A Poststructuralist Feminist Study of Three Chinese Women Academics’ Subjectivity and Agency

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  In Roundtable Session: Bearing Witness, Blurring Boundaries

Abstract

Using life history methodology with a poststructuralist feminist theoretical frameworkhe, this study examines the ways in which three Chinese women academics construct their subjectivities through both embracing and resisting the dominant official discourses in Chinese society, and how they create agency and resistance in their various daily discursive practices. This study critique and deconstruct the dominant official discourses of being women academics, the discourses of professionalism, the discourses of administration in China's higher education, the discourses of gender equality, and the three Chinese women academics’ own discourses. Data were collected through multiple interviews, observations, personal artifacts and documents. It is hoped that this study can shed new light on examining Chinese women’s subjectivity and creating new spaces for envisioning their agency.

Author

• Xiaoling Ke, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies