Re-theorizing feminist community development: towards a radical democratic citizenship

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, I analyse and critique the different ways in which identity is constructed within the dominant feminist community development discourses in the United Kingdom. Using a post-structuralist discourse analysis framework, I examine how essentialist claims of homogeneity in ‘women's’ identities and experiences misrecognize and oftentimes exclude some women's interests – especially those women who seek to mobilize intersectional social justice claim-making by drawing on their ‘race’, ethnicity, religion, sexuality and/or disability. In order to recognize difference between and within different kinds of women, I argue that feminist community development needs to reconstruct the identity of the feminist political agent. Rather than constituting the agent as an unproblematic and stable ‘woman’, I contend that this identity must be decentred in favour of ‘radical democratic citizen’ who is not constituted by essentialized gender claims but by claims to radical democracy, equality and justice.