ERIKA APFELBAUM and ANA VASQUEZ
449
in this assemblage of forty to sixty-year-old women without violating
the rules of respect due to mothers? (Such a transgression is particu–
larly unacceptable in a culture, impregnated with machismo, that
consecrates a veritable cult of motherhood.) Even dictators have to
legitimize their acts of violence. What strategy, then , could the au–
thorities adopt in response to these contradictory exigencies - the
double bind - that held them in a vise grip?
The answer was simple and scathing: obviously these women
were
mad.
A label of madness, they rationalized, ought to be suffi–
cient to stop the movement, to deal the fatal blow.
If
physical violence
toward these women was socially unacceptable, the juxtaposition of
"women/mothers/madwomen" was not. For the authorities, it ap–
peared to be a stroke of strategic genius . A madwoman is by defini–
tion a non interlocutor, someone whose words are meaningless. Bya
single stroke, then, they relegated these women to their one socially
tolerable role, that of mot4ers (mothers mad with grief, perhaps),
and at the same time disqualified their actions. This logic allowed
them to erase the political dimension of the women's demonstration,
and above all to avoid accepting the precedent of having such a polit–
ical action go unpunished. To label a woman "mad" was to send her
back to her proper, nonexistent role in the social and political scheme;
and it rendered pointless any physical violence, which generally sup–
poses the existence of a defined enemy .
The strategy might have succeeded and silenced, once and for
all , these women who otherwise were not in the habit of making
public demonstrations . But, undoubtedly, the force and determina–
tion that can arise from fear and desperation were underestimated,
as was the exhilarating feeling of being no longer alone, of par–
ticipating in a shared confrontation as a means of resisting the absur–
dity that the authorities thought to pass off as reality.
Reversing the authorities' strategy, the women appropriated
the label for themselves-"we are madwomen". In truth, they have
been helped by the ambience of their own sexuality and social status
as women. But beyond this, the women have fashioned it into an of–
fensive weapon . By guarding the trademark of "madwomen," they
have reinforced the political nonstatus conferred on women and in
doing so, have made possible the creation of an unassailable and ir–
repressible movement, one that finds its power in the nonpolitical
and nonthreatening characterization that the authorities themselves
have assigned to it. At the same time, their movement, in all its sub–
versiveness, gives itself a certain impunity by situating itself outside
