ABSTRACT
In the past 20 years, we have come a long way toward unraveling the identity production processes among various groups within American society. Feminist work, in particular, has helped us understand the ways in which girls and women fashion their own identities in relation to what Dorothy Smith called textually mediated discourses. Drawing from Foucault, Smith (1988, p. 39) argued,
Social forms of consciousness, “femininity” included, can be examined as actual practices, actual activities, taking place in real time, in real places, using definite material means and under definite material conditions. Among other matters, this means that we do not neglect the “textual” dimensions of social consciousness. By texts, I mean the more or less permanent and above all replaceable forms of meaning, of writing, painting, television, film, etc. The production, distribution and uses of texts are a pervasive and highly significant dimension of contemporary social organization. “Femininity,” I'm going to argue, is a distinctively textual phenomenon. But texts must not be isolated from the practices in which they are embedded and which they organize.
