Social Movement Selves

Abstract

This article discusses Holstein and Gubrium's (2000) analytic for understanding the production of postmodern selves and suggests that it is a means by which to further understandings about the construction of social movement selves. According to Holstein and Gubrium's perspective, the construction of postmodern subjectivity is an interplay between circumstantial resources and self-constituting work. As an example, I discuss research about a social movement organization in the GLBT (gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender) movement, Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). I begin by illustrating how PFLAG parents can be understood as drawing on the narrative resources of the GLBT movement, in particular the dominant narrative of coming out. Next I discuss how PFLAG parents also do selves (as heterosexual parents), through everyday interactional identity work to construct affiliation. In so doing, I illustrate a key process of Holstein and Gubrium's analytic—the interplay between cultural constraints and artful agency in the production of postmodern selves—and show how it can help to explain the production of subjectivity in today's social movements. I close with a discussion of the significance of understanding the production of social movement selves for social movement literature.