ABSTRACT
Along with other prized concepts of modern liberal political culture, autonomy has been subjected to feminist critical scrutiny. For all of the differences between the counter-narratives of autonomy proffered by feminist object relations theory and Julia Kristeva, each shares the elaborated intuition that the trouble with autonomy is that it relies on a repression of the maternal. Feminist object relations theory highlights the ways in which gendered symbolics and social arrangements produce two different kinds of self: a masculine "separative" self and a feminine "soluble" self. But if these feminists are critical of accounts of autonomy that belie the embedded nature of the self and promote masculine constructs of separative selfhood, they are unwilling to give up altogether on autonomy. Relational autonomy is autonomy "made safe" for women. The appeal of this revision is that it brings autonomy within women's reach.
