“Speaking Truth to Power” in Transnational Feminist History
Abstract
The moments in the history of Transnational Feminism that I find most compelling are those in which women from a variety of cultures can be found “speaking truth to power,” a favorite US progressive concept first advocated by the Religious Society of Friends in the 1950s “Speak Truth to Power” . Given the dominance of women from the United States, Great Britain, northern and western Europe, and the “neo-Europes” of Australia and Canada in the transnational women’s organizations that flourished from the late nineteenth century through the Second World War, it is not surprising that women from other parts of the world had to fight against feminist orientalist assumptions about a whole range of issues, from the very nature of feminism to the impact of global power dynamics on organizing across national borders Zonana; Weber, “Unveiling”; Melman; Lewis . Although the context has changed, many of the struggles within the three transnational women’s organizations I researched for my book, Worlds of Women, remain powerfully present today Rupp . If we listen to the voices of women who challenged the power dynamics within transnational women’s organizations in the past, perhaps we can think more productively about Transnational Feminism in the present.
References
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