Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

MAKING OPPOSITIONAL CULTURE, MAKING STANDPOINT: A JOURNEY INTO GLORIA ANZALDÚA'S BORDERLANDS

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 25; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/02732170500176021

1521-0707

Theresa A. Martinez,

Cuban History and Society

ABSTRACT The theory of oppositional culture, as discussed by Bonnie Mitchell and Joe Feagin (Citation1995), suggests that African Americans, American Indians, and Mexican Americans draw on their own cultural resources to resist domination. Patricia Hill Collins suggests that Black women develop a unique vision of the social world based on their position within a matrix of domination that organizes intersecting oppressions of race, class, and gender, among others. Expression of this unique vision or standpoint, however, is rendered problematic within a matrix of domination organized via four domains of power—the structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal (Collins Citation2000). This article suggests that Gloria Anzaldúa's writing—her storytelling, narratives, and poetry—is a significant form of oppositional culture and contributes to the achievement of a Chicana feminist standpoint within a matrix of domination as Anzaldúa shares tales of living in the borderlands. The paper provides a brief analysis of Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987). I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the late Gloria Anzaldúa whose work inspired and enlightened this article. Thanks also go out to Bonnie Mitchell, Joe Feagin, and Patricia Hill Collins. Finally, I would like to wholeheartedly express my thanks to three excellent reviewers for making this journey possible. Notes 1There is an obvious difference between the work of Anzaldúa and that of Du Bois, Gilman, and Martineau, in that, Anzaldúa is not a sociologist nor is she making an obvious attempt to convey specifically sociological concepts in her writing. I believe it is my task in this manuscript to take Anzaldúa's narratives, stories, and poetry and convey their contribution to the discipline of sociology. 2It is essential to note that Mitchell and Feagin are referring to a broad definition of “culture” in this instance, by not reducing it to music, dance, and literary works. Culture, as used by Mitchell and Feagin, refers to all forms of human expression and articulation and includes life practices and belief systems that emerge within a culture (Williams Citation1958). See George Lipsitz (Citation1988) for a discussion of Ivory Perry, a political activist from the Civil Rights era who was committed to racial justice through resistance and oppositional culture. See also Frederick Erickson (Citation1987) for a discussion of oppositional cultural patterns developed by minority students in response to negative encounters with teachers and repeated failures in school. 3In this context Chicano/a refers to men and women from Mexican American background. Latino/a is an umbrella term of choice rather than Hispanic (which refers to both Mexicans and Mexican Americans). Another term frequently used in the text will be the term mestiza/owhich refers to persons of mixed Spanish and Indian heritage and can be used synonymously with Chicano/as. 4David Montejano stresses that the Mexican elite and the Anglo elite would forge bonds through marriage and compadrazgo or sponsorship through “baptisms, confirmations, or marriages” (1987, p. 37). 5Anzaldúa rarely mentions white women in the course of her text. However, it is instructive and significant to note that she is inclusive of the white woman or gabacha as a critical player in the “borderlands” poem (1987, pp. 194–195). This is not a casual mention on Anzaldúa's part, as the “borderlands” poem incapsulates so much of Anzaldúa's mestiza consciousness. That is, Anzaldúa attempts to include all players in the human drama with the admonition that to live in the borderlands, one must “live sin fronteras”—without borders. While the omission of white women in the narrative may seem strange to readers, it can also be understood as a Chicana seeking to construct and reconstruct truly gaping absences of Chicana thought in academic and public discourse. Patricia Hill Collins' influential work Black Feminist Thought (1991, 2000), while referring to the work of white feminists and thinkers, relies almost entirely on the work of black women writers, blues singers, and poets. 6Similarly, Aurora Levis Morales suggests a paradigm of “medicinal stories” to assert that the telling of our stories, our histories, has the transformative power to heal the individual and the collective. She writes, “It is in retelling the stories of victimization, recasting our roles from subhuman scapegoats to beings full of dignity and courage, that [re-creating the shattered knowledge of our humanity] becomes possible” (1998, p. 13).