Revolutionary representations: Gender, imperialism, and culture in the Sandinista Era. Item Type text; Thesis-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Knisely, Lisa Catherine Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 07/10/2021 11:37:12 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/292086 REVOLUTIONARY REPRESENTATIONS: GENDER, IMPERIALISM, AND CULTURE IN THE SANDINISTA ERA by Lisa Catherine Knisely Copyright © Lisa Catherine Knisely 2005 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF WOMEN'S STUDIES In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2 00 5 UMI Number: 1427223 Copyright 2005 by Knisely, Lisa Catherine All rights reserved. INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI UMI Microform 1427223 Copyright 2005 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 2 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This thesis has been submitted in partial fulfilhnent of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. /' SIGNED / (•"V APPROVAL BY THESIS DIRECTOR This thesis has been approved on the date shown below: /¥ Date Professor of Women's Studies 3 Acknowledgmeats Without the help of many wonderful people, this thesis would have been impossible. First, 1 would like to thank my committee for being so enthusiastic about my work. Your faith in my scholarly ability, as well as your insistence on the importance of my work, is greatly appreciated. Caryl Flinn deserves thanks for her unique ability to challenge and critique my work while making it seem like she is giving only praise and compliments. Laura Briggs also deserves thanks for her role as mitigator of my academic insecurity at the times I most needed reassurance. In her role as my professor, but also as my friend and mentor, Liz Ogelsby was encouraging and informing this thesis before it was even a tangible project. Without her extensive knowledge and willing engagement with me as a scholar, this thesis would not have materialized. Thank you, Liz. I owe thanks to one of my undergraduate professors, Karen Kampwirth, because she was the first person to introduced me to the role of gender in international politics. She is also the person who sparked my interest in the Nicaraguan Revolution and U.S. imperialism. Scholarly work like hers was necessary before a project like mine could even be imagined. 1 also want to thank the graduate students of the Latin American Studies department at the University of Arizona for the work that they do and for taking me in as an honorary member of their cohort. I want to thank my peers in the Women's Studies department at the University of Arizona for their resilience and their joy. Outside of the academy, I also owe many thanks. Many friends have supported me tremendously while I wrote this thesis. Thank you all. One friend, in particular, Georgeanne Barrett, went above and beyond the duties of friendship by listening to my nearly constant worries, stresses, and graduate • school dramas and responding with nothing but resounding affirmation of my ability and worth as a scholar and as a person. Thanks, George. In addition to my friends, 1 owe my family much gratitude. I would like to thank my Grandma Gloria for her immense generosity that has provided me with so many opportunities. I would also like to thank my stepmother, Judy Knisely, for being a reliably positive and vocal source of support. Lastly, I want to thank my parents, Tracy Knisely and Catherine Thompson, quite simply, for everything. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: FEMINIST VIEWS ON POLITICAL VIOLENCE ............7 CHAPTER ONE: REVOLUTIONARY NICARAGUAN FEMININITY IN MEMOIRS AND TESTIMONIALS....... ......22 CHAPTER TWO, MURALS THE "NEW MAN," AND THE SANDINISTA CITIZEN 42 CHAPTER THREE: GENDERED IDENTITIES, IMPERIALISM, AND THE NEW YORK TIMES ..64 CONCLUSION 95 WORKS CITED 100 5 ABSTRACT TMs thesis employs the critical insights of poststracturaiism, postcoloniai scholarship, and Third World feminisms to interv ene in feminist scholarship on women and war. It is argued that gender and political violence are mutually constituted and therefore there can be no assumed relationship of women to war. This study's primary focus was to trace discursive representations of gender, violence, citizenship, and nation in Sandinista Nicaragua and the United States during the Reagan presidency. Textual analysis of three cultural areas: memoirs and testimonials, murals, and newspaper articles was used to explore dominant constructions of gender as they intersected with Sandinista nationalism and imperialist U.S. foreign policy. The process of mutual constitution of gender and political violence are then examined in the specific cases of Nicaragua and the U.S. It is concluded that discursive constructions of gender were essential to the politics of both Nicaraguan revolution and U.S. imperialism. "The question is not of female participation in insurgency, or the ground rules of the sexual division of labor, for both which there is 'evidence.' It is, rather, that, both as object of colonialist historiography and as subject of insurgency, the ideological construction of gender keeps the male dominant." -Gayatri Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?", 287 7 INTRODUCTION: FEMINIST VIEWS ON POLITICAL VIOLENCE Women's relationships to violence, war, and peace has received much attention by feminist scholars. Situating women in relation to war is a significant undertaking because i1 cuts across larger debates about both biological and cultural gender roles for women. The debates around women and political violence are significant because they inform of theories of nation, citizenship, democracy, and international relations. When feminist scholars take positions on issues of gender, war and peace there is much at stake. This thesis is positioned itself in opposition to much "Women and War" scholarship. Feminist scholars have often attempted to outline a cross-cultural position on what women's relationship to war is, or should be. Interrogating the role of gender in U.S.-Nicaraguan relations during the Sandinista period (1979-1990), this project asserts that gender does not operate in smoothly predictable or uniform ways across various violent contexts. What constitutes a proper role for women in relationship to war is dependent upon such factors as ethnicity, national identity, class position, and political ideology. Women and war scholarship that positions women, as a group, in a fixed relation to political violence often ignores and erases vital contextual specificities. ' ' 1 will use the term political violence and war interchangeably. War, as it has traditionally been conceptualized, excludes multiple contexts of violence thai are In fact warlike (e.g. the Contra "conflicf in Nicaragua). Given the U.S. government's intentionai categorizations of warlike violence as "low-intensity conflicts" and their use of proxy armies, the traditional conceptualization of war is inadequate. I use the terms interchangeably to gesture towards an expanded notion of what constitutes war. 8 The various positions on gender and violence can be characterized by several major trends. One viewpoint maintains that women are naturally and biologically unfit and not predisposed to be violent. This view asserts that women are biologically in need of protection by (and from) men. While most feminists recognize this position as decidedly conservative, and biologically deterministic, many feminists take care to maintain that characteristics like nurturing, caring, and peacefulness are feminine. In this argument, it is not biology, but women's unique roles within cultures, as caretakers, that makes peace a feminine characteristic. In "The Truth About Women and Peace," Jodi York characterizes this position as the "motherist" position because it is based upon the logic that "mothering (and, consequently, womanhood) focuses on life, war making emphasizes death" (20). And example of this position is found in Sara Ruddick's essay "The Rationality of Care" which outlines a sophisticated defense of the motherist position by arguing that women, as primary caretakers, have access to a "subjugated knowledge" that could be radically disruptive to militarism and war (250). It is this "motherist" position that informed the political work of multiple women's groups such as Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, The Greenham Common in Britain, and Women Strike for Peace in the U.S. Through this moralizing position, women have managed to enact powerful critiques of militarization and effect concrete social change toward the goal of peace. 9 Despite the historical efficacy of the "motheiist" position, it must be examined with criticism. In "Should Women be Soldiers or Pacifists?" April Carter points out that, "being a mother does not necessarily lead to a hatred of war and an empathy with mothers on the enemy side." (35).