ABSTRACT
To engage in feminist life history work is to enter conflicted terrain. We simultaneously seek to create and disrupt the notion of the subject. Our concern is to theorize the subject as a “site of identity production” (Gilmore, 1994, p. 14) which recognizes the subject as constructed at the nexus of multiple subject positions. Embracing “nonunitary” readings of subjectivity encourages the rejection of humanist concepts of a unitary self. Nonunitary readings also acknowledge women’s conflicted subject positions in a world where they are typically represented as objects rather than subjects of knowledge.1 By focusing on life history narratives, we hope to better understand nonunitary subjectivity and the process of negotiating gendered roles when the self is nonunitary.
