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Author(iz)ing Agency

Feminist Scholars Making Sense of Women's Involvement in Religious `Fundamentalist' Movements

UNIVERSITY OF UTRECHT sarah.bracke{at}let.uu.nl

This article discusses ways in which feminist scholars draw upon agency in relation to the complex subject matter of women's engagement in so-called `fundamentalist' movements. While postcolonial critiques generally reject the term `fundamentalism', and in particular the way it is linked to Islam, feminist perspectives have a vested interest in looking at contemporary developments in different religions from the perspective of women's lives. Against the patriarchal reputations of fundamentalist movements, feminist scholarship increasingly tends to emphasize women's agency, thereby effectively breaking with widespread notions of `false consciousness'. After briefly discussing two such examples, the question is raised whether this emphasis on agency does not risk evacuating structural constraints in the construction of subjectivity, thus neutralizing the productive tension, at the heart of women's studies, between structure and agency. In conclusion, the article joins other calls for new ways of thinking about subjectivity.

Key Words: agency • false consciousness • fundamentalism • paradigms of power • structure vs agency • subjectivity • women's studies

European Journal of Women's Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3, 335-346 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/1350506803010003006


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