Women’s Political Status: Female Difference and Public Involvement in Diamela Eltit’s Fuerzas especiales

This article analyzes Fuerzas especiales’ representation of women’s political status and public involvement. From a close reading of the protagonist-narrator’s role as the breadwinner of her family and drawing insights from feminist political theory, this work conducts a theoretically-informed textual analysis of the novels’ view of female public involvement at work in a context of state repression. It aims to unveil the way in which the novel engages critically with the ambiguities of a model of women’s political participation based on female difference and the politics of motherhood.