It is not unusual in much contemporary, and particularly post-structuralist, social and cultural theory to preface any analysis of ‘identity’ or ‘subjectivity’ with the caveat that these are subject positions without essence and, to a greater or lesser extent, to assert that selfhood itself is socially and/or discursively constructed. These claims, which might loosely be situated under the umbrella of ‘deconstruction’, have been of special interest to those who seek to politicise the self and, in so doing, to expose the naturalised and universalistic notion of the self for what it is. Feminists such as Rosi Braidotti, for instance, argue that it is precisely because ‘systems of knowledge and scientific discourse at large’ (Braidotti 1994: 152) conflate the specifically White masculine point of view with the generally human standpoint, that a history of Western feminism from Simone de Beauvoir's work in the 1950s through to 1990s feminist post-structuralist theory, has constantly questioned, revised and produced concepts of identity and difference.

While the move away from a notion of identity as fixed and immutable has been welcomed, particularly because it calls attention to differences within and among ‘women’, it has nevertheless produced its own share of tensions. Feminists have shown that there is much pleasure to be had in ‘having’ an identity, and that sometimes having an identity, or passing as a particular identity, is not a question of pleasures, but of life and death (Phelan 1993). Patricia Waugh (1992) notes that the deconstruction of concepts such as identity, history and agency is itself a privilege; they must exist before they can be dismantled. While broadly in favour of the destabilisation of identity, Braidotti herself has also noted that …