Gender and Sexuality 11

you see / me behind / your pocket camera / memories from east Africa / and what you have read / about it / ready to dump it on me // (…) / the last vacation / you / spent there / and you want / to see / me / dancing / so that the pictures become / tangible again // I look at you / and into the distance / into the past / back and forth / looking / for a reason / to call you / SISTER /

May Ayim 2003: 30

May Ayim (1960-1996) was an Afro-German poet, activist, educator, speech therapist.

Ayim was speaking of the challenges presented by alliances between Black and white feminists. For Gayatri Spivak, too, the concept of a “global” sisterhood called for by the women's movement in the Global North is often nothing more than a paternalistic gesture towards “poor” sisters in the “Third World”. She has on repeated occasions reminded feminist movements in the North that the struggles of women in the South have a different material basis than those fought by women of the "First World". The widespread practice of romanticising, victimising or portraying women in the South in a paternalistic manner is symptomatic of colonial benevolence. Nonetheless, bell hooks points out that “Solidarity does not necessarily have to be based on shared experience. It can be based on the political and ethical understanding of racism and the rejection of dominance” (hooks 1994: 23)

*May Ayim (2003): Blues in Black-White. Asmara: Africa Word Press *Gayatri Spivak (1988): In: Cary Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg (Hrsg.): Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, p. 66f. *bell hooks (1986): Sisterhood: Political Solidarity between Women. * bell hooks (1994): Black Looks. Deutsche Ausgabe, p. 23 f.