Desiring women and the (Im)possibility of being

Abstract

Our focus in this paper is on the collectively available discursive strategies through which women constitute themselves and are constituted as recognisable and re-cognisable desiring subjects. Desire, we find, is a way of naming the possibilities of who we might be. And what we find, in listening to women talk about desire, is a gap between desire and possibility. We find, in listening to women's talk, that subjection to womanhood can be understood as a necessary co-condition of moving towards the not yet known, not yet lived (im)possibilities mapped out in desire. The desires to be free of guilt, and to be free, are in some fundamental, contradictory sense the co-requisites of each other, ..