Autonomy and Identity in Feminist Thinking

Abstract

Issues about women’s autonomy have been central to feminist thinking and action. Women have so often been in situations of powerlessness and dependence that any system of belief or programme of action that could count as ‘feminist’ must in some way see this as a central concern. But what is meant by ‘autonomy’ and under what conditions is it possible? This has been an important and contentious question in philosophy. But questions about autonomy, and related questions about self and identity have also been important to feminism, and within feminist thinking it is possible to find radically different ways of thinking about these things. In this paper, I want to look at one kind of way in which some feminists have tried to conceptualise what it is for a woman to be ‘autonomous’, and at the implications this has for ways of thinking about the human self. I shall argue that this conception is not only philosophically problematic, but also has an implicit politics which is potentially damaging. And I shall try to suggest some ways of beginning to think about ‘autonomy’ which seem to me to be more fruitful and adequate, and to draw on different traditions of thinking about the self which have become influential in some recent feminist thinking.