Mothering on the Lam: Politics, Gender Fantasies and Maternal Thinking in Women Associated with Armed, Clandestine Organizations in the United States

Abstract

Since the emergence of the contemporary women's movement, activists and scholars have been interested in women who engage in political violence, particularly in the context of left-wing, nationalist and progressive social movements. As part of the new scholarship in women's studies in the early 1970s, researchers investigated the lives of women who played prominent roles in anarchist, socialist and feminist movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Autobiographies of these revolutionary figures, as well as compilations of their letters and speeches were reprinted by radical presses. Feminists also documented first-hand accounts of the experiences of Third World women fighting in guerrilla organizations in their nations' struggles against colonialism. In this period, studies on women and revolution represented not merely academic inquiries. They catalyzed ongoing discussion within the women's movement concerning the historical relationship between feminism and left-wing politics and the implications of these ideological perspectives for women in contemporary Western societies. Although American feminists noted and criticized the level of male domination that operated within socialist and nationalist movements, the early literature invariably affixmed the worthiness of womens' participation in the process of social change, even when nolence is a part ofthat process. By the end ofthe 1970s, however, enthusiasm about the 'marriage' between socialism and feminism began to wane. Some authors continued to argue that women's participation in the front lines