Gender, Place and Culture, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 167–172, 2002 VIEWPOINT Feminists Talking across Worlds LYNN A. STAEHELI, University of Colorado, USA RICHA NAGAR, University of Minnesota, USA Women writing worlds. Women writing difference. Women reading difference. Women crossing borders. In the last 15 years, the theme of reading and writing across spaces, cultures, times, and social locations has surfaced prominently in feminist scholarship throughout the humani- ties and social sciences (cf. Behar, 1993; Blunt & Rose, 1994; Behar & Gordon, 1995; Abel, 1997). Starting with powerful critiques by ‘Third World’ feminists (see Anzaldua, 1987; Mohanty, 1988; Ong, 1988; Mohanty et al., 1991), this preoccupation with reading and writing difference emerged from a pressing need to grapple simultaneously with the politics of representation in an unequal world, and with the problematic nature of the category ‘woman’—a category that serves both to mask and exaggerate difference, and that is itself re/produced by colonial and neocolonial structures and discursive practices. But as feminist scholars, especially those conducting eldwork in social contexts far removed from their own, grappled with questions of power, privilege, representation and essentialism, they also felt paralyzed by countless ethical and political dilemmas that their commitments generated (Stacey, 1988; Patai, 1991; M. Wolf, 1992; D. Wolf, 1996). Many feminist researchers are guided by a passion to build connections with women from communities other than their own, to participate and learn from their struggles, to tell their stories. But being critically explicit about their own power and positionality raises a number of challenges for feminist researchers. Do ‘we’ have a right to talk to people from ‘other worlds’? When, how, and with what purpose can ‘we’ talk as feminists to women and men in vastly different structural positions? How do we talk to other feminists in different positions? And what kinds of responsibilities ought we to have—to our ‘subjects,’ to ourselves, and to our institutions—as/after we talk and listen? These are not new questions, of course. They have been a specter lurking over discussions about feminist politics and research for decades. They were also concerns that motivated Heidi Nast to organize a set of papers under the title ‘Women in the Field’ that was published in the Professional Geographer in 1994. Those papers addressed these questions through a consideration of eldwork, and of the ways in which feminists engage difference, represent difference, and perpetuate difference through research practices. In this collection of viewpoints, we revisit and extend this discussion with an explicit focus on transnational/transborder feminist praxis. Our desire to revisit and reframe these issues was prompted by the coincidence of several trends and events. First, globalization—that overused term—has created new linkages between unequal people and places. These linkages are contradictory in that Correspondence:Lynn A. Staeheli, Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309–0487, USA; e-mail: lynner@spot.colorado.edu ISSN 0966-369X print/ISSN 1360-0524 online/02/020167-06 Ó 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI 10.1080/0966396022013967 1 167