Feminist discursive institutionalism - a poststructural alternative

Abstract

This paper joins the ongoing conversation about the desirability, or undesirability, of feminists becoming “new institutionalists”, which is linked to broader concerns about feminists seeking legitimacy as political “scientists”. With “feminist discursive institutionalism” as exemplar, it introduces the argument that paradigms, and hence methodologies, matter politically because they create different realities. To illustrate this proposition it examines the political implications of the different meanings of discourse, and related concepts of power, ideas, and “agency”/subjectivity, in Habermasian-influenced discursive institutionalism and in Foucauldian-inspired poststructuralist analysis. A key issue, it contends, is the extent to which institutions (and other political categories) are conceptualized as discrete entities or as more open-ended “assemblages”. This analysis, we suggest, solicits feminist researchers to reflect on the political implications of their theoretical investments.