On Voice and Silence

What happens when feminist academics actively
encourage students to grapple with poststructuralist
thinking? Is it possible to enact a collective
feminist politics based in poststructuralist
understandings of subjectivity and power? How does
one negotiate the tension between the old desire for
a unitary and coherent personal and collective
identity, and an emerging desire for a personal and
collective complexity shot through with multiple
differences? This qualitative research thesis draws
on Drusilla Modjeska's fictionalised biography,
Poppy, to bring poststructuralist thinking to life.It
maps the process of finding, and sometimes losing, a
feminist activist voice in contemporary Australia. It
intertwines poetry, prose, story, theoretical
analysis, reflection, journal writing, transcript of
interview, and fanciful imagining to investigate the
processes of re-storying the self in the light of
current feminist understandings of subjectivity,
voice and power.

Autorentext
Lekkie Hopkins is a feminist academic in the Women's Studies
programme in the School of Psychology and Socoal Sciences at
Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia.