Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico

With stunning detail and attention to its significance, Jocelyn Olcott unearths the rich worlds of women’s activism in postrevolutionary Mexico and develops her thesis on the construction of citizenship. Weaving together the works of theorists such as Sheldon Wolin, Joshua Foa Dienstag, Seyla Benhabib, Antonio Gramsci, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Judith Butler, Olcott takes citizenship not as a juridical structure of exclusions and obligations, but rather as a practice and a tool. While engaging such theorists, Olcott attends to the historical moment at hand and shows how Mexican activists, male and female, drew on three modes of citizenship: “liberal invocations of suffrage, traditional expectations of patronage, and revolutionary commitments to popular mobilization” (p. 11). The performance of revolutionary citizenship, she continues, derived from three traditionally masculine activities — military service, labor, and civic engagement. Olcott explores the diversity of women’s civic engagement in at least five regions of Mexico...