The politics of our selves: power, autonomy, and gender in contemporary critical theory

摘要

What is the relation between socially constructed identities and power? On what grounds can we criticize particular power relations and the forms of subjectivity they produce? How should - and how can - people transform their identities? These are the questions Amy Allen asks in Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and Jiirgen Habermas, as well as on that of major feminist theorists, such as Judith Butler and Seyla Benhabib, she develops a psychoanalytic account of human subordination. Identification, Allen argues, works not only and not principally at the level of reason and cognition, but also and significantly at the level of affect and desire. Identities can be more, and they can be less, subordinating. We should criticize those that subordinate some people to others. But we should not expect such criticism, by itself, to transform identity. Instead, change requires intervention at the point at which agents form their attachments and desires: at the point, that is, at which they achieve social recognition.