Date: Sun, 05 Jan 1997 23:25:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: Kevin Hickey <HICKEYK-AT-SNYONEVA.CC.ONEONTA.EDU>
Subject: Home and Harem


Many thanks to Arindam for her eloquent response to my comments
concerning "transnational modes of analysis vs. a comparative
one." I have not read any more of HOME AND HAREM, but I did look
at Spivak's "Scattered Speculations on the Question of Culture
Studies" (in OUTSIDE IN THE TEACHING MACHINE) as well as Grewal
and Caren Kaplan's "Transnational Feminist Cultural Studies:
Beyond the Marxism/Poststructuralism/Feminism Divides" (POSITIONS
2:2) and, yes, as Arindam proposed, transnational modes of
analysis emphasize economics and do not promote a "happy
pluralism" (Kaplan/Grewal 430) but an "analysis that refuses to
choose among economic, cultural, and political concerns" AND
which pays particular attention to "the linkages and travels of
forms of representation as they intersect with movements of labor
and capital in a multinational world" (439). 
     I left off (before Christmas) with Grewal's observation (p.
54) of how definitions of "home" were similarly used in England
and India. Grewal writes: "Just as the discourse of the woman
'caged' in the harem, in purdah, becomes the necessary Other for
the construction of the English-woman presumably free and happy
in the home, the discourse of the Englishwoman's association with
men and women becomes, for Indian nationalism, a sign of
depravity. The 'purdah' construct of the English imperialists
becomes the 'home' of the Indian nationalists."
     We can trace the importance of "home" in Western society all
the way back to Homer's ODSSE, and the home/harem binarism
replicates the construction of woman as saint/whore. Was there a
similar binaric construction of women in India before European
colonization? In other words, did the home/harem binarism which
"Indian nationalists" reversed for their own political purposes
compliment pre-colonial constructions of "women" or was this
something new? 
     More after I've read some more.

Kevin Hickey
SUN Oneonta