¿Feminismo Para Todas Las Mujeres?: Competing Discourses in La Revista Alfonsina in the Argentine Democratic Transition, 1983–84

Abstract

After seven years of military dictatorship, intense repression, and state violence resulting in the deaths and forced disappearances of thousands of people, Argentina finally celebrated the permanent return of democracy in 1983. The Argentine democratic transition was also associated with a surge of activism in civil society, including feminist and queer mobilizations. It was in this first year of the democratization process that the independent feminist magazine alfonsina began. The creators sought to publish alfonsina for all women, as a way to transform them into feminists and to construct a fabric of feminist solidarity, particularly after the seven violent years of violence and division. In this thesis, I interrogate the creators’ claim that alfonsina is “para todas las mujeres” to identify both the inclusionary potential and the limitations of this goal. I argue that this goal, and the magazine’s positioning as politically and economically autonomous, introduces competing discourses and often contradictory content throughout the publication due to the creators’ attempts to cater to women from various backgrounds. Additionally, while this positioning does create space for diverse perspectives and even counter-hegemonic potential in the context of Argentine and Latin American feminisms in the 1980s, the magazine also demonstrates some tendencies of liberal feminisms that are tied to the personal experiences and identity politics of the creators.