`Subjects' of Regulation/Resistance? Postmodern Feminism and Agency in Abortion-Decision-Making

Author: Fegan E.V.

Source: Feminist Legal Studies, Volume 7, Number 3, 1999 , pp. 241-273(33)

Publisher: Springer

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Abstract:

This article explores the epistemological and strategic issues facing feminists embarking upon narrative explorations into women's experiences. It considers the implications for feminist epistemology of acknowledging women's participation in dominant ideologies about their social role. Focusing upon questions of women's agency, it asks how this `conforming knowledge' might complicate postmodernist feminist notions of resisting and reconstructing law's categorisation of `Woman'. It also represents an attempt to clarify, in advance of my own analysis of women's agency in abortion decision-making, why postmodern feminists might talk to women – the `subjects' of law's constructive power. It seeks additionally to open a discussion among a wider audience of feminists about what we might do with the information uncovered through listening to women's own stories in an area pronounced upon authoritatively by a multitude of discourses.

Keywords: agency; epistemology; feminism; ideology; legal discourse; personal narratives; postmodernism

Language: English

Document Type: Regular paper

Affiliations: 1: Lecturer in Law, Cardiff Law School, Cardiff University (of Wales), PO Box 427, CF10 1XJ Email: FeganEV@cardiff.ac.uk.

Publication date: 1999-01-01