The Personal, the Political, Sanctuary, and Cruelty: Jean Franco in the 1980s

Abstract

In this article I reread Jean Franco´s academic production of the 1980s and argue that her early attention to the relationships between gender and political violence were overlooked. Some of the most radical claims made in her last book "Cruel Modernity" (2016) were already present in her scholarship of the 1980s. Since the inception of military coups in the region, Franco could see that the feminine had come under attack by both the right wing and feminism at the exact historical juncture when the need for them as spaces of sanctuary had become more urgent.