| dc.description.abstract | In this paper, I highlight the salience of agency as embodied in performing
non-threatening femininity. I argue that the potency within this form of
resistance is in its slipperiness and/or elusiveness to power. While radical
acts of resistance can reshape reality, they are also more visible and
vulnerable to power and/or patriarchy and are as such, more likely to be
nipped in the bud. The normative repertoire of the agency as embodied
in individual rights, freedoms and empowerment (Evans, 2013; Wilson,
2013), are more likely to be embodied and “entitled” to men within
patriarchy. This normative repertoire/script is disturbed in my study which
uses women’s narratives of non-threatening femininity, emphasizing
relationality, pluralism, collectiveness, communality as a possibility in remaking women’s realities, within socio-cultural structures of subordination.
Non-threatening femininity as such, makes it intelligible to locate agency
within women’s epistemological and ontological frames. Indeed the
women in my study, far from lone rangers in remaking their reality, leant on
other people. The women’s narratives are explicit about the networks and
relations on which they drew support in navigating gendered constraints.
Indeed as Madhok et al. point out, the constraints relate to social, not just
personal power relations, highlighting “the need to shift from the more
exclusive focus on individual capacities and vulnerabilities to wider power
regimes within which we operate” (2013, p. 7). I argue then, that we shift
our theoretical gaze in regard to agency towards exploring less overt forms
of agency. Indeed Madhok advocates a “displacement of the chief site of
agency from free acts to speech practices and ethical reflection” (2013, p.
116) as demonstrated through the women’s narratives. | en_US |
