Week 9: Migrating Selves Chandra Mohanty, “Women Workers and Capitalist Scripts: Ideologies of Domination, Common Interests, and the Politics of Solidarity”, in Alexander and Mohanty, eds. Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies (1997): 3-29. Maria Mies, “Colonization and Housewifization”, from Rosemary Hennesy and Chrys Ingraham, eds. Materialist Feminism (1997): 175-185. (or, essay in reading pack) Pun Ngai, “Becoming Dagongmei: Subject, Gender and Power in a Global Workplace” (conference paper from 2002)

What is Mohanty’s thesis? “[H]ow do we talk about poor Third-World women workers’ interests, their agency, and their (in)visibility in the so-called democratic processes? What are the possibilities for democratic citizenship for Third-World women workers in the contemporary capitalist economy? These are some of the questions driving the essay. I hope to clarify and analyze the location of Third-World women workers and their collective struggles in an attempt to generate ways to think about mobilization, organizing, and conscientization transnationally.” (4) Third-World women according to Mohanty are invisible; the capitalist scripts suggest they are subordinate and exploited. Their emancipation can come from a reconceptualization of Third-World women as agents rather than victims. Is Lucy an agent or a victim?

Discussion Questions What are the problems with the term “Third World”? Is it outdated according to Mohanty? Mohanty suggests that there is a “heterosexualization of women’s work – women are always defined in relation to men and conjugal marriage.” Are Lucy or Mariah defined solely by their relationship with men? Mohanty poses the question: “How do women understand their own positions and construct meanings in exploitative job situations?” How would you answer this question? Are any of the characters in Lucy in an “exploitative job situation”? Are the characters that are exploited conscious of their exploitation? Do any of the characters resist their exploitation? Mohanty concludes “homework is one of the most significant, and repressive forms of “women’s work” in contemporary global capitalism” (27). Do you agree? Is this a message that resonates in Kincaid’s Lucy? Mohanty suggests that we should “understand the commonalities of experiences, histories, and identity as the basis for solidarity and in organizing Third-World women workers transnationally” (27). Are there any commonalities between the female characters of Kincaid’s Lucy? Do these commonalities enable solidarity? Is there a “renewed politics of hope and solidarity” (29) by the end of the novel?

What is Mies thesis? “Maria Mies argues that the increasing division of the world into consumers and producers has a profound effect on Third-World women workers, who are drawn into international divisions of labor as workers in agriculture; in large-scale manufacturing industries like textiles, electronics, garments, and toys; in small-scale manufacturing of consumer goods like handicrafts and food processing (the informal sector); and as workers in the sex and tourist industries.” (Mohanty 10) Mies focuses on the ways in which women in the “Third-World” become “foreign capital” that the government pimps out. Mies also examines how women’s work or “real housewives” are exploited and superexploited, this work is largely invisible. Western women are consumers, housewives, mothers and sex objects. Third World women are producers, not consumers or “breeders”.

Mies and Kincaid’s Lucy Is Lucy “foreign capital”? Is she exploited? How does Kincaid portray “women’s work” in the novel, is it invisible?

What is Ngai’s thesis? “The central argument in this paper is that the process of subject- making according to the principle of locality or ethnicity is political, embodying rural-urban disparity and spatial inequality.” (24) The transformation of the rural female body into an industrial subject is political, and can be both empowering and repressive. According to Ngai the creation of a new industrial subject can be empowering. “The constitution of new selves and identities is an act of power, and a process of self-subjectivization, exclusion and displacement” (18) Is Lucy empowered by her move to the metropole?

Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy How does Lucy escape this domestic world? Where does Lucy fit within the global political economy? What are the differences between her two homes? Is Lucy’s role in the novel primarily to accommodate men, whether they are in the home, workplace or elsewhere? Why does Lucy leave her job as an au pair? Are the female characters in the novel complicit with male patriarchy?