Feminism and Nationalism

Delia D. Aguilar

Women’s Studies

University of Connecticut

The rhetoric of globalization of the past decade or so has effectively erased any notion of nationalism and all but relegated it to the dustbin of history. If brought up at all, nationalism is equated with various forms of fundamentalism and viewed as retrograde. Hardt and Negri's widely reviewed Empire, for example, debunks national liberation struggles with its authors dictating, as progressive intellectuals in the North often do, the terms upon which the world is to be transformed. Feminism, now largely confined to the academy, has simply toed this line of thinking.

Using the Philippines as a case study, this presentation underscores the fallacy and dangers of this approach by examining the situation of women. It will show the impact of globalization (understood as U.S. imperialism) on the lives of women who, in order to support their families, have joined the diaspora to become the world's servants, caregivers, or mail-order brides. It will review Western feminist research on Filipino domestic helpers, caregivers and mail-order brides which, precisely because of its dismissal of nationalism, has resulted in depictions that, while claiming to grant their female subjects agency, function to obscure North/South relations of power.