Religion, Feminism, and the Problem of Agency: Reflections on Eighteenth-Century Quakerism
Author(s)
Mack, Phyllis
Abstract
While the conditions for achieving agency have been of intense interest to feminist scholars, there has been much less discussion of the definition of agency itself. For feminists-and for scholars in general-agency may be defined as the exercise of free will (Davidson), as individual (Taylor) or social (Giddens), and as conditioned by discourses (Foucault), by structures or structuration (Giddens), or by habitus (Bourdieu). It can be a form of resistance to discourses or modes of performance (Butler), or it can be empowered by them, varying in its effects according to the structural support enjoyed by the particular agent (Sewell). However the agent remains a subject acting according to his or her conscious will or intention: self-expression, not self-transcendence. nThe preoccupation of feminist theorists with the issue of autonomy and their indifference to religion are understandable in the context of the discourse of secularization and the categories of modern philosophy and social science. I want to suggest that there are still important reasons to consider the experience of religious women in relation to theories of women’s agency. The example of eighteenth-century Quakerism shows how complicated the experience of agency was for religious women who were also activists. Some aspects of the Quakers’ religious mentality, like their belief in the possibility of universal redemption and the equality of souls before God, are easy for modern feminists to appreciate; others, like the belief that pain and illness are avenues of spiritual insight, or the desire to be controlled by an authority external to oneself, are clearly not.
