Abstract
The central claim of this article is that narrative agency, which I will define as a subject’s capacity to make sense of herself as an ‘I’ over time and in relation to other ‘I’s, is a precondition for identity formation. I engage with two critiques of this claim: first, that narrative agency is limited by, rather than primary to, subordinating gender norms and, second, that a view of narrative agency as primary is committed to too ambitious a conception of the communicability of narratives. I argue that the narrative model survives these two criticisms by emphasising its irreducibility, its inherent relationality and its generative potential. I then suggest some of the ways in which a concept of narrative agency might help feminist critical theory to posit mutual recognition and respect as productive criteria for progressive self and social transformation.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.Allen, Amy (1999) ‘Solidarity After Identity Politics: Hannah Arendt and the Power of Feminist Theory’. Philosophy and Social Criticism , 25(1): 97–118 .
2.Allen, Amy (2008a) ‘Power and the Politics of Difference: Oppression, Empowerment, and Transnational Justice’. Hypatia , 23(3): 156–172 .
3.Allen, Amy (2008b) The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory . New York: Columbia University Press .
4.Anderson, Amanda (2006) The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the Cultures of Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press .
5.Arendt, Hannah (1958) The Human Condition . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press .
6.Atkins, Kim (2008) Narrative Identity and Moral Identity: A Practical Perspective . New York: Routledge .
7.Bartky, Sandra (1990) Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression . New York: Routledge .
8.Benhabib, Seyla (1986) Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory. New York: Columbia University Press .
9.Benhabib, Seyla (1992) Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics . London: Polity Press .
10.Benhabib, Seyla (1995) ‘Feminism and Postmodernism’. In: Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell and Nancy Fraser Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange . New York: Routledge, pp. 17–34 .
11.Benhabib, Seyla (1999) ‘Sexual Difference and Collective Identities: The New Global Constellation’. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society , 24(2): 335–361 .
12.Benhabib, Seyla (2002) The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press .
13.Benhabib, Seyla (2007) ‘Another Universalism: On the Unity and Diversity of Human Rights’. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association , 81(2): 7–32 .
14.Benhabib, Seyla, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell and Nancy Fraser (1995) Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange . New York: Routledge .
15.Benjamin, Jessica (1998) The Shadow of the Other: Intersubjectivity and Gender in Psychoanalysis . New York: Routledge .
16.Bordo, Susan (2003) Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body . Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press .
17.Borren, Marieke (2013) ‘Feminism as Revolutionary Practice: From Justice and the Politics of Recognition to Freedom’. Hypatia , 28(1): 197–214 .
18.Brison, Susan (2002) Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press .
19.Brown, Wendy (1995) States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press .
20.Buckner, Janine and Robyn Fivush (1998) ‘Gender and Self in Children’s Autobiographical Narratives’. Applied Cognitive Psychology , 12: 407–422 .
21.Butler, Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” . New York: Routledge .
22.Butler, Judith (1997a) Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative . Routledge: New York .
23.Butler, Judith (1997b) The Psychic Life of Power . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press .
24.Canaday, Margot (2003) ‘Promising Alliances: The Critical Feminist Theory of Nancy Fraser and Seyla Benhabib’. Feminist Review , 74: 50–69 .
25.Cavarero, Adriana (2000) Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood . Trans. Paul A. Kottman. London: Routledge .
26.Fine, Cordelia (2010) Delusions of Gender . London: Icon Books .
27.Fivush, Robyn (1998) ‘The Stories We Tell: How Language Shapes Autobiography’. Applied Cognitive Psychology , 12: 483–487 .
28.Fivush, Robyn and Susan Golombok (1994) Gender Development . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
29.Fivush, Robyn and April Schwarzmueller (1998) ‘Children Remember Childhood: Implications for Childhood Amnesia’. Applied Cognitive Psychology , 12: 455–473 .
30.Foucault, Michel (2002) The Order of Things . New York: Routledge .
31.Fraser, Nancy (1985) ‘What’s Critical About Critical Theory? The Case of Habermas and Gender’. New German Critique , 35: 97–131 .
32.Gatens, Moira (2014) ‘Let’s Talk Story’. Critical Horizons , 15(1): 40–51 .
33.Habermas, Jürgen (1987) The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2 . Trans. Thomas McCarthy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press .
34.Heyes, Cressida (2007) Self-Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, and Normalized Bodies . Oxford: Oxford University Press .
35.Kavada, Anastasia (2015) ‘Creating the Collective: Social Media, the Occupy Movement and Its Constitution as Collective Actor’. Information, Communication & Society , 18(8): 872–886 .
36.Krause, Sharon (2011) ‘Contested Questions, Current Trajectories: Feminism in Political Theory Today’. Politics and Gender , 7(1): 105–111 .
37.Krause, Sharon (2013) ‘Beyond Non-domination: Agency, Inequality, and the Meaning of Freedom’. Philosophy and Social Criticism , 39(2): 187–208 .
38.Lara, Maria Pia (1998) Moral Textures: Feminist Narratives in the Public Sphere . Cambridge: Polity Press .
39.Mackenzie, Catriona (2008) ‘Introduction: Practical Identity and Narrative Agency’. In: Kim Atkins and Catriona Mackenzie (eds) Practical Identity and Narrative Agency . New York: Routledge, pp. 1–28 .
40.Mackenzie, Catriona and Natalie Stoljar (eds) (2000) Relational Autonomy . Oxford: Oxford University Press .
41.Madhok, Sumi, Anne Phillips and Kalpana Wilson (eds) (2013) Gender, Agency and Coercion . New York: Palgrave MacMillan .
42.McNay, Lois (2000) Gender and Agency: Reconfiguring the Subject in Feminist and Social Theory . Cambridge: Polity Press .
43.McNay, Lois (2003) ‘Having it Both Ways: The Incompatibility of Narrative Identity and Communicative Ethics in Feminist Thought’. Theory, Culture and Society , 20(6): 1–20 .
44.McNay, Lois (2008) Against Recognition . Cambridge: Polity Press .
45.Meretoja, Hanna (2014) ‘Narrative and Human Existence: Ontology, Epistemology, and Ethics’. New Literary History , 45(1): 89–109 .
46.Nedelsky, Jennifer (2012) Law’s Relations: A Relational Theory of Self, Autonomy, and Law . Oxford: Oxford University Press .
47.Nelson, Katherine (1993) ‘The Psychological and Social Origins of Autobiographical Memory’. Psychological Science , 4(1): 7–14 .
48.Stern, M. and K.H. Karraker (1989) ‘Sex Stereotyping of Infants: A Review of Gender Labeling Studies’. Sex Roles , 20: 501–522 .
49.Taylor, Charles (1989) Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .
50.Weir, Allison (2013) Identities and Freedom: Feminist Theory Between Power and Connection. Oxford: Oxford University Press .
51.Young, Iris Marion (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press .
52.Zerilli, Linda (2005) Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom . Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press .