Politics of female subjectivities and the everyday : the case of the Hong Kong feminist journal Nuliu
Document Type
Journal article
Source Publication
Feminist Review
Publication Date
7-1-2009
Issue
92
First Page
36
Last Page
53
Keywords
Cultural studies, Everyday life, Feminism, Hong Kong, Subjectivities, The personal is political
Abstract
Based on selected writings on women's experiences of and reflections on dress and travel published in the Hong Kong feminist journal Nuliu, this paper discusses the politics of female subjectivity in relation to the everyday. The context of the discussion is the changing actualization of the well-known feminist slogan 'the personal is political' within the local feminist movement in Hong Kong between the 1980s and the 1990s. The paper aims to create a new paradigm for analysing agency - the key concept in subject formation - by critiquing the ideology of choice, which is a liberal value system that connects people's imagination with the notion of personal 'liberation'. As demonstrated by the examples of dress and travel, the everyday is a site of both possibilities and conflict for women, who generate new strategies or tactics to negotiate not only with institutions, structures and policies, but also with 'interpellations', 'temporality', 'spatiality', 'performativity', 'symbolism' and 'psyche'.
DOI
10.1057/fr.2009.7
Print ISSN
01417789
E-ISSN
14664380
Publisher Statement
Copyright © 2009, Macmillan Publishers Ltd
Access to external full text or publisher's version may require subscription.
Full-text Version
Publisher’s Version
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Chan, S.-h. (2009). Politics of female subjectivities and the everyday: The case of the Hong Kong feminist journal Nuliu. Feminist Review, (92), 36-53. doi: 10.1057/fr.2009.7