Questions about essentialism and "difference" are at the heart of many debates within U.S. feminism in the past three decades. Worries about making cross-cultural generalizations, or about establishing a universal concept of "woman," have led feminists into a variety of difficulties. Focusing in particular on identity and cultural differences, I suggest that these problems are in part due to a problematic understanding of multiculturalism. In my research, I conduct parallel discussions of women's identity within difference and of cultural differences. I critically assess two approaches to women's identity--the "particularity argument" and gender skepticism--and propose a concept of women's identity that embraces differences among women. I then evaluate two aspects of cultural differences--the liberal feminist critique and the postcolonial feminist critique--and propose a concept of culture that respects differences among cultures and dynamics of cultures as well as a compatible transcultural approach. The discussions of identity and culture point to a practical issue: the necessity of discussing transcultural feminist solidarity. In Chapter 1, I explore the limitations of the "particularity argument," which is an approach of criticizing problematic generalizations made by White middle-class feminists and arguing that the particulars of an individual woman should be considered in order to avoid glossing over differences among women. The "particularity argument" addresses the interlaced oppression of underprivileged women but fails to elaborate on how women can be connected among their particularities. Intellectually, it seems that feminism now is divided into separate feminisms, such as Black feminism, Latino feminism, Asian feminism. Politically, feminist struggles are dissolved into localized, regional, and specific struggles representing the interests of particular women or particular groups of women. In Chapter 2, I consider how to construct a category in a way that is consistent with recognizing differences among women. The general metaphysical perspective of gender is under attack because it fails to take into account racial, cultural, and class differences between women or because gender is considered a detrimental concept. I focus on the shortcomings of postmodernist category skepticism and present a fruitful approach of addressing the dynamic relationship between differences among women and the category of women. I argue that experiences of women can be generalized and that the concept of women can be generalized in a way that grasps both the variability and the dynamics of women.In Chapter 3, I present a debate about liberal multiculturalism and point out that liberal discussions of cultural diversity often rely on a problematic understanding of cultures, which regards cultures as static, self-contained, and well-integrated entities. For instance, Susan Okin has a questionable assumption that the minority culture is often more patriarchal than the majority culture and she is insensitive to the political context in which the minority cultural claims are made. I propose that the concept of culture, as a self-contained entity, should be reconceptualized with the consideration of cultural interdependence and communication into a fluid concept of culture as internally contested and diversified. Chapter 4 assesses the postcolonial critique of multiculturalism by pointing out both its failure to break free from the multicultural approach and its fruitful proposal for fostering dialogues among women. Postcolonial feminists criticize the problematic concept of culture employed by multiculturalists with the hope that multicultural theorists will become more sensitive to the context and the history of cultural differences. While their critiques call attention to the fact that feminism needs a dynamic and context-sensitive concept of culture, they unwittingly adopt aspects of the positions that they otherwise reject. I argue that feminism not only needs to have a reconstructed concept of culture, but also needs a new approach to replace multiculturalism because the reconstruction of the concept of culture challenges the foundation of multiculturalism. In Chapter 5, I propose a transcultural approach as an alternative to multiculturalism. Unlike the multicultural approach, which asserts a completeness of each culture, the transcultural approach suggests that if a specific group loosens the hold of the oppression of a specific cultural identity by virtue of transcultural experiences, then they will have a starting point to emancipate themselves from the subordination that is imposed by the culture of origin, which consists of social factors such as race and class. Transcultural themes have been present in the background of feminist scholarship, such as work by María Lugones (2003), who demonstrates that transcultural themes, such as "world"-traveling, hold the promise for achieving women's solidarity if more fully explored. In the final chapter, I discuss the importance of women's solidarity through considering it from two different angles: identity politics and cultural differences. I challenge two feminist concepts of solidarity: a concept of political coalition that relies on a strategic usage of women's group identity and an idea of global feminism that is based on a Western liberal notion of democracy. As an alternative, I propose the concept of transcultural feminist solidarity, which is built on women's group identity and addresses structural inequality, global injustice, and cultural differences. Practices or initiatives that draw from a transcultural approach (or at least act in a way that is consistent with such an approach) can promote the interaction of feminism, even of those women who are from different cultural backgrounds and class locations. These interactions, such as a genuine dialogue between Chinese and American feminists, would benefit from following the transcultural approach and as a result they would contribute to women's solidarity in general.In conclusion, I propose transculturalism as an alternative to feminist multiculturalism because it offers a promising way of mediating the assumed tension between differences among women and the common cause of feminist solidarity. The notion of solidarity suggests that there should be strong connections among women, but feminist multiculturalism sometimes makes such connections difficult. Through bringing the discussions in the previous chapters into a normative discussion of feminist transcultural solidarity, I show that a category of women embraces the variability and the dynamics of women, that a concept of culture embraces the variability and the dynamics of cultures, and that a transcultural approach are promising for overcoming the flaws of multiculturalism. These three arguments point to the direction that we should learn to engage differences, confront conflicts, and intentionally build bridges, while we acknowledge differences among women and among cultures.
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