Borderlands La Frontera Summary

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza – Gloria E. Anzaldúa In describing a state-of-being in the notorious lands in-between – a space often described as suitable for only the stigmatized (Goffman 1963), the wandering gender-immigrant (Lorber 1994), and the political excommunicated, that banished dissident-, Gloria Anzaldúa is doing a lot of work. For example, by noting that separation from traditional places of origins (whether by choice or by force) does not mean having to detach from that which gives us a sense of intrinsic character – “los mexicano is in my system. I am a turtle, wherever I go I carry “home” on my back” (43) she describes a similarly authentic construction of identity built upon history and politics (and a history of politics), of a formative genealogy instead of simply genes. In describing the socio-political margins of the exiled, those liminal areas demarcated less by map edges
It might seem easy to hand-wave such incorporeal devices away during the contentious debates around sexual and gender politics where bodily materiality falls under the jurisdiction of Foucauldian bio-power and Mbembe’s necropolitics. Yet Anzaldúa argues that to survive the eviction these singular (if not nationalist) politics impose, one must be able to appreciate and cultivate a blended knowledge that is borne from the multiple identities one carries into the Borderlands. It is only from such an experience that a Self and Subject can be fashioned in response, so that “(w)ith that recognition, we bec(o)me a distinct people” (85). In this way, the mestiza consciousness can be seen as the affective retort that can only emerge from the diaspora of the