[This is from the old Slant Truth. It was originally posted on 26 September, 2006]

*I leave these posts not only to introduce or remind others of important writers who have or are currently influencing my thinking, but also as notes for future reference that I hope to draw back on (or critique) in the future. I do hope that if you aren’t familiar with the writers I excerpt here that you take the time to check them out in more detail.

From Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza ¹ by Gloria Anzalda:

Within us and within La cultura chicana, ² commonly held beliefs of the white culture attack commonly held beliefs of the Mexican culture, and both attack commonly held beliefs of the indigenous culture. Subconsciously, we see an attack on ourselves and our beliefs as a threat and we attempt to block with a counterstance.

But it is not enough to stand on the opposite river bank, shouting questions, challenging patriarchal, white conventions. A counterstance locks one into a duel of oppressor and oppressed; locked in mortal combat, like the cop and the criminal, both are reduced to a common denominator of violence. The counterstance refutes the dominant culture’s views and beliefs, and, for this, it is proudly defiant. All reaction is limited by, and dependent on, what it is reacting against. Because the counterstance stems from a problem with authority–outer as well as inner–it’s a step towards liberation from cultural domination. But it is not a way of life. At some point, on our way to a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between the two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once and, at once, see through serpent and eagle eyes. or perhaps we will decide to disengage from the dominant culture, write it off altogether as a lost cause, and cross the border into a wholly new and seperate territory. Or we might go another route. The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.

A TOLERANCE FOR AMBIGUITY

These numerous possibilites leave la mestiza floundering in uncharted seas. In perceiving conflicting information and points of view, she is subjected to a swamping of her psychological borders. She has discovered that she can’t hold concepts or ideas in rigid boundaries. The borders and walls that are supposed to keep the undesirable ideas out are entrenched habits and patterns of behavior; these habits and patterns are the enemy within. Rigidity means death. Only be reremaining flexible is she able to stretch the psyche horizontally and vertically. La mestiza constantly has to shift out of habitual formations; from convergent thinking, analytical reasoning that tends to use rationality to move toward a singe goal (a Western mode), to divergent thinking, ³ characterized by movement away from set patterns and goals and toward a more whole perspective, one that includes rahter than exludes.

The new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity. She learns to be an Indian in Mexican culture, to be Mexican from an Anglo point of view. She learns to juggle cultures. She has a plural personality, she operates in a pluralistic mode–nothing is thrust out, the good the bad and the ugly, nothing rejected, nothing abandoned. Not only does she sustain contradictions, she turns the ambivalence into something else.

She can be jarred out of ambivalence by an intense, and often painful, emotional event which inverts or resolves the ambivalence. I’m not sure exactly how. The work takes place underground–subconsciously. It is work that the soul performs. That focal point of fulcrum, that juncture where the mestiza stands, is where phenomena tend to collide. It is where the possibility of uniting all that is seperate occurs. This assembly is not one where severed or separated pieces merely come together. Nor is it a balancing of opposing powers. In attempting to work out a synthesis, the self has added a third element which is greater than the sum of its severed parts. That third element is a new consciousness–a mestiza consciousness–and though it is a source of intense pain, it’s energy comes from continual creative motion that keeps breaking down the unitary aspect of each new paradigm.

En unas pocas centurias, the future will belong to the mestiza. Because the future depends on the breaking down of paradigms, it depends on the straddling of two or more cultures. By creating a new mythos–that is, a change in the way we perceive reality, the way we see ourselvese, and the ways we behave–la mestiza creates a new consiousness.

The work of mestiza consciousness is to break down the subject-object duality that keeps her a prisoner and to show in the flesh and through the images in her work how duality is transcended. The answer to the problem between the white race and the colored, between males and females, lies in healing the split that originates in the very foundation of our lives, our culture, our languages, our thoughts. A massive uprooting of dualistic thinking in the individual and collective consiousness is the beginning of a long struggle, but one that could, in our best hopes, bring us to the end of rape, of violence, of war.

LA ENCRUCIJADA/THE CROSSROADS

A chicken is being sacrificed
at the crossroads, a simple mound of earth
a mud shrine for Eshu,
Yoruba ⁴ god of indeterminacy,
who blesses her choice of path.
She beings her journey.

So cuerpo es una bocacalle. La mestiza has gone from being the sacrifical goat to becoming the officiating priestess at the crossroads.

1. Gloria Anzalda, “From Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza,” in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism ed. Vincent B. Leitch, et. al. (New York: W W Norton & Company, 2001), 2211-2223. [↩]
2. Chicanos are portrayed by Anzalda as existing between Anglo (white European) U.S. culture and the indigenous Native American culture of both Mexico and the United States [Editor's note]. [↩]
3. In part, I derive my definitions for “convergent” and “divergent” thinking from Rothenberg, 12-13 [Anzalda's note]. [↩]
4. One of the two largest ethnic groups in Nigeria; many Carribbean and Latin American blacks come from the Yoruba and have retained elements of the ancestral culture [Editor's note]. Eshu particularly is a subject of my own scholarly interests [Kevin's note]. [↩]