The New Social Subject as Transgender: Woman as Revolutionary Man

Abstract

The purpose of this presentation is to explore: 1) the nature, possibility, or impossibility of the political, and for that, I examine the makeup of the social subject –in this paper that of woman as urban guerrilla; and 2) the understanding of “the feminine” as an entry point to the malleability or transformability of being. How these two questions are related and how the crossover between the political and the philosophical discourse takes place is the burden of this exhibit. My compass in the first point is the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe on hegemony and radical democracy; my compass in the second is Catherine Malabou’s work on plasticity. My ground for this exercise is an interview of Leticia Herrera, urban guerrilla commander of the Sandinista Revolution, published as Guerrillera, mujer y comandante de la Revolución Sandinista. Memorias de Leticia Herrera. The presentation moves directly to the second point, the malleability or transformability of being, as the transgender nature of the social subject: woman as a revolutionary man; and show how this premises the (im)possibility of politics as hegemony or radical democracy.