Alejandra
Castillo (2014)
El
desorden de la democracia. Partidos políticos de mujeres en Chile
Santiago de
Chile: Editorial Palinodia, 194 p.
Reviewed by Eliana Largo
Independent Researcher
The
politics of knowledge suppose in turn politics of ignorance.
valeria flores
“There is politics
only where the singularity of a damage takes
the floor in order to claim
the place of universality proper to every order
of representation. There is politics
only when a ‘non-part part’, neglected/invisibilized, politicizes its own situation and disrupts the established
framework of the political/policing
order of representation, affirming itself as a universal representative and demanding the rearticulation of its particular
position. There is politics, in other words, in every conflict in which the struggle
for the order
of visibility/inclusion is at stake” (p. 19).[1]
With
these words, Alejandra
Castillo opens her recent book El desorden de la democracia. Partidos políticos de mujeres en Chile.
The first part of the book
analyzes, in three chapters, what is understood and postulated as the
signs of disorder of Chilean democracy: “Republican Apories: Women and
Politics”; “Maternal Feminism” (an oxymoron, needless to say, yet
made explicit as such in the postulates of Amanda Labarca regarding the alwaysmother,
everlasting-mother woman);
and “The Female/Feminist Knot”.
For
centuries, women –first in small groups, then in larger organizations, wider movements
and their own political parties– have attempted
(without much success) to solve
the aporetical condition of their
own political, social, and economic
equality qua women within Chile’s male republic. In this state –presided between 2014 and 2018 by a woman, Michelle Bachelet, in her second
period in office– in a cold morning of
May” (p. 20), 1875, a group of
women decided to register in the electoral registry
of San Felipe in order to exercise the
right to vote as “Chilean”, a term that according
to the 1833 Constitution embraces both sexes. Yet,
it is only
in 1952 that they exercise for the
first time the right to universal suffrage. Currently, political parity, quota systems, and balanced representation of men and women
in the access to positions of
popular representation, as well as
within the parties, as members,
are still discussed. Therefore, it remains
an unresolved knot.
In the second part
of the book,
the author navigates the trajectories
accomplished and substantiated
by hundreds of women from
their own political parties between 1919 and 1953 –namely, the Civic Female Party, the Alessandrista Female Party, the National Female Party, and the Progressive Female Party. The
latter three displayed an Ibañista stamp, a type of right-wing populism (although the Progressive Female Party was also connected to the left).
To
read Castillo’s work is to
learn about the local-global patriarchal culture that rules
upon us –with no substantive, structural changes–, a culture that becomes
apparent in the ideological
orientations that permeated the participation
of women in their own political parties and that, under different forms, extends to this
day. The author states that “[t]he disorder of women’s
politics parties in early 20th century was mainly a consequence of the description
of their politics, the confusion
between a progressive rhetoric
(the discourse on women’s emancipation) and a conservative rhetoric of a ‘maternalcivism’ (p. 185).[2]
On the other hand,
this culture is crystalclearly reflected in the generalized unawareness of the historical
participation of Chilean women in female parties. Without sin of ignorance, anyone can ask if
there was such a thing as a disorder in parties, politics, and feminism embedded in the composite feminist
political parties— an almost always remissible
unawareness insofar as women’s history,
considered as ornament or anecdotic
fact, is not an essential part of the
national history (and it is possible to deduce the place
that the history of feminism
might have taken) (p. 11).[3]
Castillo adds that this “unawareness is due to the
old practice of writing history,
which taught us to conjugate
the words politics and party understanding by them a certain universal reason blinded to the differences
between sexes, and yet these words
are universalized as masculine” (p. 11-12).[4]
Similarly, we can
see traits of this localglobal
culture in the words of political
philosophers such as
Etienne Balibar, who states
that the great difficulty of feminism has
been that of determining what would be
the anti-patriarchal institution
that constitutes and maintains its political
identity, in Castillo’s words (p. 13; emphasis added).[5]
This stance reflects a perception that keeps neglecting the dimension of
feminism as a movement, which is crucial for
its existence and transcendence in time. A movement
that depends not on an
anti-patriarchal institution, but rather
on everyday feminist practices, individual as well as collective,
and on autonomous, noninstitutional
groups.
In a similar vein, it
is a common assertion that the achievement of political rights
allows for “participation in power”, which is participation from a standpoint that reifies power as one, singular
entity, external to those who exercise
it from the
top of the patriarchal hierarchy –that power,
we must say, once again, recalling
Foucault. All of this contributes to make the whole
of society more and more ignorant of the fact
that “progress” and the “achievements” of half of the
population (but not exclusively
of this half) do not come from that
power. The critical transformations
waged and promoted by feminist organizations,
collectives, and networks –which address the
causes, issues, and formal
and informal norms that restrict freedom and equality (autonomy, in short) by virtue
of class, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, age, etcetera– are only crystallized
and thereby distorted within that power. Article 1 of Chile’s
Political Constitution states
that people are born free
and equal in dignity and rights. However, we still live in the country of the
(dis)order, of the aporia
instituted by force and accustomed as normal. As Montesquieu said, within a republic, women are free
by law and captive by custom,
which accurately translates feminine political participation in Chile. A situation
similar to Chile’s is experienced
in other countries of the region, as
is confirmed by the study
Gender and Political Parties: Far
from Parity (2011), carried out in 18 countries based
on 94 surveyed political parties. It is
worth mentioning that, in 2014, the
unpublished manuscript of Alejandra Castillo’s important and substantial book was
awarded the Honorary Mention of the Casa de las Américas’ Essay
Prize in Havana, Cuba.
[Translated into English by Felipe Lagos Rojas]
Bibliography
Roza, Vivian,
Llanos, Beatriz and Garzón de la Roza, Gisela (2011). Gender and Political Parties: Far from
Parity. New York: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral
Assistance (International IDEA). Spanish Edition:
2010.
[1] “Sólo hay política allí donde la singularidad de un daño toma la palabra para reclamar para sí el lugar de la universalidad propia a todo orden de representación. Sólo hay política cuando una ‘parte no parte’, excluida/ invisible, politiza su situación y perturba la estructura establecida del orden de representación político/ policial, afirmándose como representante universal y exigiendo la rearticulación de su posición particular. Hay política, en otras palabras, en todo conflicto en donde lo que está en juego es la lucha por el orden de visibilidad/inclusión”.
[2] “El desorden de las políticas de las mujeres de comienzos del siglo XX se deberá principalmente a la descripción de su política confundida entre retóricas progresistas (discurso de la emancipación de las mujeres) y retóricas conservadoras de un ‘civismo materno’”.
[3] “Sin pecar de ignorancia, cualquiera se podría preguntar si hubo algo así como el desorden de los partidos, la política y el feminismo anudados en el sintagma de partidos políticos feministas –desconocimiento casi siempre perdonable debido a que la historia de las mujeres cual ornamento o dato anecdótico, no forma parte esencial de la historia nacional (se puede colegir el lugar que podría ocupar la historia del feminismo) –”.
[4] “desconocimiento debido a una antigua práctica de escribir la historia que nos ha enseñado a conjugar las palabras de política y partido entendiendo por éstas cierta razón universal que no sabe de la diferencia de los sexos, pero que, sin embargo, se universaliza masculinamente.”
[5] “la gran dificultad del feminismo ha sido determinar cuál habría de ser la institución anti-patriarcal que constituiría y mantendría su identidad política.”