Voice in Things Fall Apart and Anthills of the SavannahIn “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse,” Chandra Talpade Mohanty suggests a fundamental flaw in most analyzes Western feminists: the presupposition that women, "across classes and cultures, are somehow socially constituted as an identifiable homogeneous group prior to the process of analysis." This is an error of thought which results in “the hypothesis according to which women constitute an always already constituted group, described as “powerless”, “exploited”, “sexually harassed”, etc., by feminists scientific, economic, legal. and sociological discourse. For Mohanty, such faulty thinking results in a feminist discourse "quite similar to the sexist discourse characterizing women as weak, emotional, math-anxious, etc." » In such feminist discourse, “the emphasis is not placed on discovering the material and ideological specificities that constitute a group of “powerless” women in a particular context. Rather, it is about finding a variety of cases of groups of “powerless” women to prove the general point that women as a group are powerless” (200). Furthermore, Mohanty suggests that there is a "claim to authenticity", a claim, in her view, too often ignored by Western feminists – the idea that "only a black person can speak for a black person". ; only a postcolonial subcontinental feminist can adequately represent the lived experience of that culture” (201). Mohanty's arguments are worth considering: the stereotypical categories of oppression that Mohanty sees as typical of Western feminist analysis (women as victims of male violence, women as universal dependents, married women as victims of the colonial process, etc.) can indeed be almost as reductive, middle of paper...... Feminist Studies and Colonialism Discourse. » Feminist magazine. 30 (fall 1988): 65-88.Nnaemeka, Obioma. “Gender relations and critical meditation: things that collapse in the anthills of the savannah.” Difficult hierarchies: issues and themes in colonial and postcolonial African literature. Society and politics in Africa. Vol 5. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1998. 137-160. Opara, Chioma. “From stereotype to individuality: femininity in the novels of Chinua Achebe.” Difficult hierarchies: issues and themes in colonial and postcolonial African literature. Society and politics in Africa. Vol 5. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1998. 113-123. Podis, Leonard A. and Yakubu Saaka, eds. Difficult hierarchies: issues and themes in colonial and postcolonial African literature. Society and politics in Africa. Vol 5. New York: Peter Lang Editions, 1998.