To return to a lost paradise is, provided one so wishes, a paradise regained

Abstract

Clara Campoamor (1888–1972) viewed history as a space for critical repetition and the possibility of correction, an idea that runs through her life and work. As she herself stated, ‘History likes to repeat itself…’, her experience of exile following the Spanish Civil War marked a turning point from which she reformulated her political and feminist thinking: an experience marked by loss, but also by the opportunity for intellectual review and renewal.

For Campoamor, exile symbolised a ‘paradise lost’, understood as a break with the republican ideals in which she had placed her trust. In texts such as. In works such as El voto femenino y yo: mi pecado mortal (1935) and La revolución española vista por una republicana (1937), she develops a self-criticism that reveals the limits of progressive political projects regarding the genuine inclusion of women, articulating the notion of “political sin” as an expression of a process of mourning and self-awareness.

From Argentina, this historical and geographical distance allows her to “take a step back” in order to critically reinterpret the founding myths of the Western imagination. Through a feminist lens, she reinterprets figures such as Eve and Lilith and uses the Great Flood as an allegory of moral and political rebirth. This discursive renewal is evident both in her journalistic contributions and in her correspondence, where an intellectual voice in constant transformation can be observed, and in her unpublished correspondence, which reflects a constantly evolving political consciousness and a constant focus on the power of discourse from the political margins. The ‘conquered paradise’ does not represent a conclusion, but rather an active metaphor that runs through narrative writings imbued with lyricism and political reflection, as well as journalistic contributions that contribute to the construction of Campoamor’s feminist persona.