The Mimetic Feminine: Re-examining and Critiquing Sexual Difference

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The aim of this research is a novel exploration of modern mechanisms through which women aredominated in Western neoliberalism. While it is often assumed that there has been a real progress ongender equality in recent decades, I will examine (i) the specific mechanisms through which women aredominated in neoliberalism, (ii) the new challenges that a politics aimed both at the self-determination ofwomen and at a collective transformation of their conditions of existence faces in our era, and (iii) thetools that can be used to respond to these challenges.My focus will concern the ideal of the entrepreneurial-self, a social identity that individuals in neoliberalsocieties are encouraged to embrace. In analysing this ideal, I will proceed in two steps. Firstly, I shallexamine how the neoliberal concept of entrepreneurship, whilst appealing to the language of autonomyand self-determination, generates gendered oppression and undermines collective liberation. Secondly, Ishall analyse the specific form of neoliberal rationality underpinning this ideal. Key to this will be (i)uncovering the foundations of this rationality in modern philosophical accounts of subjectivity and (ii)revealing alternative ways of understanding the subject offered by contemporary feminist theory. I willthus examine how the modern account of the subject shapes the self-understanding of neoliberalentrepreneurial-selves and leads them to view 'others' in general, and women specifically, as resourcesto be utilised, disciplined and objectified. Following this, I shall explore how a different view of subjectivitymight allow us to overcome neoliberal ideals and the subjugations they engender.