ABSTRACT
In order to pave the way for a more productive and mutually beneficial exchange between feminist body theory and feminist health activism, the authors turns to three highly publicized debates within contemporary feminist body theory. The first debate concerns the female body and the uses (and abuses) of biology in justifying gendered inequalities as “natural.” The second debate concerns the validity of women’s experiential knowledge as an arbiter of the “truth.” And, finally, the third debate concerns how to conceptualize women’s agency with regard to the production of subversive or empowering forms of knowledge. The authors show how the confrontation with Our Bodies, Ourselves (OBOS) as an epistemological project can contribute to these debates, thereby making feminist body theory more amenable to the concerns of feminist health activism. In conclusion, while postmodern feminist theory has focused on the power of discourse to shape women’s practices, it has tended to adopt a discursive concept of agency.
