Who Are We Dealing With? Re-visioning Citizen Subjects from a Feminist Perspective

This paper explores the meaning of the citizen subject from a feminist perspective. I argue that a poststructuralist feminist account provides the best interpretation of the subject, how it is formed through governmental practices and discourses, but is still capable of practicing ethics. The subject in contemporary society is overly determined by naturalized accounts of gender and the body. These essentialized notions are imported into the liberal view of the subject. Administrators who approach citizen subjects as free and autonomous, but gendered in irrevocable ways, presume too much about who they are serving. I argue that administrators should practice the art of not governing too much, and be careful about the presumptions they make about citizens' identities.