intellectual: whether to put intellect at the service of power or at the service of criticism, community, dialogue, and moral sense (p. 172). It is through this process that, as pointed out by Zine (2002), ‘the white man’s burden or mission civilisatrice became a project of political, economic, and cultural domination sustained ideologically through knowledge production about the Orient as an atavistic place in need of modernization and rescue’ (p.10).

This clearly reminds us of Spivak’s (1999) remarks in her well-known essay “can the subaltern speak?” about the responsibility of white men to rescue brown women from brown men. By referring to the concept of “epistemic violence” Spivak explains how the west tries, firstly, to dominate Eurocentric ways of knowing and thinking, and, secondly, to destruct non-western ways of knowing. Thus, according to Spivak, subaltern’s way of thinking is always marginalized by the dominant power.

Mohanty (1991) also has used the term “colonialism” to demonstrate western scholarship’s reproduction of unequal relations of power, and to show ‘the global hegemony of western scholarship—that is the production, publication, distribution, and consumption of information and ideas’ (p. 56). Therefore, as Emberley (1993) has argued, ‘post-colonialism has shifted the critique of colonialism from strictly economic and political determinations to ideological ones’ (p. 6).

Within a dominant Eurocentric discourse, the project of decolonization is introduced by many post-colonial feminists as a powerful way of resistance and decolonizing culture (Katrak, 1989; Smith, 2005; Mohanty, 2003). Katrak (1989) has highlighted the intellectual and political domination of western theoretical models over post-colonial writers and believed that post- colonial texts could be viewed as powerful tools for decolonizing culture. Tuck (2009) has referred to ‘theorizing back as a sister component in a larger decolonizing project’ (p. 112) and

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believed that it ‘contains a critique of the ways in which white stream voices are constructed as rigorous, logical, reasoned, and valid while voices outside of the white stream are considered experiential and emotional, representing devalued ways of knowing’ (p. 112).

Seggie and Mabokela (2009) believed that ‘post-colonial theory allows for the colonized to be the subject of legitimate knowledge’ (p. 13) and, for that reason, it can be the best choice to explore the experiences of colonized people. They have argued:

By using this theoretical perspective to unearth the taken for granted unequal and uneven distribution of power, knowledge, and resources, one can begin to explore the consequences of globalization on the people who are relocating around the globe and the local environment to which they move. This is particularly important for Muslims who reside in predominantly Christian societies (p. 13).

In this sense post-colonial feminist theory along with the theories of third-wave feminism and anti-racist feminism are the best theoretical lenses for this research.