The Voice in Things that Fall Apart and the Anthills of the Savannah In "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse," Chandra Talpade Mohanty suggests a fundamental flaw in most Western feminist analyses: the assumption that women, "across classes and cultures, are somehow socially constituted as a homogeneous group identifiable prior to the process of analysis." This is an error of thought that leads to "presupposing women as an already established group, which has been labeled as 'powerless', 'exploited', 'sexually harassed', etc., by scientific, economic and feminist legal theories. and sociological discourse." For Mohanty, this faulty thinking translates into a feminist discourse "quite similar to the sexist discourse that labels women as weak, emotional, math anxious, etc." In such feminist discourse, "the focus is not on uncovering the material and ideological specificities that constitute a group of women as 'powerless' in a particular context. It is rather about finding a variety of cases of groups of 'powerless' women to demonstrate 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 can speak for a black; only a postcolonial subcontinental feminist can adequately represent the lived experience of that culture" (201). It is worth considering Mohanty's arguments: the stereotypical categories of oppression that Mohanty notes 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 in fact be almost as reductive, with...... Discourse." Feminist review. 30 (autumn 1988): 65-88. Nnaemeka, Obioma. "Gender relations and critical meditation: from things that go in pieces to the anthills of the savannah". Challenging 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'. Challenging 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. Challenging Hierarchies: Issues and Themes in Colonial and Postcolonial African Literature. Society and politics in Africa. Vol 5. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1998.