Liberal feminism reads agency as a latent drive for autonomy awaiting release

Evidence

When women’s actions seem to rein.. scribe what appear to be “instruments of their own oppression,” the social an.. alyst can point to moments of disruption of, and articulation of points of opposition to, male authority-moments that are located either in the inter.. stices of a woman’s consciousness ( often read as a nascent feminist conscious.. ness), or in the objective effects of women’s actions, however unintended these may be. Agency, in this form of analysis, is understood as the capacity to realize one’s own interests against the weight of custom, tradition, transcen.. dental will, or other obstacles ( whether individual or collective). Thus the humanist desire for autonomy and self..expression constitutes the substrate, the slumbering ember that canspark to flame in the form of an act of resis.. tance when conditions permit. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 74

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precisely defines the liberal-feminist conception of agency as the substrate argument — autonomy as a slumbering ember.
• XREF: Directly engages Spivak’s question of how the subaltern woman’s agency is read; frames the target Mahmood will dismantle.