The Personal Is the Theological

Abstract

AT THE CENTER of contemporary feminist analyses of religion and theology lie women's experiences of oppression and agency embedded in our particularities and in our commonalities as women.' In such work, women bring experience to bear upon scholarly work, thealogies and theologies. We draw upon reports of female experience in historical, literary, and social scientific work we deem reliable. We also draw upon our own lives, upon our experiences of oppression and transformation. Our memories, traditions, and creativities are resources for reflection. So too are they resources for the ongoing construction of identities. In the work of contemporary feminist theo/thealogians, we have particular lives and experiences, reflected on, inscribed, for us. In inscribing experience, the work of contemporary feminist religionists aligns itself with reevaluations of the subject of autobiography sought by recent feminist theorists. Most radically, such theorists call in question the law of genre, the enforcement of generic purity, the policing of borders per se (Schenck:28-1). In addition to directing attention to letters, diaries and other private forms of writing selves, feminist theorists have focused upon poetry, film, pedagogy and philosophy as autobiographical acts constituted by female subjects (see Benstock