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The Daughters of Bengal: A History of “Western Eyes” on the Girl Victim

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Children and Youth as Subjects, Objects, Agents

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Abstract

With the rise of the ready-made garments industry in Bangladesh, the young girl in the factory has become a powerful symbol of Western economic exploitation of distant others. As many writers have shown, mobilisation of such symbols in global efforts for social justice are deeply problematic and can undermine the aims of transnational solidarity movements. This chapter traces the genealogy of the figure of the girl-child who needs saving—the object of the Western gaze—back to the late eighteenth century, with a focus on textiles industries in Bengal. The author examines anxieties about the vulnerable young Bengali woman in British discourse as the East India Company rule was exploiting producers in the hand-woven textiles industries in British-dominated India. Using metropolitan characterisations of the “virgin daughter” as an entry point into the larger architecture of colonial modern epistemes, Khatun sketches the emergence of an imaginative history and geography that continues even today to profoundly shape social justice projects for global solidarity.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As Shahidul Alam recounts in an extraordinary interview for an Iranian audience, it was the comments of a five-year old girl Karina from Northern Ireland that alerted him to the problem that western subjects grow up “incapable of seeing a Bangladeshi as anything other than an icon of poverty” (Interview of Bangladeshi Photographer Shahidul Alam on Iranian TV 2014).

  2. 2.

    Image 14 of 18 in https://www.vqronline.org/photography/2014/04/rana-plaza-four-days-april.

  3. 3.

    Discussing the works of John Stuart Mill in Chakrabarty 2000, 8.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. SOAS University of London, London, UK

    Samia Khatun

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  1. Samia Khatun
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Correspondence to Samia Khatun .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Deborah Levison

  2. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Mary Jo Maynes

  3. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Frances Vavrus

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Khatun, S. (2021). The Daughters of Bengal: A History of “Western Eyes” on the Girl Victim. In: Levison, D., Maynes, M.J., Vavrus, F. (eds) Children and Youth as Subjects, Objects, Agents . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63632-6_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63632-6_7

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-63632-6

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