4) Narayan,Uma. 2003. The Project of Feminist Epistemology: Perspectives from a Nonwestern Feminist, p. 308-17 in Carole McCann and Seung-Kyung Kim. Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives.

Uma Narayan’s article provides evidence behind the dangers of using difference to differentiate groups of people. Uma Narayan argues that there is a discrepancy from western feminist epistemology and non western feminist conceptual understanding and use of difference to describe experience. She provides insights into feminist epistemology, which sometimes present dangers associated among western feminists and non western experience. The first insight is that western feminists are trying to create a universal understanding of certain ideas. Within this context non western and western feminists place different value on women’s experience, but their non western differences often result in silence and fall into conventional dialogue. She presents the solution of rather that making the comparisons between groups of women; we should try and understand the creation behind the oppression. A second insight is the use of positivism and how we cannot use western scientific research as the basis of understanding non western experience. She argues that we should adopt a relativist position which means that people only have knowledge of their experiences and would be unable to discuss anything that they haven’t yet experienced, when understanding experience.  Another insight she provides is the ‘double vision’, in this context women who experience oppression are privilege since they are able to discuss their oppression and what causes it.

Both authors came to the same conclusion regarding the dismantling of difference. Maynard’s concluding thoughts were that there was a need to dismantle and re-evaluate difference; she argues that there needs to be a shift from focusing on difference and rather place emphasis on what manipulates difference into marginalization. She argues that we need to dismantle the power dynamics associated with race and gender, while problematize the privilege of whiteness, and eliminating the opposition understanding of race and gender. Finally she argues that society needs to stop using gender and race as categories of difference, and should focus on the institutional power that constructed these categories in the first place. While Narayan’s concluding thoughts were that oppression provides more insight, but we should romanticize oppression or overlook what’s causing the oppression. If we identify the instated points of comparison necessary to the idea of difference, we will then examine the relationship between people who have and people who lack the power to assign the label of difference.