In The Location of Culture (1994), the influential post-colonial theorist Homi Bhabha articulated the paradoxical role of the Other as object, simultaneously, of ¡°desire and derision¡±. This idea of the fundamental instability of the binary of self and other is intelligently revisited from a gendered perspective by Sara de Jong in her important new book, Complicit Sisters.

If the women¡¯s movement is fractured, de Jong argues, then the power dynamics of the North/South divide are played out in and around those fault lines. Using black and post-colonial feminism, she examines the considerable influence that women in the global North wield when it comes to ¡°doing good¡± for women in the global South. Bhabha¡¯s desire/derision quandary is, according to de Jong, significant for these ¡°complicit sisters¡± ¨C women whose efforts to dismantle oppressive structures in the global South are informed by precisely those colonial legacies that they are ostensibly undoing.

De Jong moves beyond the ¡°strained relationship between privileged women and their ¡®subordinate sisters¡¯¡± that has characterised much recent work in development studies. The idea that feminism all too often comes from a white, middle-class perspective is hardly a revolutionary one. That many in the academy still treat intersectionality as if it were a new idea, however, almost 30 years after Kimberl¨¦ Crenshaw coined the term, tells us something important about the complacent nature of the field, and about the relevance of de Jong¡¯s book.

Non-governmental organisations, the great white hope ¨C and I use that redolent phrase quite intentionally ¨C of the post-war 20th century, have had their shortcomings documented by commentators such as the Tanzanian academic Issa Shivji. De Jong, too, critiques the ¡°neoimperial and postcolonial project¡± of international development. The purportedly utopian notion of the ¡°global citizen¡± is also dissected, and she depicts global mobility as deeply problematic in its elitism. ¡°The seemingly neutral term ¡®mobility¡¯,¡± she warns her readers, ¡°should not hide the structurally embedded differences between the travel of aid workers to the global South and the journeys of migrants who access NGO services in the North.¡±

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Complicit Sisters?is an unrepentantly ¡°academic¡± book. Parenthetical citations come so thick and fast that they sometimes hinder the fluency of the prose. Structurally, there are issues, too: it¡¯s an at-times clunky read, and de Jong¡¯s ideas interested me (and her, too, I sensed) far more than her rather dry explication of her methodological approach. It¡¯s also an expensive publication ¨C and this is a paradox in itself, as it highlights problems of accessibility, reinscribing precisely those polarising divisions between ¡°us¡± (who have money or access to a university library) and ¡°them¡± (who have neither) that the narrative works so hard to demolish.

Ultimately, however, the voices of the 21 women from the global North de Jong interviews ¨C who work with female migrants or ¡°on the ground¡± in the global South ¨C are vividly rendered. Even if we are ¡°complicit sisters¡±, the book¡¯s dominant message is one of hope. De Jong¡¯s own faith in the notion of ¡°sisterhood¡±, and that of her participants, is powerful enough to offset ¨C albeit only temporarily ¨C the ugly, crushing actuality of global geopolitics today. It¡¯s no longer enough simply to ¡°do good¡± if one is not ¡°doing it right¡±. With books such as this, there¡¯s no excuse not to.

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Emma Rees is professor of literature and gender studies at the University of Chester, where she is director of the Institute of Gender Studies.

Complicit Sisters: Gender and Women¡¯s Issues across North-South Divides
By Sara de Jong
Oxford University Press, 240pp, ?47.99
ISBN 9780190626563
Published 6 April 2017