Feminism as Hegemonic Whiteness: Looking Beyond the Imperial Gaze

‘Bad subjects’ in feminist theory and practice are typically assumed to be subversive subaltern actors such as women of colour, trans women, sex workers and/or other kinds of women who experience hierarchies of class, sexuality and legal status who disrupt the cosy consensus of who gets to be a ‘woman’ and what constitutes ‘women’s interests’. Defining feminism on these terms assumes and normalises hegemonic whiteness and perpetuates the exclusion of different kinds of women from feminist spaces and politics. In this paper I examine how hegemonic whiteness operates in three feminist debates: 1. The now overturned 2016 burkini ban on French beaches 2. The 2016 New Year’s Cologne train station attacks 3. Feminist anti-austerity activism and critique in Britain. In each case I will demonstrate how the debasement of women of colour is a central feature of white feminism and the constitution of the white feminist subject. I conclude with a discussion of how European feminism might take seriously a process of decolonialisation.