Women's writing as a way of political intervention in prision's times of Argentina in the seventies

Abstract

This work inscribed in recent Argentine history, the history of women and gender studies investigates how female political prisoners articulated a form of political intervention through the letters and writings sent to their relatives from Villa Devoto prison during the last military dictatorship. These materials which served to bypass the isolation and institutional control reinstate the political senses and meanings these prisoners built between the possibilities of words and the imposition of penitentiary silences. These letters constituted a specific discursive practice and a central space in which feminine writing of the time of confinement broke into. Stretching out as a semantic bridge between the outside world and the inner world, these letters contributed to replenish a political dimension that in theory was forbidden. Thus, this paper seeks to contribute to the line of studies that delve into how women produce specific knowledge and articulate their demands resorting to diverse strategies to achieve their goals.