Constituting the feminist subject in poststructuralist discourse

In this article, we describe a collective biography that we convened in order to revisit the site of the radical theoretical break with the liberal humanist individual marked by the poststructuralist work of Henriques and colleagues and the feminist poststructuralist work of Weedon. These writers suggest that the new subject of poststructuralist theory will be more open to the changes desired by feminist and social justice movements. They describe the break with the liberal humanist subject as a break that heralds new possibilities of personal and cultural transformation. In this article, using the medium of collective biography stories, we revisit the relation between the liberal humanist individual and the transformative possibilities poststructuralist writers envisaged for the new subject of poststructuralism. We situate the discussion in the context of our transformation into neoliberal subjects over the last three decades.