Scattered Hegemonies in Cultures

In most cultures gender is usually divided into power differences. Stereotypically men dominate in most aspects according to society in comparison to women. However this essay tries to prove and explain the importance and significant impacts in feminists’ views and how those views are diverse in different regions around the world in reference to the prolific writer Caren Kaplan and her essay: Scattered Hegemonies. In Kaplan’s Introduction: Transnational Feminist Practices and Questions of Postmodernity, Kaplan along with her research group “were looking for ways to broaden and deepen the analysis of gender in relation to a multiplicity of issues that affect women’s lives” (Kaplan, 1). The collaborated effort that was formulated to work across differences in culture, discipline, and profession, results in the advocacy for the condition of feminist thinking, working, and writing. This essay focuses on feminist theory that often tends to be a homogenizing influence among women and men from First and Third World countries; also including the complications of one’s identity and culture in the views and thoughts of a feminist. In theory, Caren Kaplan uses homogenization in finding one logic, one system of capitalism, among women coming from completely different backgrounds, hence the politics of location. Her theories take in account with the “politics of location” and helping us to understand a bigger and better idea of one’s identity and culture from the point of view of gender. According to Kaplan, “many advances and contributions to the study of gender and colonial discourse have been made; we strongly feel the need for viewpoints of feminists for various locations around the globe” (Kaplan, 3). With inclusive studies of various feminists’ viewpoints all over the world, it broadens the focus on gender ideology and the significant differences of feminists’ ideals depending on one’s location.
In the essay Scattered Hegemonies, Kaplan informs her readers that