ArticlePDF Available

IV. Knowledge from the borderlands: Revisiting the paradigmatic mestiza of Gloria Anzaldúa

Authors:
http://fap.sagepub.com/
Feminism & Psychology
http://fap.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/10/15/0959353511415969.citation
The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/0959353511415969
published online 18 October 2011Feminism & Psychology
Liliana Vargas Monroy
Gloria Anzaldúa
IV. Knowledge from the borderlands: Revisiting the paradigmatic mestiza of
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
can be found at:Feminism & PsychologyAdditional services and information for
http://fap.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:
http://fap.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:
What is This?
- Oct 18, 2011 OnlineFirst Version of Record>>
at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Biblioteca Alfonso Borrero Cabal, S.J. on March 5, 2012fap.sagepub.comDownloaded from
Feminism & Psychology
0(0) 1–10
!The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0959353511415969
fap.sagepub.com
eminism
&
sychology
F
P
Special Feature Contribution
IV. Knowledge from the
borderlands: Revisiting
the paradigmatic mestiza
of Gloria Anzaldu
´a
Liliana Vargas-Monroy
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogota
´-Colombia
Keywords
Borderlands, Gloria Anzaldu
´a, Latin America, Postcolonial theory, Women-of-color
feminism
The publication in 1987 of Borderlands/La Frontera strengthened the theoretical
work of a group of women, feminists and Latin Americans who had been born or
were living in the United States and who expressed in their work – This Bridge
Called My Back (Anzaldu´ a and Moraga, 1981), Cuentos: Stories by Latinas
(Go
´mez et al., 1983) and Loving the War Years (Moraga, 1983), among others –
the experience of inhabiting a territory between two worlds. The paradigmatic
work of Gloria Anzaldu´ a marked a point of inflection for their discussions, con-
solidating perhaps the field of what has been referred to as a women-of-color fem-
inism, a feminism in the diaspora, clearly postcolonial and on the border. This
article considers two issues in relation to the work of Anzaldu´ a. The first refers
to the peculiarities and dierences that distinguish her work in relation to certain
proposals of white feminism (in particular, I will draw upon the work of Donna
Haraway). The second is related to the epistemological consequences of this
dierentiation.
Two mestiza sisters
I will begin my discussion considering some elements of Donna Haraway’s work,
particularly regarding the first chapter of her (1997) book Modest Witness@Second
Millenium. FemaleMan Meets OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience. In this
chapter, Haraway uses the work of Anzaldu´ a to construct the image of the
Mestiza Cosmica. In her discussion, she describes a Lynn Randolph painting
Corresponding author:
Liliana Vargas-Monroy, Facultad de Psicologı
´a-Universidad Javeriana. Carrera 5a no 39-00. Bogota
´-Colombia,
S.A., Bogota
´, Colombia.
Email: vargasmliliana@yahoo.com
at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Biblioteca Alfonso Borrero Cabal, S.J. on March 5, 2012fap.sagepub.comDownloaded from
which clearly resembles the physical features of Anzaldu´ a. I will begin with a
fragment of the text which condenses the dierences I would like to draw attention
to, italicizing below what will serve as the central point of my reflection:
A mestiza stands with one foot in Texas and one foot in Mexico. She is taming a
diamond-back rattlesnake with one hand and manipulating the Hubble telescope with
another .... La Mestiza Cosmica is the kind of modest witness coming into existence
at the end of the Second Christian Millennium, when what can count as freedom,
justice, knowledge, and skill are again very much at stake in the mutated experimental
way of life .... La Mestiza Cosmica is historically specific, located in a particular time,
place, and body; she is, therefore, a figure representing the kind of global conscious-
ness a modest witness should cultivate. The rattlesnake and the four hands suggest a
mode of consciousness called the Coatlicue state, associated with an Aztec goddess, as
theorized by Gloria Anzaldu´ a. Not unlike Anzaldu
´a, who maintains a necessarily eclec-
tic altar on her computer, Randolph’s mestiza joins the snake and the Hubble telescope to
demonstrate the kind of vision needed in the New World Order. (Haraway, 1997: 20)
Using the dierence proposed between the Mestiza Cosmica and Anzaldu´ a’s
mestiza, I suggest that this contrast evokes two dierent narratives: one, the nar-
rative that Haraway builds from her idea of a cyborg conscience, and the other the
narrative that Anzaldu´ a has constructed in Borderlands/La Frontera.
The work of Donna Haraway implies a strong critique of certain forms of sci-
entific knowledge. In this text, Haraway (1997) critiques the experimental point of
departure that develops a particular form of testimony, defining modesty as one of
its central virtues.
1
The virtue of modesty that characterizes the Modest Witness
the scientist – implies the concealment of its positions, emotions and opinions, with
a certain inexpressiveness which renders invisible the subject who is speaking.
Haraway proposes, with some humor, that this allows him (sic) to speak as a
legitimate ventriloquist of the objective world:
Modesty is one of the founding virtues of what we call modernity. This is the virtue
that guarantees that the modest witness is the legitimate and authorized ventriloquist
for the object world, adding nothing from his mere opinions, from his biasing embodi-
ment. And so he is endowed with the remarkable power to establish the facts. He
bears witness: he is objective; he guarantees the clarity and purity of objects. His
subjectivity is his objectivity. His narratives have a magical power — they lose all
trace of their history as stories, as products of partisan projects, as contestable rep-
resentations, or as constructed documents in their potent capacity to define the facts.
The narratives become clear mirrors, fully magical mirrors, without once appealing to
the transcendental or the magical. (1997: 24)
For Haraway (1997), the Modest Witness is the basis for the model of western
science, both European and masculine, which has followed us to the present day
and which has facilitated the notion of objectivity, establishing a strong
2Feminism & Psychology 0(0)
at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Biblioteca Alfonso Borrero Cabal, S.J. on March 5, 2012fap.sagepub.comDownloaded from
dierentiation between the object and subject of knowledge. This form of disem-
bodied knowledge, through dierent discursive mechanisms, brings about the con-
cealment of its positions and interests. Against the Modest Witness, Haraway
introduces a new subject of knowledge which she calls the ‘Mutated Modest
Witness’ who is capable of an embodied form of knowledge.
In this way, Haraway (1997) does not completely abandon the Modest Witness;
rather, because of her faith in science (‘I sign into this religion’ she says to us in her
text Crittercam: Haraway, 2007: 185), she suggests the ‘Mutated Modest Witness’
with a viewpoint that is situated and has not only the capacity to reflect, but also to
diract knowledge. Her proposal is a critique of illustrated science, which para-
doxically is located within the same tradition, indicating a mutation in its path.
This is why Haraway can arm her faith in science; it is also why her mestiza is
accompanied by the Hubble telescope.
The fragment quoted initially seems to indicate that she finds material for this
new ‘Mutated Modest Witness’ in the new Mestiza proposed by Anzaldu´ a (2007) in
Borderlands/La Frontera. Nevertheless, the fragment also clearly indicates that the
line separating Randolph’s mestiza and Anzaldu´ a’s mestiza is not a tenuous one:
‘The Mestiza Cosmica connects the snake and the telescope of Hubble, while
Anzaldu´ a’s mestiza identifies with the snake and with the state of conscience
called Coatlicue, proposed in the mystical tradition, within the knowledge of the
indigenous Mexican cultures’ (Haraway, 1997: 37). This is why Anzaldu´ a’s mestiza
necessarily supports an eclectic altar, perhaps distinguishing her destiny from that
of the Mestiza Cosmica. The two mestizas are, however, sisters and it could be
concluded that Haraway finds in the one (Anzaldu´ a’s mestiza) the inspiration for
the other.
Two forms of knowledge
This dierentiation makes it possible to suggest that the two mestizas, although
sisters, respond to dierent traditions and trajectories of knowledge. Haraway’s
mestiza continues in the scientific tradition (and it is possible to clearly locate her in
the Critical Studies of Science), whilst Anzaldu´ a’s mestiza, in spite of giving inspi-
ration to some elements of the Mestiza Cosmica, cannot be located within this
tradition
2
and is better placed in what the post-colonial Latin American theorists
have called ‘border thinking’ (Mignolo, 2003).
In the introduction of the Spanish edition of his book Local Histories, Global
Designs, Mignolo (2003) proposes the denomination of gnosis to capture a wider
range of forms of knowledge which philosophy and epistemology contributed to
casting away (in this he is following the ideas of the African theorist Valentin Y.
Mundimbe [1988]). The origin of the word gnosis refers to knowledge in general,
without specifying the dierence between doxa (common opinion) and episteme
(formalized knowledge). Mignolo proposes a ‘border gnosis’ or ‘border thinking’ as
a kind of knowledge from a subaltern perspective. This implies a ‘knowledge oth-
erwise’, a knowledge conceived from the borders of the modern /colonial
Vargas-Monroy 3
at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Biblioteca Alfonso Borrero Cabal, S.J. on March 5, 2012fap.sagepub.comDownloaded from
world system. Hence ‘border thinking’ could be a powerful and emergent form of
comprehension or episteme that absorbs hegemonic forms of knowledge from the
perspective of the subaltern (Mignolo, 2003).
As subaltern, queer and someone of the third world in the United States,
Anzaldu´ a (2007) recognizes herself as being multiply situated, complex, contradic-
tory and many in one. This is why she chooses to narrate her experience from
categories that are not part of the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture, where she is con-
tradictorily immersed. Thus, she constructs new histories and a new and powerful
narrative that proposes not only another history, but also another subjectivity, one
unimaginable from ‘the advantageous position of the Cyclops-type self-satisfied eye
of the dominant subject’. (Haraway, 1997: 9).
Anzaldu´ a’s (2007) theory arises then from her own history and connects with the
emergence of new spaces, of new narratives of refuges, which she constructs by
weaving her histories with the subaltern knowledge of the indigenous Mexican
people. In considering fragments of the texts of Anzaldu´ a, I will present particu-
lar points where border feminism involves epistemological ruptures and challenges
for scientific knowledge (including their mutated versions) as well as for psychol-
ogy, a clear inheritor of this form of thought. In doing this, I would like to bring
out some of the possible queries that could be posed in this sense from the work of
Anzaldu´ a.
Knowledge in the borderlands
But I, like other queer people, am two in one body, both male and female. I am the
embodiment of the ‘hieros gamos’, the coming together of opposite qualities within.
(Anzaldu´ a, 2007: 41)
Anzaldu´ a inhabits multiple identities. Her territory: Borderland (La Frontera) is a
physical, geographical place of uncertainty.
3
This place opens the possibility of a
new psychological, sexual and spiritual politics (Perez, 2005) that provides the
space for new forms of knowledge. Like a mestiza in multiple senses,
4
Anzaldu´ a
lives in this border ground, a place of mixture that is not only racial:
A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of
an unnatural boundary. It is a constant state of transition. The prohibited and for-
bidden are its inhabitants. Los atravesados live here: the squint eye, the perverse, the
queer, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulato, the half-breed, the half dead; in
short those who cross over, pass over, or go through the confines of the ‘normal’.
(Anzaldu´ a, 2007: 25)
Borderlands are a place of instability. In contrast to the canons of western
thought, which look for the certainties of dierentiations and which construct
their own imagery from identities based on these dierentiations, the borderland
4Feminism & Psychology 0(0)
at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Biblioteca Alfonso Borrero Cabal, S.J. on March 5, 2012fap.sagepub.comDownloaded from
appears as undetermined, a place which is constantly in transition and which pro-
duces a feeling of unease. In this way, if illustrated science generates strong and
established binary logics, subversion arises with the promise of the territories of
transition and borders. Lugones (1994) sees the figure of the mestiza as one of
resistance, capable of inhabiting these borderlands, since she herself is
unclassifiable.
In dierent texts, Anzaldu´ a (2002, 2007, 2009) suggests a form of knowledge
which challenges the rational dichotomy of the modern/colonial world system and
makes the way to the borderland possible. Her elaborations, therefore, have a
dierent point of demarcation working from an undetermined area between fem-
inist critique, theory and the narrative. Her writing also departs from many of the
traditional forms of writing in the disciplines of the West. For Anzaldu´ a, writing
must be alive and must produce transformations. When she writes, she goes to
narratives which rearticulate and recreate indigenous traditions, recovering the
voice of another type of knowledge; in her writing the word jumps, hurts and
heals; it is, in fact, a spellbinding word.
This knowledge has a dierent voice, an intonation and a melody that speaks,
and is impossible to find in the voice of the Modest Witness; Anzaldu´ a’s voice is
alive and her writing has a force, implying a trip and a transition.
5
In this way it is
impossible to separate words such as ‘knowledge’, ‘charm’ and ‘transformation’ in
her work:
I look at my fingers, see plumes growing there. From the fingers my feathers, black
and red ink drips across the page. Escribo con la tinta de mi sangre. I write in red. Ink.
Intimately knowing the smooth touch of article, its speechlessness, before I spill myself
on the insides of trees. (Anzaldu´ a, 2007: 93)
In the following fragment written in Spanish,
6
Anzaldu´ a considers writing as a
muse. It is a muse that tortures and awakens self-consciousness:
Musa bruja, venga. Cu´ brese con una sa
´bana y espante mis demonios que a rempu-
jones y a cachetadas me roban la pluma, me rompen el suen
˜o. Musa, ¡misericordia!
´game, musa bruja ¿Por que
´huye uste
´en mi cara? Su grito me desarrolla de mi
caracola, me sacude el alma. Vieja quı
´tese de aquı
´con sus manos de navaja. Ya no me
despedaze mi cara. Vaya con sus pinches un
˜as que me desgarran de los ojos hasta los
talones. Va
´yese a la tiznada. Que no me coman, le digo. Que no me coman sus nueve
dedos canı
´bales.
Hija negra de la noche, carnala ¿Por que
´me sacas las tripas, por que
´cardas mis
entran
˜as?
Este hilvanando palabras con tripas me esta
´matando. Jija de la noche ¡vete a la
chingada! (Anzaldu´ a, 2007: 72)
Vargas-Monroy 5
at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Biblioteca Alfonso Borrero Cabal, S.J. on March 5, 2012fap.sagepub.comDownloaded from
After considering border identities, border knowledge and forms of writing
which come from those borders, it is possible to indicate some of the challenges
to traditional forms of scientific knowledge that arise from the work of Anzaldu´ a.
Firstly, it should be recognized that her work operates from a dierent place from
that which characterizes scientific reason. This new point of departure makes pos-
sible a way of thinking about forms of knowledge that cannot be separated from
the experience of transition and transformation. This is why it is a matter of think-
ing through categories such as mestiza which do not fit the logics of dichotomy.
The journey through reading/writing is another key element in the work of
Anzaldu´ a. The experience of her writing and our reading therefore becomes trans-
formative, presenting the possibility of re-writing one’s own history.
Autohistory-theory: A path from our own subjectivity
to the social world
The struggle is inner: Chicano, Indio, American Indian, mojado, Mexicano, immi-
grant Latino, Anglo in power, working class Anglo, Black, Asian – our psyches
resemble the border towns and are populated by the same people. The struggle has
always been inner and is played out in outer terrains. Awareness of our situation must
come before inner changes, which in turn come before changes in society. Nothing
happens in the real world unless it first happens in the images in our heads. (Anzaldu´ a,
2007: 109)
The category of autohistory-theory brings together some of the elements of what
might be thought of as the methodological proposal of Anzaldu´ a (Keating, 2005), a
proposal that comes through an exercise with our own subjectivity. Subjectivity
then emerges as a central element, articulating the possibilities of social transfor-
mation. It is a matter of invoking one’s own history (‘the struggle is inner’) and
recreating larger histories (‘played out in outer terrains’), since only in this way is
there a possibility of social transformation (‘nothing happens in the world unless it
first happens in the images in our heads’). In this way our own psychology and
desires are the source of transformation.
It is perhaps from this point that the multiple interpellations that Anzaldu´ a’s
work make to psychology become clearer. Her ideas and images speak about a
subjective world clearly intersecting with the social. However, as border knowl-
edge, we would only find elements close to her proposals in discussions that are also
on the borders of the discipline and that constitute a critique of modern thought
(e.g. Enriquez, 1992; Owusu-Bempah and Howitt, 2000).
It is therefore possible to say that in at least three ways the work of Anzaldu´ a
(2007) demonstrates dierences as regards modern thought (as well as scientific
psychology). The first one is related to the rebellious opposition to binaries that is
made clear by the idea of borderlands; the second one aims to eliminate the dis-
tinction between the knower and the known, positing instead a vision of our own
6Feminism & Psychology 0(0)
at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Biblioteca Alfonso Borrero Cabal, S.J. on March 5, 2012fap.sagepub.comDownloaded from
subjectivity as the center of knowledge; and finally the third one rejects (scien-
tific) control, and rather appeals to the experiences of uncertainty, transition and
crisis.
Interpellating Latin American feminism
Within Latin American feminism, Anzaldu´ a’s proposals have stimulated a Mestiza
feminism (Saldivar-Hull, 2000), which allows a movement from identity to post-
identity politics, thus challenging essentialist visions of women. In this way, it
opens a space for the recognition of minority subjectivities.
The question of autonomy and identity considered by many to be a feature of
Latin-American feminism (Alvarez et al., 2002, Curiel, 2009), is challenged by
Gloria Anzaldu´ a’s category ‘La Frontera’ (Borderland) which opens a space for
a non-essentialist epistemology. This is an epistemology of frontier capable of
thinking identity conflicts and contradictions in many creative ways:
The psychological borderlands, the sexual borderlands and the spiritual border-
lands are not particular to the Southwest. In fact, the Borderlands are physically
present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of dierent
races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes
touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy. (Anzaldu´ a,
2007: 27)
The displacement from an essentialist way of thinking to a non-essentialist per-
spective has been signaled as a movement to decolonize feminism (Sua
´rez Navas
and Herna
´ndez, 2008). This movement contributes to a more complex feminism
and to the constitution of an always mobile feminine subject.
Stories as a way of healing
Finally, I would like to use some examples of how, in Anzaldu´ a’s work, narrative
interweaves with theory and experience. In the third part of Borderlands/La
Frontera, Anzaldu´ a (2007) recovers the figure of Coyolxauhqui, the ancient
Aztec goddess, who was cut into pieces due to the rivalries with her brother. The
big stone that represents Coyolxauhqui was found accidentally in an excavation
near the Templo Mayor in 1978. In dierent writings, Anzaldu´ a (2007, 2009)
invokes the memory of this mutilated body, which she considers a metaphor for
everything that has been broken in the mestiza, an inner state that must be over-
come to create self-awareness (Kattau, 2007). Anzaldu´ a proposes that the recon-
struction of the dismembered goddess is synonymous with change and the return of
exiled emotions, creating the possibility of healing. In this sense, for Anzaldu´ a, the
fact that the stone was found symbolizes a kind of return of all the personal and
social fragmentations we experience, and indicates a means of transition for our
own healing (Anzaldu´ a, 2009).
Vargas-Monroy 7
at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Biblioteca Alfonso Borrero Cabal, S.J. on March 5, 2012fap.sagepub.comDownloaded from
Anazaldu´ a invokes Coyolxauhqui as a way of explaining her feelings. In the
following excerpt Anzaldu´ a calls to the fragmented goddess during the terrorist
attack on New York (and the US Pentagon) on September 11, 2001:
The day the towers fell, me sentı
´como [I felt like] Coyolxauhqui, la luna [the moon].
Algo me agarro
´y me sacudio
´[Something grabbed me and shook me], frightening la
sombra [soul] out of my body. I fell in pieces into that pitch-black brooding place.
Each violent image of the towers collapsing, transmitted live all over the world then
repeated a thousand times on TV, sucked the breath out of me, each image etched on
my mind’s eye. Wounded, I fell into shock, cold and clammy. The moment frag-
mented me, dissociating me from myself. Arresting every vital organ in me, it
would not release me. (Anzaldu´ a, 2009: 218)
In a similar vein, Anzaldu´ a appeals to the figure of Coyolxauhqui to speak about
the fragmentations that must be healed, and Coatlicue, the mother of Coyolxauhqui,
illustrates this healing. Her proposal again appears as a narrative: Coatlicue, the
serpent goddess of the darkness and the light, contains all contradictions. She
reigned before the Aztecs came to be a military and warlike bureaucracy, at which
point she was forgotten (Anzaldu´ a, 2007). Because of her misfortunes, Coatlicue can
still help us to find the way, to re-compose what we have lost:
Coatlicue depicts the contradictory. In her figure, all the symbols important to the
religion and philosophy of the Aztecs are integrated. Like Medusa, the Gorgon, she is
a symbol of the fusion of opposites: the eagle and the serpent, heaven and the under-
world, life and death, mobility and immobility, beauty and horror ... when we are not
living up to our potentialities and thereby impeding the evolution of the soul or worse.
Coatlicue the Earth opens and plunges us into her maw, devours us. By keeping the
conscious mind occupied or immobile, the germination work takes place in the deep,
dark earth of the unconscious. (Anzaldu´ a, 2007: 69)
In following Anzaldu´ a in the exercise of constructing new narratives, it is pos-
sible to wonder if in these times humankind is inhabiting the black ground in which
Coatlicue, goddess of multiplicity, keeps her detainees immobile until they success-
fully integrate, thus bringing opposites closer. As the western mind is busy and
immobilized, perhaps something is germinating in the dark, deep ground of the
unconscious (Aigner-Varoz, 2000). Anzaldu´ a speaks to us about a knowledge that
refuses to disappear. This knowledge is in a battle to the death with other forms of
knowledge that have lost the way to the borderlands.
Notes
1. This concurred with the arguments of Shapin and Schaffer (1985) in their studies on
Robert Boyle, a scientist of the 17th century who was considered one of the founding
fathers of experimental science (identified in the work as a ‘modest witness’).
8Feminism & Psychology 0(0)
at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Biblioteca Alfonso Borrero Cabal, S.J. on March 5, 2012fap.sagepub.comDownloaded from
2. Discussing this issue, Paula Moya (1997) makes a critique of postmodern feminism. To
Moya, postmodern feminism has generated a way of considering the differences that
paradoxically eliminate such differences. I am following this critique when I insist on the
distinction between the Mestiza Cosmica and Anzaldu´ a’s mestiza.
3. Recovering a Nahuatl word, Anzaldu´ a calls the borderlands: ‘Nepantla’, the spaces in
between worlds. Her proposal is that transformation occurs in these places which are
unstable and unpredictable, producing fear and anxiety.
4. Mestiza is a word that designates a person of mixed race, in Latin America the offspring
of a Spanish American and an American Indian. In Anzaldu´ a’s work the word could be
used as a metaphor of different kinds of mixtures.
5. Keating (2005) proposes that Anzaldu´ a shapes her theory as transformative writing or
‘Shaman aesthetics’; her stories (prose and poetry) have the ability to transform the
storyteller and the listener into someone or something else.
6. Boderlands/La Frontera is written in three languages: Nahualt, Spanish and English.
This is a gesture that contests the dominance of English as the main academic language.
References
Aigner-Varoz E (2000) Metaphors of a mestiza consciousness: Anzaldu´ a’s Borderlands/La
Frontera. MELUS 25(2, Latino/a Identities): 47–62.
Alvarez SE, Friedman Jay E, Beckman E, Blackwell M, Chinchilla N, Lebon N, Navarro M
and Tobar Rios M (2002) Encountering Latin American and Caribbean Feminisms.
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28(2): 537–580.
Anzaldu´ a G (2002) (Un) natural bridges, (un) safe spaces. In: Anzaldu´ a G and Keating AL
(eds) This Bridge we Call Home, Radical Visions for Transformation. New York:
Routledge, 1–6.
Anzaldu´ a G (2007) Borderlands/La Frontera, 3rd edn. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute.
Anzaldu´ a G (2009) Let us be the healing of the wound: The Coyolxauhqui imperative—La
sombra y el suen
˜o. In: Keating AL (ed.) The Gloria Anzaldu
´a Reader. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 303–318.
Anzaldu´ a G and Moraga C (eds) (1981) This Bridge Called My Back. Boston, MA:
Persephone Press.
Curiel O (2009) Panel: Los encuentros feministas latinoamericanos, ana
´lisis y perspectivas.
Unpublished article. Escuela de Estudios de Ge
´nero. Bogota
´: Universidad Nacional de
Colombia.
Enriquez VG (1992) From Colonial to Liberation Psychology: The Philippine Experience.
Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.
Go
´mez A, Moraga C and Romo-Carmona M (eds) (1983) Cuentos: Stories by Latinas.
New York: Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press.
Haraway D (1997) Modest Witness@Second Millenium. FemaleMan Meets OncoMouse:
Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge.
Haraway D (2007) Crittercam: Compounding eyes in NatureCulture. In: Selinger E (ed.)
Expanding Phenomenology: Companion to Ihde. New York: SUNY Press.
Kattau C (2007) Review of ‘Entre mundos / among worlds: New perspectives on Gloria
Anzaldu´ a’ edited by Ana Louise Keating. Wagadu 4: 201–203.
Keating A (2005) Entre Mundos / Among Worlds: New Perspectives on Gloria Anzaldu
´a. New
York: Palgrave.
Lugones M (1994) Purity, impurity, and separation. Signs 19(2): 458–479.
Vargas-Monroy 9
at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Biblioteca Alfonso Borrero Cabal, S.J. on March 5, 2012fap.sagepub.comDownloaded from
Mignolo W (2003) Historias Locales/ Disen
˜os Globales. Colonialidad, Conocimientos
Subalternos y Pensamiento Fronterizo. Madrid: Akal.
Moraga C (1983) Loving in the War Years/Lo que nunca paso por sus labios. Boston: South
End Press.
Moya P (1997) Postmodernism, ‘realism’ and the politics of identity: Cherrie Moraga and
Chicana feminism. In: Alexander J and Tapalde Mohanty Ch (eds) Feminist Genealogies,
Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures. New York: Routledge, 125–150.
Mudimbe VY (1988) The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge.
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Owusu-Bempah K and Howitt D (2000) Psychology beyond Western Perspectives. London:
Wiley-Blackwell.
Perez E (2005) Gloria Anzaldu´ a: La Gran Nueva Mestiza Theorist, Writer, Activist-Scholar.
NWSA Journal 17(2): 1–10.
Saldivar-Hull S (2000) Chicana Gender Politics and Literature. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press.
Shapin S and Schaffer S (1985) Leviathan and the Air Pump. Hobbes, Boyle and the
Experimental Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Sua
´rez Navas L and Herna
´ndez A (2008) Decolonizando el Feminismo. Madrid: Ediciones
Ca
´tedra.
Liliana Vargas-Monroy is associate professor in Psychology and Cultural Studies at
the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogota
´-Colombia.
10 Feminism & Psychology 0(0)
at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Biblioteca Alfonso Borrero Cabal, S.J. on March 5, 2012fap.sagepub.comDownloaded from
... 263). For example, Vargas-Monroy (2011) illustrates how Haraway's (1997) "mestiza cosmica" reflects a mutation of modern science, in which the disembodied nature of knowledge is not abandoned but rather "diffracted" through being situated and embodied. In contrast, Anzaldúa's (1987Anzaldúa's ( /1999) "mestiza" does not connect with modern science at all, but rather implies a "knowledge otherwise," through which new histories, narratives, and subjectivities can be constructed (Vargas-Monroy, 2011). ...
... For example, Vargas-Monroy (2011) illustrates how Haraway's (1997) "mestiza cosmica" reflects a mutation of modern science, in which the disembodied nature of knowledge is not abandoned but rather "diffracted" through being situated and embodied. In contrast, Anzaldúa's (1987Anzaldúa's ( /1999) "mestiza" does not connect with modern science at all, but rather implies a "knowledge otherwise," through which new histories, narratives, and subjectivities can be constructed (Vargas-Monroy, 2011). I am not saying that cross-pollination of ideas should not happen, but rather seek to illustrate the importance of attending to border-crossings; how analyzing them can be generative in terms of advancing our understandings of phenomena, theories, and also the borders themselves. ...
Article
Full-text available
Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang develop the concept of “refusal” as an essential methodology for decolonizing social sciences, that I suggest provides an opening for white scholars to contribute to decolonizing projects. In this article, I reflect on my attempts at engaging with my colonial complicities, as a white European woman doing research on comprehensive sexuality education and young people's agency in Tanzania. I present this discussion as a series of refusals interspersed throughout more conceptual discussions on how feminist and social psychological theorizing, and post‐/de‐colonial problematizations of it, have advanced my understanding of agency, and shaped my approach and research design. In drawing these literatures together, along with my own practical efforts at applying them, I attempt to mark out, but also problematize, potentials for white people's anti‐colonial praxis in working across borders. I conclude with some broad thoughts on the particularities of refusals connected to whiteness and the neoliberal university.
... L'approche du « témoin muté » est l'héritière des théories de science critique (Haraway, 1997) ainsi que des approches féministes postcoloniales (Anzaldúa, 1989 ;Vargas-Monroy, 2011). Le « témoin muté » et semblable au « témoin métisse » (Anzaldúa, 1989). ...
Article
Full-text available
La présente contribution retrace le processus de co-construction d’une « ethnographie du proche » qui durant 20 mois fut focalisée sur les stratégies des travailleuses migrantes pour accéder à la protection sociale. L’auteure propose d’esquisser de nouvelles pratiques de production du savoir inspirées des travaux de Donna Haraway, telles que l’adoption d’une posture de « témoin muté » permettant de rééquilibrer les relations de pouvoir entre le participant et l’auteur.
Chapter
This chapter describes the study about Australian Muslim women on which this book is based. It begins with an introduction to the 20 Muslim women who participated in the study and provides an overview of the interviews conducted with the women. The decolonial feminist methodology used to theorise and analyse Australian Muslim women’s subjectivities is presented. The chapter begins by delineating the use of the postmodern concept of subjectivity in the study and then reviews intersectional decolonial feminism, with a particular focus on Gloria Anzaldúa’s ‘borderlands’ feminist theory developed by Maria Lugones. It then enters new territory by bridging theoretical epistemological insights from borderlands theory with discourse analysis. Guidelines are provided on how to undertake a decolonial feminist border analysis of the subjectivities of Australian Muslim women’s experiences of oppression and resistance across intersecting relations of power in light of the broader discursive, material and political context of their lives. As part of this methodology, Maria Lugones’s work on world travelling is introduced, to bring to the fore critical questions between the knower and the known, and to centre experience as a site of knowledge and knowledge production.
Article
The main purpose of this article is to bring to the fore the nexus between what borderlands theory stands for and the mushrooming of community archives in these areas as a form of counter-archiving and documenting the ‘other’. Zimbabwe's borderlands are uniquely inhabited by the marginalised ethnic indigenous groups of people. This prevalent borderland phenomenon has seen the growth of community archives which border on archival activism. Therefore, this article, through literature review interrogates further this borderland phenomenon by giving an overview picture of the nexus between community archives and Zimbabwe's borderlands. One of the findings reveals that these community archives which come in different formats such as archives, museums, trusts, oral history groups and language associations seem to be a counter move by the marginalised to tell their stories which are side-lined by those in power. It is now almost axiomatic to conclude that the stories of those in borderlands are scarcely documented in the mainstream heritage institutions in Zimbabwe. Also, one of the leitmotifs which runs through the article is how the concepts of Information and Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D) are used by community archives in borderlands to further their objectives.
Article
Few studies have examined how Mexican-origin mothers experience epistemic harm irrespective of its impact on childrearing. Clinicians and researchers can benefit from understanding how public narratives of (un)belonging influence the development of Mexican-origin mothers’ knowledge construction and identity as knowers. We used Chicana decolonial feminisms to examine the epistemic experiences of seven Mexican-origin mothers in the US–Mexico borderlands during a period of heightened racist, nativist, and anti-family violence. Participants between the ages of 22 and 51 years completed in-depth semi structured testimonio interviews in Spanish, English, and Spanglish, an admixture of both English and Spanish common among bilingual Americans of Mexican descent. Epistemic experiences were intertwined with crossing, bridging, and the liminality associated with navigating diverse citizenship discourses as gendered, racialized knowers. Three themes were identified including brown-on-brown conflict, discrimination denial, and co-family as sources of new knowledge. Participants experienced epistemic harm from expected and unexpected sources, including within-family invalidations that were especially disorienting. Epistemic growth arose from relational, integrated co-construction of new knowledge, but epistemic harm also appeared to cultivate internalized nativist fears in some participants.
Article
Fifteen Maya Ixil and K’iche’ women of Chajul, Guatemala, were interviewed 17 years after publishing their feminist participatory action photovoice research. Their book documents gross violations of human rights during nearly 36 years of armed conflict and their memories of survivance and persistence. A constructivist grounded theory analysis of in-depth interviews with these Maya Ixil and K’iche’ women contributed to the authors’ “bottom up” meaning making of the women's narratives – stories that reflect memories of participatory, community-based workshops and community actions in the wake of genocidal violence. The latter included performances of: presence despite absences; profound losses amidst ongoing suffering; renewed and transformative engagement with traditional beliefs and practices; women's protagonism evidenced through enhanced skills; new capacities performed in multiple contexts within and beyond their community's borders. We analyze these narratives of protagonism and persistence to elucidate some of the multiple contributions of long-term feminist community-based accompaniment and participatory processes as resources for rethreading life and wellbeing in the wake of war.
Article
Full-text available
In this paper, I examine alternative feminist activism and social movements in Egypt by analyzing BuSSy. BuSSy is a performance art group that hosts storytelling workshops and monologues of taboo and “shameful” personal stories that challenge societal and state-sanctioned normative discourses on femininity/womanhood and masculinity/manhood. Drawing on transnational feminist scholarship and queer theory and using collective memory as a lens, I argue that BuSSy’s storytelling is an act of airing Egypt’s dirty laundry, queering normative discourses to enable feminist counter-memorializing. Based on content analysis of secondary data including BuSSy’s published interviews, YouTube videos, website and Facebook images, and testimonies from 2006 to 2020, my analysis reveals BuSSy as curating an “archive of feelings” centralizing gendered narratives of shame. I examine how BuSSy’s affectively contagious storytelling leads to feminist social change by empowering storytellers and listeners. BuSSy’s works create cathartic experiences to shed stigma and shame. Finally, I reconceptualize feminist activism and collective memories outside of the 2011 Egyptian revolution and contribute to the literature on shame by analyzing how BuSSy identifies and counters shame’s silencing power. Keywords shame, gender and affect, queering discourse, honor, collective memory, feminist social movements
Article
Campus counterspaces exist as spaces where Brown and Black students can promote their own learning, and where their experiences are considered valid and critical knowledge. However, research on classrooms as counterspaces has often been limited to ethnic studies courses. Using data collected from a graduate-level research methods course situated in the U.S, this study explores what constitutes a classroom counterspace, and how instructors can create classroom counterspaces. Data were mainly collected through student conversations, reflections, classroom observations, and field notes. Drawing from Anzaldúa’s borderlands theory, the study revealed that classroom counterspaces recognize the complexity of Brown and Black identity, push back against whiteness, and support Brown and Black students’ vulnerable and honest perspectives on the academy. These findings highlight areas where instructors can rethink their pedagogical approaches to create classroom counterspaces, and suggest that classroom counterspaces also push against the hegemony found in current U.S. higher education.
Article
Full-text available
The metics, or those who live in-between several different cultures, nations, races, ethnicities, or identities, have a major epistemological advantage: they are more likely to develop a way of knowing, different from Western rationality, that could help transform oppressive institutions and identities. I will call this way of knowing metis, and argue that it allows one to handle more effectively ambiguous and complex situations. I will define it as the art of playing with contradictions, and maintain that it generates new knowledge from the tension between divergent forces. Even though metis works with or through contradictions, it does not violate the principle of non-contradiction, and in this sense is not incompatible with rationality. In fact, rationality is unsustainable without metis. To elaborate these ideas I will rely on several concepts developed by Chicana writer Gloria Anzaldúa and Eastern European philosopher Merab Mamardashvili. Speaking from different cultural and geopolitical contexts, both thinkers maintain that it is epistemologically more advantageous to position oneself in-between major cultures and identities.
Article
In this article, I propose an understanding of the Global Hispanophone as a dynamic of (dis)entanglement, taking as points of departure a global history of science perspective, as well as feminist and decolonial science and technology studies. Discussing conceptual thinking on issues such as the circulation and noncirculation of knowledge and objects in colonial contexts, I develop a number of suggestions with regard to how scholars might study the entanglement (relationality) of different entities in cultural contact zones. I further explore how the hybridity resulting from such entanglement is often rendered invisible by processes of what I call “disentanglement” (denial of relationality). I also suggest how Global Hispanophone studies might trace the ways in which entanglement is prevented from occurring in the first place. While this article focuses on the (dis)entanglement of scientific knowledge, its premise is that this dynamic can also be explored in regard to other forms of knowledge beyond the field of science.
Book
Over twenty years after the ground-breaking anthologyThis Bridge Called My Backchallenged feminists to envision new forms of communities and practices, Gloria E. Anzaldua and AnaLouise Keating have brought together an ambitious new collection of over eighty original contributions offering a bold new vision of women-of-color consciousness for the twenty-first century. Through personal narratives, theoretical essays, textual collage, poetry, letters, artwork and fiction, thisbridge we call homeexamines and extends the discussion of issues at the center of the first Bridge such as classism, homophobia, racism, identity politics, and community building, while exploring the additional issues of third wave feminism, Native sovereignty, lesbian pregnancy and mothering, transgendered issues, Arab-American stereotyping, Jewish identities, spiritual activism, and surviving academe. Written by women and men - both 'of color' and 'white,' located inside and outside the United States - andmotivated by a desire for social justice,this bridge we call homeinvites feminists of all colors and genders to develop new forms of transcultural dialogues, practices, and alliances. Building on and pushing forward the revolutionary call for transformation announced over two decades ago,this bridge we call home, will challenge readers to rethink existing categories and invent new individual and collective identities.
Article
Essai d'archeologie de la connaissance africaine en tant que systeme de connaissance et de pouvoir dans le cadre duquel des problemes philosophiques majeurs ont surgi recemment : l'" africanisation " de la connaissance et le statut des systemes traditionnels de pensee. L'A., analysant le pouvoir des anthropologues et des missionnaires, s'interesse directement a la transformation des types de connaissance
Book
Boyle argued for a new epistemology, of the "matter of fact" that could be shown by experiment. The experiment would be witnessed, or virtually witnessed, by credible persons. Causes would not be sought beyond certain boundaries, but matters of fact could be attained. This new natural philosophy was opposed by Hobbes who has historically been eliminated from the story as the loser. But he attacked Boyle on attackable points - the imperfections of instruments (the air pump), and the lack of public space surrounding an experiment. In the aftermath of the English Civil War, as people were groping for new forms of political order, Robert Boyle built an air-pump to do experiments. Does the story of Roundheads and Restoration have something to do with the origins of experimental science? Schaffer and Shapin believed it does. Focusing on the debates between Boyle and his archcritic Thomas Hobbes over the air-pump, the authors proposed that "solutions to the problem of knowledge are solutions to the problem of social order." Both Boyle and Hobbes were looking for ways of establishing knowledge that did not decay into ad hominem attacks and political division. Boyle proposed the experiment as cure. He argued that facts should be manufactured by machines like the air-pump so that gentlemen could witness the experiments and produce knowledge that everyone agreed on. Hobbes, by contrast, looked for natural law and viewed experiments as the artificial, unreliable products of an exclusive guild. The new approaches taken in Leviathan and the Air-Pump have been enormously influential on historical studies of science. Shapin and Schaffer found a moment of scientific revolution and showed how key scientific givens--facts, interpretations, experiment, truth--were fundamental to a new political order. Shapin and Schaffer were also innovative in their ethnographic approach. Attempting to understand the work habits, rituals, and social structures of a remote, unfamiliar group, they argued that politics were tied up in what scientists did, rather than what they said. [Megan, STS 901-Fall 2006]