Speaking from the margins: A discourse analysis of ten women's accounts ofspirituality

Psychology's concern with the human subject has traditionally marginalised women's accounts of their own experience. This paper reports a study of the discursive resources identified in 10 women's accounts of their spirituali ty and the relationships between these resources and those identified in se lected psychological, feminist, and poststructuralist texts. From a poststr ucturalist perspective, we analyse and discuss the ways in which the women' s accounts, and the more academic accounts, reproduce discourses and discur sive objects, and simultaneously produce speaking positions for women. We d iscuss some of the problematics of engaging with the research process and o f working through and with theories that historically constitute women as l acking, invisible, and silent.