Situated Freedom Reconsidered: Feminism and the Possibilities for Action

Questions concerning the situation of women remain central in feminist debates today. Ambivalent developments surrounding #MeToo call for a feminist reconsideration of gendered possibilities for action. This research attempts to contribute to this reconsideration by examining the relation between the agency and freedom of women in the twenty-first century. The proposed research will be devoted to three prominent feminist approaches as represented in the work of Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, and Rosi Braidotti. While these last two thinkers have exchanged the notion of freedom for agency, they risk reducing concrete possibilities for action to something very abstract. In contrast, Beauvoir's notion of situated freedom offers a welcome addition to the contemporary notion of agency precisely because it allows us to develop a realistic and concrete approach to feminist action. In this research project I will examine the relation between women's agency and situated freedom through three themes: one's relationality to others, (inter)corporeality, and political action. I will study the themes by employing a textual interpretation, after which I will incorporate each theme in a contemporary societal framework regarding #MeToo. How to act when one's possibilities for action depend largely on the meanings and values ascribed to one's relations to others and one's body?