Kathy Davis, “Reclaiming Women’s Bodies: Colonialist Trope or Critical Epistemology?”

In a recent article, Kuhlmann and Babitsch (2002) have explored the reasons for what they call the “dissociation process” between contemporary feminist body theory and research and activism on women’s health. In their view, postmodern feminist theory is the culprit. Its concepts and theories have become so esoteric, so ethereal, so divorced from women’s everyday experiences with their bodies that they have been of little use to feminist health activists. This kind of abstract theorizing has not only prevented feminist health activists from profiting from the insights of feminist body theory, but it also signals an even more fundamental problem in the theory itselfspecifically, a neglect of the materiality of the (sexed) body and the concrete processes of health and illness (433).