«EL PATRIOTISMO DE LA MUJER» (1876) DE MERCEDES CABELLO: RESIGNIFICACIONES, DESPLAZAMIENTOS Y TENSIONES EN LA ARTICULACIÓN DE UNA GENEALOGÍA FEMINISTA

Abstract

This paper studies the essay “El patriotismo de la mujer” by Mercedes Cabello (1876) from a feminist perspective. In this text, Cabello presents a monolithic reading of the Battle of Callao, whose outcome was controversial. By this means, she also brings to the surface women's participation in national history, something that constituted a submerged knowledge at the time. Hence, I delve onto the strategies through which Cabello re-signifies the “generic” category of “women” in order to articulate a feminist genealogy marked by the constant displacement within generic and nominal forms of the feminine (Valcárcel, 1994). I believe a detailed reading of these displacements is key to pondering the particularities, implications, and silences of the feminist discourse-object-reality of the time.