Been there, done that? Consciousness raising, critical theory and nurses

The concept of consciousness raising has become somewhat tired and jaded in nursing literature. Indeed the notion of consciousness raising and its associated catchcry of 'making the personal political', is almost so hackneyed as to be somewhat unfashionable and clichéd in the 1990s. This is due, at least in part, to the fact that consciousness raising emanated from the women's movement of the 1960s and was originally directed at linking the personal and the political, but in nursing emphasis has often been given to the personal with little recourse to the political. It is thus timely and important to draw on insights afforded by critical perspectives and synthesize them anew with the tenets of consciousness raising in order to make explicit the power relations and structural oppression implicit in the nursing context. If consciousness raising, and the making of the personal political, are combined with the theoretical insights provided by critical theorists such as Faoucault (1977, 1980), it is possible to re-orient and re-energise the somewhat trite and worn catchcry of the personal as political.