Journal for Educators, Teachers and Trainers

Abstract

This paper aims to conceptualize the tensions in the notion of citizenship exploring its emancipatory contents and inquiring into its ambiguities, asking for its limits and for the reasons why, when we think about citizenship, we do it in the terms of the liberal tradition. Generally speaking, citizenship is conceived as if there was a break between the citizen and the real human being -marked by class, race, gender and sex. One of the ways to illuminate the meaning of citizenship is by searching into its historical genealogies as they enable the understanding that its nuances, restrictions and expansions are not only a matter of ideas, but the result of historical and social conditions, geographical determinations and political traditions. The trajectory proposed revisits, on the one hand, the Marxist interpretation of the abstract citizen under the light of current crossroads; and, on the other hand, it makes reference to the so-called Wollstonecraft dilemma