Global Governmentality and Transnational Feminism

Transnational feminism is one of the most striking examples of current transformations of the global public sphere. In fact, globalized gender activism serves as a prism for looking at new forms of transnational interaction between states, supra-state actors and civil societies. Among the effects of these new forms of interaction is a phenomenon that is often called the NGOization of political movements, which usually leads to changes of the organizational structure as well as of the agendas of civil society actors. While within the academic field of NGO studies this phenomenon has been documented quite well, it has hardly been taken up by political theory so far. My paper is an attempt to change this. Using transnational feminism as the prime example, I aim at addressing current moments of change in the realm of civil societies from a perspective informed by the work of Michel Foucault, especially his texts on governmentality