In a path-breaking essay, ‘The Virtual Speculum in the New World Order (1999),’ Donna Haraway links Our Bodies, Ourselves (the book and the slogan) to a critique of the US women's health movement, claiming that both draw implicitly upon colonialist metaphors of discovery and acquisition of territory. Haraway's critique does not stand alone, but belongs to a broader discussion within poststructuralist feminist theory which has been concerned with denaturalizing the female body, with the rejection of ‘experience’ as basis for feminist knowledge projects, and with deconstructing women's position as autonomous epistemic agents. Given the popularity of this much-cited and often reprinted essay, as well as Haraway's enormous influence on feminist (body) theory, feminist epistemology and technoscience politics, I will use her essay to consider the gap between contemporary poststructuralist feminist theory and women's health activism. On the basis of alternative feminist theoretical (phenomenological) perspectives on women's bodies and embodiment, I conclude that Haraway's critique, while provocative, has little to offer as an epistemological foundation for feminist health activism.
AlcoffL.M. (2000) ‘Phenomenology, Post-structuralism, and Feminist Theory on the Concept of Experience.’ In FisherL. and EmbreeL. (eds), Feminist Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
2.
BartkyS.L. (1990). Femininity and Domination. Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. New York: Routledge.
3.
BartkyS.L. (2002) ‘Sympathy and Solidarity’ and Other Essays. Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).
4.
BirkeL. (1999) Feminism and the Biological Body. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.
5.
BordoS. (1987) The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture. Albany: SUNY Press.
6.
BordoS. (1993) Unbearable Weight. Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley: California University Press.
7.
BreckenridgeC.A. and VoglerC. (2001) ‘The Critical Limits of Embodiment: Disability's Criticism’, Public Culture13, 3 (2001): 349–357.
8.
ButlerJ. (1989) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
9.
ButlerJ. (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’New York: Routledge.
10.
CollinsP.H. (2000) Black Feminist Thought. Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd edition. New York: Routledge.
11.
DavisK. (1997) ‘Embody-ing Theory: Beyond Modernist and Postmodernist Readings of the Body.’ In Embodied Practices. Feminist Perspectives on the Body, ed. DavisKathy, 1–23. London: Sage.
12.
DavisK. (forthcoming) The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves. How feminist knowledge travels across borders. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
13.
Davis-FloydR.E. (1994) ‘Mind Over Body. The Pregnant Professional.’ In Many Mirrors: Body Image and Social Relations, ed. SaultNicole, 204–234, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.
14.
Fausto-SterlingA. (2005) ‘The Bare Bones of Sex: Part 1- Sex and Gender.’Signs30, 2: 1491–1527.
15.
GatensM. (1999) ‘Power, Bodies and Difference.’ In Feminist Theory and the Body, ed. PriceJanet and ShildrickMargrit, 227–234. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
16.
HarawayD. (1991) ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’, In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women by HarawayDonna, 183–202. London: Free Association Books.
17.
HarawayD. (1999) ‘The Virtual Speculum in the New World Order.’ In Revisioning Women, Health, and Healing, ed. ClarkeAdele E. and OlesenVirginia L., 49–96. New York: Routledge.
18.
HardingS. (1991) Whose Science? Whose Knowledge: Thinking from women's lives. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
19.
KapsalisT. (1997) Public Privates. Performing Gynecology From Both Ends of the Speculum. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997.
20.
KellerE.F. (1985) Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven: Yale University Press.
21.
KruksS. (2001) Retrieving Experience. Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
22.
KuhlmannK. and BabitschB. (2002) ‘Bodies, health, gender – bridging feminist theories and women's health.’Women's Studies International Forum25, 4: 433–442.
McNayL. (1992) Foucault and Feminism. Cambridge: Polity.
25.
MarshallH. (1996) ‘Our Bodies Ourselves. Why We Should Add Old Fashioned Empirical Phenomenology to the New Theories of the Body’, Women's Studies International Forum19, 3: 253–265.
26.
MartinE. (2001) The Woman in the Body. Boston: Beacon Press.
27.
MohantyC. (2003) Feminism Without Borders. Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
28.
MorgenS. (2002) Into Our Own Hands. The Women's Health Movement in the United States, 1969–1990. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.
29.
MoyaP.M.L. (1997) ‘Postmodernism, “Realism,” and the Politics of Identity: Cherríe Moraga and Chicana Feminism.’ in AlexanderJ. and MohantyC. (eds), Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures125–150. New York: Routledge.
30.
MurphyM. (2004) ‘Immodest witnessing: The epistemology of vaginal self-examination in the U.S. Feminist self-help movement.’Feminist Studies30, 1: 115–147.
31.
ScottJ.W. (1992) ‘Experience.’ in Feminists Theorize the Political, ed. ButlerJudith and ScottJoan W., 22–40. New York: Routledge.
32.
SmithD.E. (1990) The Conceptual Practices of Power. A Feminist Sociology of Knowledge. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
33.
SmithD.E (1987) The Everyday World as Problematic. A feminist sociology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
34.
SmithS.L. (1995) Sick and tired of being sick and tired; Black women's health activism in America, 1890–1950. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
35.
SpelmanE. (1988) Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought. Boston: Beacon Press.
36.
SpringerK. (1999) (ed.), Still Lifting, Still Climbing: African American Women's Contemporary Activism. New York: New York University Press.
37.
Stone-MediatoreS. (1998) ‘Chandra Mohanty and the Revaluing of “Experience”.’Hypatia13, 2:116–133.
38.
VarikasE. (1995) ‘Gender, experience, and subjectivity: The Tilly-Scott disagreement.’New Left Review211: 89–101.
39.
WendellS. (1996) The Rejected Body. Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability. New York: Routledge.
40.
WhiteE.C. (1990) (ed.), The Black Women's Health Book. Speaking for Ourselves. Seattle, WA: The Seal Press.
41.
YoungI.M. (1990) Throwing Like a Girl and other essays in feminist philosophy and social theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
