Feminist Orientalism: Tracing the Tradition of Feminist Orientalism in the Anglo-American Discourse on Civilization

There is a long-standing tradition of feminist orientalism in the Anglo-American civilization and this tradition is manifested in various phenomena of cultural politics. There are two kinds of references regarding the term of “feminist orientalism.” Its basic meaning refers to the orientalism practiced by women in the Anglo-American society, including their consumption, imagination, and even creation of “the orient”in order to empower themselves in the struggle for equality against white men. The other reference of this term is the orientalism of the West operated through female discourse, women's problems and feminist agendas. The feminist orientalism in the second sense, which is imposed on the oriental society by the capitalist imperialism, is characterized by the convergence of three elements—the East, the West and women—into a binary structure consisting of the lower East and the higher West. In the meantime, this binary structure appeals to human emotions, especially when people lack in sufficient information about the East. Feminist orientalism had served the imperialist cause in history. A tradition of feminist orientalism can be identified in Anglo-American history: firstly, it was the Asian commodities and the oriental arts, represented by chinaware and chinoiserie, that provided white women with cultural space of their own and potential opportunities for liberation, thus contributing to the construction of their subjectivity; secondly, white women travel writers, represented by Lady Montagu, unveiled the East through their “imperial eyes,” which differed from those of white men, and therefore, feminist orientalism was no longer just domestic, but became transnational and imperial; thirdly, female religion workers of the colonial period developed and reinforced this tradition, and by rendering the East inferior to the West, this tradition joined the discourse of the Western cultural imperialism. It is important for us to trace the source of this tradition in the light of historical experience over the past century in order to demystify orientalism and construct a new intercultural discourse for the new era.