ABSTRACT
Formed as a palimpsest of critical, feminist, and anti-Humanist theories, poststructural feminist thought deconstructs taken-for-granted knowledges about gender in order to de-essentialize the subject of “woman” and open up ways of doing gender differently in our material realities. The purposeful inaccessibility of poststructural language, and the often misunderstood notions of contingency and constant critique, often create tension and critique among those who situate their work outside of this deconstructive paradigm. However, much of this critique fails to take into consideration the ontological turn necessary to employ such non-foundational knowledges as political acts of social justice. The ability of poststurctural feminist theory to redeploy language, challenge status quo, and reconceptualize stable identities as fluid ones, all move towards creating spaces for alternative meanings, reverse discourses, and disruptive counterhegemonic narratives of gender. Such material-discursive reconceptualizations encourage small ruptures in dominant-gendered expectations, allowing for different ways of doing gender in the world. In a moment when theoretical pluralism gives us the best hope to illuminate our complicated realities, thinking with anti-Humanist, poststructural feminist theory offers yet another way to advance feminist social justice within our leisure research.
