Feminism, Feminist Theory, Feminist Politics, Poststructuralist, Subject, Agency, Deconstruction, The Enlightenment, Philsophy, Social Sciences
Abstract
This paper deals with the implications of poststructuralism for feminism as politics. Questioning the notion of the autonomous subject and the belief in reason as a means to go beyond repressive power structures, poststructuralism challenges basic theoretical foundations of feminist political discourse. By juxtaposing a poststructuralist feminist position with a Habermasian one I discuss a number of central questions concerning the subject of feminism, its constitution, its conditions of agency, and the political aspirations of feminism. Interpreting both positions as instantiations of the Enlightenment, but of different trends within it, I claim that the opposition between them may be understood as an expression of the dialectics of the Enlightenment.
