Spiritual Activism (Gloria Anzaldua)

Resumen

Borderlands/La Frontera, de Gloria Anzaldúa, es un texto que obliga a repensar el género autobiográfico y las concepciones tradicionales de sujeto, historia y escritura. En él, Anzaldúa no promueve la concepción del ser humano como sujeto individual, esencial y puro; por el contrario, propone un sujeto interdependiente, híbrido, en proceso. Este texto no sólo pretende negociar la identidad latina en el Estados Unidos de hoy; sino que a la vez, desafia la identidad latinoamericana de la que parte; desborda las fronteras geográficas y de lengua, que se supone la contienen; pluraliza el término de identidad latina al hacer evidente que hay otras.

This article critically departs from the second-wave feminism of first-generation Latina feminist and mujerista theology by focusing on Chicana queer feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldúa’s relational epistemology. I argue that Anzaldúa’s work is a new form of feminist theologising that stems from a radical commitment to interconnectedness and relationality. I enter into a conversation with Anzaldúa in order to foreground new, productive, and creative ways to reflect on feminist standpoint epistemology and ontology, which in turn open up interesting avenues through which to think about the material and experiential dimensions of women’s theologising. I consider Anzaldúa’s El Mundo Zurdo (The Left-Handed World)1 and her fecund notion of spiritual activism in order to illuminate the centrality of relationality and interdependence when conceptualising new forms of women’s subjective engagements in the production of theology.

The title in and of itself—Venceremos—right, like that’s just very empower- ing. “We shall overcome,” that in itself is a very strong message that spoke to me. And the whole idea of how we call the writers guerrilleros—I like that. It’s like guerrillera style. This isn’t some kind of formal journalist-journalism. It’s very kind of underground and I liked that. I really liked that it was really just your voice. We had a platform to just voice our stories. It was okay if we didn’t have a journalistic background. It was okay if we weren’t natural story- tellers. We were just able to kind of say our piece and have the freedom to do that and I really thought that was important. Especially because most of us are students and in academia, your voice is very, sometimes limited and very structured in how you have to present yourself. So I liked the freedom of just expressing yourself however you chose. I really liked that. —Marisela Garza, Venceremos Editor, Fall 2008–Spring 2009

How is it possible for diasporic Indigenous women and mothers, to remember, recover and restory what has been lost in the last five hundred years of colonization? How can mothers who have been displaced from land, language, and culture as a result of colonization participate in cultural restoration, their own and that of the collective. How is Trauma involved, relied on, perpetuated, and resolved in order to either maintain or escape patterns of fight, flight and/or paralysis? As a Xicana Indígena mother, existing in the cycle of birth and death, always becoming ancestor, I have searched for an accurate story to pass on to my children, a story that is true but that is also a truth-telling. I address and explore problems of authentic identity – de- Indianization, appropriation and misappropriation, and hemispheric Indigeneity in order to set up the initial problem. I then move on to consider historical trauma, trauma theory, Indigenous healing practices and paradigms as well as resonant western ones. I then consider histories, issues, and ceremonies related to Indigenous birth and mothering. This project is a Ceremony of restoration, of decoding remnants, of generative gestures, and stitching stories. It offers guiding principles and ceremonial protocols that allow for the product of ceremony, vision, to emerge. A large part of this dissertation consists of imaginal, dream-crafted, poietic, and performative output and it is supplemented with an exhibition and a published collection of poetry. I share my vision, a personal transformation and an offering, a generative gesture of In Xochitl In Cuicatl – poetry and prayer that honors Indigenous holistic dualism as a way forward through trauma . . . into freedom. Supplementary materials available at: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/79526

This anthology foregrounds scholarly, activist, and creative refl ections on spirit, spirituality, and "spiritual activism" (Anzaldúa 2002a) from the perspectives of Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous women. We, the coeditors Elisa Facio and Irene Lara, have been studying Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous women's spiritualities and, just as significantly, living our own spiritualities since the 1990s. Through our distinct yet interweaving paths as spiritually identified Chicana scholar-activists from working-class backgrounds, we are committed to decolonizing the academy that largely devalues or misunderstands spirituality, both as a serious academic topic and as an integral aspect of being alive. We have encountered many others who are also committed to a life of inquiry , teaching, writing, cultural activism, or social justice that values a spiritual perspective and praxis grounded in the decolonial histories, politics, and dynamic cultures of our Indigenous and mestiza/o ancestors and in solidarity with Indigenous people and people of color, across constructed "races" and "nations." Built on the supposition that spirituality often plays a decolonizing role in creating meaning, inspiring action, and supporting healing and justice in our communities, this anthology contributes to an emerging body of knowledge focused on voicing and understanding spirituality through an intersectional, interdisciplinary, and nonsectarian lens. Although they are widely perceived to be a religious or spiritual group, until recently there have been few works that address the gendered, sexualized, classed, and racialized spiritualities of Chicanas, Latinas, and Indigenous women, particularly through their own voices.

This essay elaborates on constructions of "la Bruja"—a female practitioner of spiritual, sexual, and healing knowledges—in our contemporary cultural imaginary grounded in a legacy of the otherization of women healers in Europe and las Américas. Specifically, I analyze Ricky Martin's song "Livin'La Vida Loca" about the ambivalent witchy power of a racialized woman over a man. The essay explores the ways that "brujas" are feared for their knowledge and power and hence subjected to oppressive treatment. I argue for a bruja positionality within Chicana/Latina studies that includes developing our own bruja-like epistemologies. As a practice of what Gloria Anzaldúa all activism,a" is builton the internalized might "spiritual activism," a bruja positionality is built on healing the internalized beliefs that demonize la Bruja and the transgressive spirituality and sexuality that she represents.

Within Queer Theory ‚classical‘ lesbian-feminist contributions, such as those by Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, Monique Wittig and Adrienne Rich, have been adopted very selectively and sometimes in a highly superficial way. Ambivalences and inconsistencies have been either marginalised or interpreted within a linear historiography of queer progress. Hence, not only the complexity and analytical potential of these works tend to get lost, furthermore, also their ‚alternative‘(queer) strategies and visions for a deconstruction of (racialized) gender binaries and institutionalized heterosexuality are marginalised. This article sheds a critical light on these selective reading practices and highlights the transgressive implications of their versions of queer/ness. One focus of the article lies on the gender subversive and spiritual implications of Anzaldúa’s feminist-lesbian/patlache standpoint epistemologies. Furthermore, the articles discusses Wittigs idea of a (linguistic) universalization of an (anti-essentialist) idea of the ‘feminine’/‘the lesbian’ as well as her materialist and class-theoretical conceptualization of the ‘lesbian’. The paper asks how these ideas can be read and interpreted as an intervention into dominant notions of Queer Theory.

In this essay I argue that the primary role that Gloria Anzaldúa creates for herself as a writer and activist is that of the curandera of conquest, the healer of la herida  abierta (the open wound) created by the borders imposed by capitalism, nationalism, imperialism, sexism, homophobia, and racism. After examining Anzaldúa’s Prietita and  the Ghost Woman as both an illustration (in content) and an example (in enactment) of her practice as a curandera, I provide a brief overview of curanderismo and key devel- opments in the theories of decolonization within global indigenous studies since the turn of the twenty-first century. I read Anzaldúa’s decolonizing work as a companion to this recent decolonization move within indigenous theory and practice.

Much of this paper weaves together secondary literature on Anzaldua's writings in an attempt to show how her political, spiritual, and linguistic themes interrelate. I take the view that they are really inseparable, all of them implicated in each other. However Anzaldua's spirituality significantly shapes her political thought / activism, and this is not given proportionately enough attention by scholars. This paper tries to counteract that.

“Abrazos de Conocimiento Across the Generations: Chicana Mothering and Daughtering in the Borderlands.”  The Chicana M(other)work Anthology: Porque Sin Madres No Hay Revolución. Eds. Cecilia Caballero, Yvette Martínez-Vu, Judith Pérez-Torres, Michelle Téllez, and Christine Vega. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2019. 223-42.

This piece is a 'conference report' about ISA 2018 (International Studies Association 59th Annual Convention, San Francisco). The review focuses on two panels on international ethics and decolonial critique organised by Louiza Odysseos and Myriam Fotou: 'Eurocentrism, Racism, and the De-Colonization of Ethical Enquiry'.
I start the piece with a quick presentation of the International Studies Association in the broader context of International Relations as a discipline (IR) — therefore, the piece is accessible to non-IR specialists.

Drawing upon critiques that claim a lack of interest in spirituality in development studies, this paper aims to show how alternative ethical forms of development can be enacted when adopting shamanic spiritual worldviews. The paper draws upon ethnographic research conducted in Terra Mirim, an intentional shamanic community, located in the Itamboatá valley, Bahia, Brazil. Drawing upon contributions from Chicano scholars, this research engages with the concept of 'spiritual activism' to understand how alternative ontologies of development are shaped around the idea of interconnectedness and relational consciousness.

This paper explores connections between: the intrinsic immanent spirituality and faith that springs from living in common; experiences of divinity as the charismatic energy of spirit as in Pentecostal Christianity and African spirit traditions; and the spirit or spirituality of biopolitical population life as manifest in British imperialist nationalism – manifest in both the miraculous commons of the National Health Service and the hunger for pure life that fuels the racist and radically exploitative biopolitical death drive. In a speculative genealogy, the paper suggests that the holy spirit of Pentecostal and other Charismatic traditions might be understood as a kind of displaced, dispossessed, version of the spirituality of the commons. The experience of holy spirit might be seen as an answer to the problem of how to live in common in the absence of the material common of land, possession or place – which would explain its prevalence amongst the radically displaced revolutionary proletariat of the 17th-19th century transatlantic (as well as it’s current proliferation). Further, the paper suggests that the spirituality of biopolitics, which was honed in the class body of the 19th century bourgeoisie, might derive not only from the scientific invention/discovery of population level phenomena and disciplinary practice as Foucault argues, but might also be seen as a bourgeois appropriation of the spirituality of the transatlantic revolutionary proletariat – the monster – that the imperial bourgeoisie had by then spent two centuries fighting. The paper can be read as a warning as to the duplicity and dangers of this multifaceted spirituality of the commons – that the faith that inspires us can also be a snare. But it concludes with a hope – that the reinvestment of spirit in worldly matters of place, property and ecology might yet drown out the biopolitical siren songs of infinite life, growth, wealth and health that have generated so much injustice and violence.

This essay explores the remaking of religion and the presence of a social justice ethic in the contemporary spiritual practices and beliefs of Tejanas of the post-WWII generation. This work draws on ethnographic research conducted in the Texas-Mexico borderlands with eighteen Tejanas involved in social justice causes since the late 1960s. Using the theory and praxis of spiritual activism as put forth by Gloria E. Anzaldúa, this essay examines patterns of spiritual change in the lives of three Tejanas. Such cultural change is reflective of women’s social worlds; political acts tied to the material realities of women’s experiences. By reconfiguring how they view and practice spirituality—which includes a shift away from organized Catholicism—women are critiquing and working to reverse gender hierarchies, patriarchy, and other social inequalities within and outside of organized religion. Today women’s activism takes the form of spiritualized activisms, whereby they do the inner spiritual work that gives them the strength to do the outer work of creating social change as spiritual healers, educators and community activists.

Among a persistently criminalized population of Mexican-Americans in the farmtown-gangland of Salinas, California, healing from the wounds of history has emerged as a critical register of political action, an uncertain and experimental activism recalibrating the pace and tense of personal recoveries and social change. Engaging fieldwork conducted during a string of local police homicides of Latinos, this dissertation focuses on how spiritually-inflected healing circles, and the form of being-with they generate, came to constitute a timely formation of politics otherwise in line with burgeoning activist techniques and tactics associated with ‘the new Civil Rights’ of lives mattering. Amidst the mostly slow, but sometimes spectacular, modes of state-sanctioned lethality at work in places like Salinas — those abandoned, racialized and criminalized communities of color that are strewn across postindustrial America — what kind of politics is possible? In poor communities where life is hard and its management exhausting, where the so-called Latino Sleeping Giant lies ‘not yet' awake, and where the stakes invested in silence may be illegible to latent liberal sensibilities, through what registers, relationalities, and temporalities is the social changed?

This article embarks on adventures in search of antifascist aesthetics—an excursion born of despair at the increasingly racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim poison of our political ground. It asks whether ecological attunement can provide a counter to such capitalist sorcery and barbarism. The article draws on feminist philosophy of science, new materialism, and ecofeminism. What, it asks these guides, can ecological attunement offer to the task of composing antifascist, anticapitalist political subjectivity or shattering the reality principle of the “no alternative”? Among the responses to that question are certain ideas that we might call theological figurations—figures that open onto the theological task of questioning the value of values, and the political task of mustering spirit. Centering on an attempt to think with Stengers, the article turns to three such figures: the enchantress, the witch, and the intrusion of Gaia. It asks how these figures might succeed and fail in speaking to a popular politics that could lift our despair.
本文开啓一个寻找反法西斯主义美学的探险——一个从我们逐渐加剧的种族主义、反移民、反穆斯林毒害的政治基础的绝望中诞生的旅程。本文质问生态调和是否能够用以反抗此般资本主义巫术和野蛮的未开化状态。本文运用科学女性主义哲学、新物质主义和生态女性主义，并质问这些索引，生态调和能够为组成反法西斯、反资本主义的政治主体性，抑或打破“别无选择”的现实信条之任务提供什麽？对上述问题的回答中，是有关我们可能称为神学形体的若干概念——通向质问价值的价值的神学任务之形体，以及鼓起灵性的政治工作。本文聚焦与考史坦格共同思考的企图，转向此般三种人物形体：妖妇、女巫，以及盖亚的侵入。本文质问这些形体如何成功或失败地诉诸可能解除我们的绝望的大众政治。
Este artículo se embarca en aventuras por la búsqueda de la estética antifascista – una excursión producto del desespero por el cada vez más grave envenenamiento racista, anti-inmigrante y anti-musulmán de nuestro terreno político. El artículo pregunta si la afinación ecológica puede proveer remedio contra a tal hechicería y barbarismo capitalista. Se apoya en la filosofía feminista de la ciencia, el nuevo materialismo y el ecofeminismo. ¿Qué puede ofrecer, se les pregunta a estas guías, la afinación ecológica a la tarea de componer subjetividad política antifascista y anticapitalista, o para devastar el principio de realidad de la “no alternativa”? Entre las respuestas a esa pregunta hay ciertas ideas que podríamos denominar figuraciones teológicas – figuras que se abren sobre la tarea teológica de cuestionar el valor de los valores, y la tarea política de soliviantar el espíritu. Centrándose en un intento de pensar con Stengers, el artículo vuelve sobre tres de esas figuras: la encantadora, la bruja y la intrusión de Gaia. Se pregunta cómo podrían estas figuras triunfar y fallar hablando a una política popular que pudiese levantar nuestro desespero.

Invitation réalisée par le CAC Brétigny à l'occasion de l'exposition Sâr Dubnotal

Lien de la publication en ligne : https://www.cacbretigny.com/fr/465-between-the-two-eyes-in-her-head-the-tongueless-magical-eye-and-the-loquacious-rational-eye-was-la-rajadura

... ories and writings have impacted many disciplines (especially in the humanities), few “mainstream” sociologists or other so-cial scientists have taken up her works.3 As the rich diversity of papers presented at the 2006 Social Theory Forum indicates, An-zaldúa's theories have ...

Invitation made by the CAC Brétigny on the occasion of the exhibition Sâr Dubnotal

Link to the online publication: https://www.cacbretigny.com/en/465-between-the-two-eyes-in-her-head-the-tongueless-magical-eye-and-the-loquacious-rational-eye-was-la-rajadura