Power, Gender, and The Politics of Our Selves

Abstract

Amy Allen’s insightful and nuanced feminist critical-theoretical account of the politics of our selves could be strengthened with a more complex and differentiated account of power and of gender, and of the social as a site of multiple conflicting and contesting relations. Such an account would adhere more consistently to Allen’s own project of understanding subjects to be constituted through both relations of power and relations of interdependence and mutuality, care and solidarity. The development of this account, and of a situated account of desire or motivation, is essential for a feminist critical theory of self and social transformation.

Keywords:

• feminism
• gender
• power
• autonomy
• self-transformation
• motivation