ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the complex interplay between power and resistance in Falcon's 1992 novel, Camino sin retorno. It addresses the way in which Lidia Falcon, writing from the left and from a feminist perspective, criticizes the "orthodoxies" of the left, while also suggesting the transformation of society through feminism. Falcon's diverse accounts of the political struggles of the left and the feminist movement draw directly from the turbulent events in her own life. Her political memoirs, Memorias politicas, provide a fascinating portrait of the full range of her militancy as well as significant background information for the understanding of her novels. Falcon's affirmation of the need for a feminist ethics at the end of Camino sin retorno corresponds to a serious meditation on the relationship between feminist theory and practice and leftist militancy that several of her characters articulate throughout the novel.