Abstract

This dissertation explores the articulation of meaning, norms, and power within specific feminist practices. While much has been written on the contemporary feminist movement as a context for social action, scant attention has been paid to feminism as a site for the production of meaning. Nevertheless, the last two decades have witnessed the emergence of a flourishing and multifaceted women's culture, and it is apparent that feminists, employing cultural signifying systems on their own behalf, have actively engaged in the creation of new meanings. ;I explore the construction of gendered social space at the same time as I examine the deconstruction of a unified feminism and the shift from an undifferentiated feminist identity to a notion of identity constituted in/through difference. Tracing the development of specific feminist "locations"--the performative space of lesbian feminist humor, the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, the Women's Studies classroom, abortion clinics and the abortion rights movement, and various "homes" and "communities," I examine the ways in which they mediate women's access to the world