A Revolution in the Binary? Gender and the Oxymoron of Revolutionary War in Cuba and Nicaragua

Citation:

Volo, Lorraine Bayard de. 2012. “A Revolution in the Binary? Gender and the Oxymoron of Revolutionary War in Cuba and Nicaragua.” Signs 37 (2): 413-39.

Author: Lorraine Bayard de Volo

Annotation:

The urgency posed by the U.S. “War on Terror” prompted a renewed surge in feminist analyses of war and security, with far-reaching implications for gendered approaches to political violence. The primary focus has been on the United States and its allies. Considerably less attention has been given to smaller nations of the global South, including revolutionary states that resist U.S. neoimperialism. Through the cases of Cuba and Nicaragua, this essay addresses this gap in the literature by training a gender lens on the ways in which the revolutions in smaller nations—first as guerrilla armies, then as revolutionary states—hailed a revolutionary public and discursively engaged with other states by means of certain gendered logics. Gendered analysis of such revolutionary logic is a relatively unexamined means to understand a fuller range of wars and security events. In turn, a focus on armed insurrection and security events of revolution also generates insight into gender relations and efforts at gender equality.

Topics: Gender, Gender Analysis, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-State Armed Groups, Security Regions: Americas, Caribbean countries, Central America Countries: Cuba, Nicaragua

Year: 2012