Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 4-28-2016 12:00 AM Girls(') Speak: Criticality as Agency AnnaLise Trudell The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Wayne Martino The University of Western Ontario Joint Supervisor Goli Rezai-Rashti The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Women's Studies and Feminist Research A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © AnnaLise Trudell 2016 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Community-Based Research Commons, Domestic and Intimate Partner Violence Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Other Education Commons, Social Welfare Commons, Social Work Commons, and the Theory, Knowledge and Science Commons Recommended Citation Trudell, AnnaLise, "Girls(') Speak: Criticality as Agency" (2016). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 3714. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/3714 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract I seek to contribute knowledge about girls’ embodied sense of agency, as well as to provide empirical insights into anti-violence community programming. Rather than a focus on girls as victims, I want to illuminate the conditions of possibility for girls’ exercise of agency. Working with a feminist post-structuralist framework, and drawing heavily on Judith Butler (1990; 1997), I ask: How does anti-violence programming impact girls’ sense of themselves as agential subjects rather than victims, and, hence, as capable of exercising agency in their subjectivization? Which conceptions of agency do girls mobilize, and how do certain identity categories come to bear on how they understand their agency? I understand that existing literature offers little opportunity for “girls to be a part of the production of knowledge regarding their own lives” (Hussain et al. 2006). As such, my methodology centers on girls’ voices, using focus groups to engage 13 girls aged 16-21, who took part in an anti-violence program offered through a community centre located in a mid-sized city in South Western Ontario. While I did not set out to specifically study the experiences of teen mothers, it became an important focus of the data analysis as 5 of the girls were teen mothers. One significant finding from this research is that the girls tended to experience agency or made sense of their agential capacities in terms that are best understood as negotiations between discourses; engaging in certain relations of power in order to frame their own narrative accounts as embodied, gendered and agential subjects. My research contributes to an understanding of how girls experience subjectivizing power within the context of a community anti-violence programming initiative, and has created space for locating ways in which girls are doing ‘girl’, how they are thinking about and engaging with the discourses on girl, and how this feels agential. Keywords Girls, girlhood, agency, post-structuralism, Feminism, Butler, anti-violence programming, violence-prevention programming Acknowledgments Thank you Dr. Wayne Martino and Dr. Goli Rezai-Rashti for your support and guidance throughout these five years, particularly during the editing phase and my struggle in incorporating theory. Thank you to Louise Pitre, for creating space for me to find my community. Thank you to Jane McGregor, for your friendship and for the continued support provided throughout this process. Thank you to my feminist sisters and colleagues. You have kept my brain sharp; you have shared in a continual learning around feminist analysis & praxis. Thank you to my partner Alex, my father Marc, and my ‘tantes’ for your encouragement and hugs. Thank you to mom, Pauline Trudell. You’ve been my sounding board and have gone through this learning journey right by my side. ii Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................ i Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iii List of Tables ...................................................................................................................... v List of Figures .................................................................................................................... vi List of Appendices ............................................................................................................ vii 1 Chapter 1: Introduction & Theoretical Framework ....................................................... 1 1.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 1.2 Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................... 3 1.2.1 A Butlerian Analytical Perspective ............................................................. 4 1.2.2 Feminist Poststructuralist Critiques of the Liberal Humanist Subject and Engagements with Girls’ Agency ............................................................... 8 1.2.3 Postfeminist Problematics ......................................................................... 18 2 Chapter 2: Literature Review ....................................................................................... 23 2.1 Girlhood Studies ................................................................................................... 23 2.1.1 Girls’ Agency ............................................................................................ 27 2.3 Prevention-based Anti-violence Girls’ Programming Literature ........................... 37 2.2 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 44 3 Chapter 3: Methodology .............................................................................................. 45 3.1 The Community Program in Question .................................................................. 46 3.2 The Focus Groups ................................................................................................. 50 3.3 Data Analysis ........................................................................................................ 64 3.4 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 65 4 Chapter 4 Data Analysis: What the Girls Said ............................................................. 66 iii 4.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 66 4.2 Gender Subjectification and Power Relations ...................................................... 66 4.3 Girls’ Agency and Strategies of Resistance .......................................................... 81 4.3.1 Girls’ Critical Self-Reflexivity ................................................................. 83 4.3.2 Fantasy and Girls’ Social Imaginaries ...................................................... 86 4.3.3 Doing and Undoing Gender ...................................................................... 88 4.4 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 95 5 Chapter 5 Data Analysis: The Experiences of Teen Mothers ...................................... 96 5.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 96 5.2 Dominant Discourse on Teen Motherhood: At-risk or Risk-takers ...................... 98 5.3 What do Teen Mothers Have to Say: Awareness of the Discursive Operations of Power .................................................................................................................. 100 5.4 (Re)articulating One’s Subjectivity as an Agential Process ............................... 106 5.5 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 111 6 Conclusion: What Does This All Mean? ................................................................... 113 6.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 113 6.2 Significance of the Study .................................................................................... 113 6.3 Implications for Community Programming ........................................................ 116 6.4 Limitations of the Study...................................................................................... 123 6.5 Reflections on the Struggle for Accessibility in Theory ..................................... 126 6.6 It’s Personal ........................................................................................................ 128 7 References .................................................................................................................. 130 8 Appendices ................................................................................................................