{"id":14090,"date":"2011-06-03T03:46:49","date_gmt":"2011-06-03T03:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=14090"},"modified":"2011-06-03T05:04:53","modified_gmt":"2011-06-03T05:04:53","slug":"re-articulating-the-new-mestiza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=14090","title":{"rendered":"Re-articulating the New Mestiza"},"content":{"rendered":"

Re-articulating the New Mestiza<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Journal of International Women’s Studies<\/a>
\nVol 12, #2<\/a> (March 2011)
\nSpecial Issue: Winning and Short-listed Entries from the 2009 Feminist and Women’s Studies Association Annual Student Essay Competition
\npages 61-74<\/p>\n

Zalfa Feghali<\/strong>
\nUniversity of Nottingham<\/em><\/p>\n

This essay provides an overview, critique, and the beginning of a refiguration of Gloria Anzald\u00faa\u2019s<\/a> theorization of the new mestiza<\/em> as set out in her seminal 1987 book Borderlands\/La Frontera: The New Mestiza<\/a><\/em>. By examining both Anzald\u00faa\u2019s precursors and the articulations of hybrid identities of her contemporaries, this essay depicts the complex dynamic that characterizes the mestiza\u2019s<\/em> need to develop, beyond borders and attempts to fashion a more contemporary, transnational mestiza<\/em>. Using the writing and criticism of Fran\u00e7oise Lionnet<\/a> alongside Anzald\u00faa\u2019s and other critics, and utilizing postcolonial and feminist theories, this essay hopes to provide an alternative articulation to conventional understandings of hybridity and mestizaje<\/em> in contemporary thought.<\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

The purpose of this essay is to provide an overview, a critique, and the beginning of a refiguration of Gloria Anzald\u00faa\u2019s theorization of the new mestiza<\/em>. Anzald\u00faa\u2019s mestiza<\/em> exists in borderlands, and is \u201cneither hispana india negra espa\u00f1ola \/ ni gabacha<\/em>;\u201d1 rather, she is \u201cmestiza, mulata<\/em>, half-breed \/ caught in the crossfire between camps \/ while carrying all five races on [her] back \/ not knowing which side to turn to, run from\u201d (Borderlands\/La Frontera<\/em> 216). However, according to Anzald\u00faa, and despite the difficulties engendered by her very existence, the mestiza<\/em> is also a figure of enormous potential, as her multiplicity allows a new kind of consciousness to emerge. This mestiza<\/em> consciousness moves beyond the binary relationships and dichotomies that characterize traditional modes of thought, and seeks to build bridges between all minority communities in order to achieve social and political change. Anzald\u00faa locates the new mestiza<\/em> consciousness at a site that, as Fran\u00e7oise Lionnet suggests, \u201cis not a territory staked out by exclusionary practices\u201d (\u201cThe Politics and Aesthetics of M\u00e9tissage<\/em>\u201d 5).<\/p>\n

Although there are clear precursors to Anzald\u00faa\u2019s work, one of which I discuss at length below, many critics and thinkers choose her work to engage with. This has to do with her unique place in the \u201ccanon\u201d of Chicana\/Mexican American writing\u2014what she calls the \u201cMoveimento Macha.\u201d Writing from the position(s) of queer Chicana womanhood, code-switching between English and Spanish, and mixing poetry and prose, Anzald\u00faa\u2019s Borderlands\/La Frontera<\/em>, at the time of publication in 1987, represented an important break from the mainly male-dominated pool of \u201ctraditional\u201d Chicano writers and inspired a generation of women, Chicana and non-Chicana alike, to write about their experiences as border-crossers with hybrid identities. Anzald\u00faa\u2019s work remains popular because it retains much of its original subversive potential, its cross-disciplinarity providing new and varied methodologies to analyze borders. In many ways, it has also played an important role in refocusing American studies as a transnational discipline. In her presidential address to the American Studies Association in 2004, Shelley Fisher Fishkin<\/a> identified Anzald\u00faa\u2019s Borderlands\/La Frontera<\/em> as epitomizing the transnational nature of American studies, and credited her work for opening up a space for \u201cAmerican studies scholars [to] increasingly recognize that understanding requires looking beyond the nation\u201fs borders, and understanding how the nation is seen from vantage points beyond its borders\u201d (\u201cCrossroads of Cultures\u201d 20)…<\/p>\n

…A \u201cCosmic Race\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his original essay of 1925<\/a>, Vasconcelos<\/a> lauds the people inhabiting the area of Mexico for their mestizo\/a culture, which, as Rafael P\u00e9rez-Torres<\/a> has put it, \u201clocates itself within a complex third space neither Mexican nor American but in a transnational space of both potential and restraint\u201d (\u201cAlternate Geographies and the Melancholy of Mestizaje\u201d 322). In its traditional meaning, mestizaje<\/em> \u201creflects a simultaneously racial, sexual, and national memory, an embodiment of colonization and conquest\u201d (Bost, Mulattas and Mestizas<\/a><\/em> 9). In fact, one of the reasons that Jose Vasconcelos won popular acclaim for his theories was the attractiveness of the idea that an entire population, which literally embodies a history of violence, can forge an identity that moved beyond such a violent history\u2014and flourish. Anzald\u00faa herself refers to this very specific history in her hope that the emergence of the new mestiza<\/em> will bring an end to rape, violence, and war.<\/p>\n

For the purposes of his essay, Vasconcelos sees this group as the first stage in the creation of a new, cosmic race that will eventually take on characteristics and subsume genetic streams from all the races on earth. This cosmic race will take on the best or most desirable traits from each respective race. Eventually, according to Vasconcelos, the lines between the \u201coriginal\u201d races will blur to the point that any one individual\u2019s \u201cracial heritage\u201d would be completely indistinguishable from another\u201fs, thus becoming the ultimate mestizo\/a<\/em> (something akin what critics would now call a \u201cpost-ethnic\u201d or \u201cpost-racial\u201d world). This emphasis on the special character and potential of the mestiza\/o Mexican subject has made Vasconcelos\u201f theory very attractive to Mexican and Chicano\/a activists, particularly nationalists. As many Chicano\/a activists have done, Anzald\u00faa uses a narrow interpretation of Vasconcelos\u2019 essay in the hope of finding a solid theoretical grounding for her own project. However, this has brought her much criticism, as Vasconcelos\u2019 theory has been rigorously undermined. As Didier Ja\u00e9n puts it:<\/p>\n

It is true that mestizaje<\/em> is one of the central concepts of the Vasconcelos essay, but of course, it is also clear that the racial mixture Vasconcelos refers to is much wider, much more encompassing, than what can be understood by the mestizaje<\/em> of the Mexican or Chicano\u2026But even if we expand the concept of mestizaje<\/em> to include all other races, this biological mixture would not fulfill what Vasconcelos expresses with the idea of the Cosmic race (\u201cIntroduction\u201d xvi).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Clearly, Vasconcelos\u2019 utopian vision of mestizaje<\/em> leading to a new, privileged subject that lives in a race-less world does not hold up theoretically or pragmatically. For example, he clearly delineates the \u201cfour major races of the world\u201d before envisioning a fifth, cosmic race which embraces the four \u201coriginal\u201d races of the world. Despite the fact that the original text was written in 1925 and must be read with one eye trained on that time\u2019s theoretical and scientific reach, it is problematic in the way it combines scientific language and terms with a more mystical outlook (something that is echoed in Anzald\u00faa\u201fs work, albeit for a different purpose). It thus presents itself as scientific fact and knowledge while in fact holding little or no solid scientific basis.<\/p>\n

My main objection to Vasconcelos\u2019 analysis comes from the implications of his own underlying premise, namely, that there are four races of humans: the Black, the Indian (as in American native), the Mongol, and the White. Out of these four races, Vasconcelos imagines that the fifth, mestizo, cosmic race will resemble a symphony:<\/p>\n

Voices that bring accents from Atlantis; depths contained in the pupil of the red man, who knew so much, so many thousand years ago, but now seems to have forgotten everything. His soul resembles the old Mayan cenote<\/em> of green waters, laying deep and still\u2026This infinite quietude is stirred with the drop put in our blood by the Black, eager for sensual joy, intoxicated with dances and unbridled lust\u2026There also appears the Mongol, with the mystery of his slanted eyes that see everything according to a strange angle\u2026The clear mind of the White, that resembles his skin and his dreams, also intervenes\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Clearly Vasconcelos\u2019 theory is based on fundamental racism on his part. Yet despite having borne heavy criticism for his theory, Vasconcelos\u2019 essay was reprinted in 1948 and became a rallying point for Chicano activist and Mexican nationalist movements. In addition to Vasconcelos\u2019 popularity as an alternative Mexican historian, this is most likely why Anzald\u00faa espouses his theory. However, as I plan to show, Anzald\u00faa\u2019s work also falls into many of the same traps as Vasconcelos\u2019. It has been important to look at Vasconcelos\u2019 work in such depth as I will show that Anzald\u00faa\u2019s work, while in many ways vastly different, may have the effect of re-inscribing Vasconcelos\u2019 racism…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Re-articulating the New Mestiza Journal of International Women’s Studies Vol 12, #2 (March 2011) Special Issue: Winning and Short-listed Entries from the 2009 Feminist and Women’s Studies Association Annual Student Essay Competition pages 61-74 Zalfa Feghali University of Nottingham This essay provides an overview, critique, and the beginning of a refiguration of Gloria Anzald\u00faa\u2019s theorization […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,125,1196,8,20,25],"tags":[657,1474,1868,6491,6490],"class_list":["post-14090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-identitydevelopment","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-francoise-lionnet","tag-gloria-anzaldua","tag-jose-vasconcelos","tag-journal-of-international-womens-studies","tag-zalfa-feghali"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14090\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}