ABSTRACT
One of the most important tasks facing contemporary feminist theorists is the task of reformulating and reconstructing our concepts of the self. We need new models of identity, of individuation, of agency and autonomy which will take account of the important critiques of these concepts generated by feminist theorists. In this paper I will work toward a model of self-identity which can address some of the concerns of both relational feminism, which argues that the ideal of self-identity too often conceals a defense against connection with others, and postmodern and poststructuralist feminism, which argues that the concept of self-identity can be understood only in terms of the system of meaning which produces it: a system predicated on a logic of exclusion of nonidentity or difference. My attempt to clarify a normative ideal of self-identity comes out of a conviction that we need to uphold a commitment to women’s struggles for identity and autonomy in the context of feminist critiques of defensive atomistic individualism and critiques of the concept of the disembedded subject as the free and unfettered author of his destiny. We need to make a space for an understanding of self-identity and autonomy which will not clash with our conviction that individuals must be understood as embedded, embodied, localized, constituted, and fragmented, as well as subject to forces beyond our control. We need to understand ourselves clearly as actors capable of learning, of changing, of making the world and ourselves, better.
