Life History as Narrative Subversion: Older Mexican Women Resist Authority, Assert Identity, and Claim Power

Abstract

Using the concepts of resistance, identity construction, and communicative democracy, I explore the possibility that older women's life histories create and occupy a potentially transformative space within global research on gender. First, such narratives challenge existing hierarchies of age and gender that systematically disadvantage older women. Second, older women use them to assert their own more complex identities (in opposition to those limiting identities assigned to them by others). Third, through their life stories, older women can contribute to democratic dialogue in society at large. I use life history interviews conducted with older women in Cuernavaca, Mexico from 1995 to 1997 as a specific case that supports my overall argument. I contend that the first two processes are already taking place through the act of storytelling and life history narration itself. The more radical methodological claim of this paper is that the act of constructing and communicating life stories is a legitimate and valuable exercise of (political) power.

Citation

Citeroni, T.B. (2006), "Life History as Narrative Subversion: Older Mexican Women Resist Authority, Assert Identity, and Claim Power", Demos, V. and Texler Segal, M. (Ed.) Gender and the Local-Global Nexus: Theory, Research, and Action (Advances in Gender Research, Vol. 10), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 195-218. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1529-2126(06)10009-0