We’re all from the Borderlands now

Yes, in a few years or centuries la raza will rise up, tongue intact carrying the best of all the cultures. That sleeping serpent, rebellion- (r)evolution, will spring up. Like old skin will fall the slave ways of obedience, acceptance, silence. Like serpent lightning we’ll move, little woman. You’ll see.

Gloria Anzaldua speaks from a site of irresolvable longing. Her project of imagining, or rather, re-imagining the Borderlands poses a question to the impossibility of her condition, that is, of invisibility. What must that be like? A crippling feeling, to wake up knowing you have no place in this world. To be resigned to the recesses; your emotions, thoughts, experiences all become invalid and like the rest of yourself, they die in silence. As if you never existed.

This is her reality, but it is not the only one.

She is a product of the Borderland and in situating herself within it, Anzaldua prescribes it with a new meaning. She transforms it; drawing potential from a site of failure (like the Borderland), she is reckoning with the past, present and future, and through writing, she creates the possibility to begin not from a point of loss, but recovery. Her motive is simple; she demands to be seen, she demands to be heard and therefore, imposes upon the reader a responsibility to bear witness. To what? A new way, a different way, a third way.

In her conception, the Borderland is not limited to a physical space, rather she expands it to an experience. Transcending material reality, the Borderland also exists in our imaginations, our hearts and our memories. It is everywhere and nowhere at once, and malleable to our individual experiences. It is hers, mine and yours and never confined to just one thing. It is a reflection of what is feared- in this case a homosexual Chicano woman- and a site of confrontation – where all injustices are meted out and grievances are voiced. It is a holy space- the point where the worldly and divine meet- and a dimension where the irrational can prevail. It is a way of living in fear, in a state of constant danger and reaction. A ‘half and half’ life, never whole and always lacking in some way. But above all, the Borderland is a zone of healing, it takes what is confined to the zone of ‘non-being’ and elevates it to a state of recognition. It mends the ‘split’ by merging and celebrating two opposing forces and gives birth to a new consciousness, a mestiza consciousness.

La mestiza has gone from being the sacrificial goat to becoming the officiating priestess at the crossroads.

Anzaldua does not engage in a simple telling of the Borderlands. She is embodying an ethic which renders the Borderland as a location of restoration, not just for herself, but for everyone. By employing elaborate descriptions of the mestiza and Chicano tradition and interchanging between the multiple languages she speaks, Anzaldua is giving the reader a sense of her reality. There is a complexity in her dialogue which, to my reading, has a twofold effect. She gives herself uncluttered space to express herself fully; going back an forth between prose and poetry, mixing languages and conducting monologues in Chicano Spanish. Yet at the same time, while she accommodates herself, her writing has a reflective element as well. In adopting an interchangeability between languages, Anzaldua is embodying for the reader the limitations and obstructions she faces in reality, within her writing. The struggle of getting through half understood sentences and pages of indecipherable words are meant to invoke within them an experience of life in the Borderlands. But there is a purpose in this. By embedding her struggle within her writing, Anzaldua is able to show how the trouble with being our true selves is one we all share. The denial of one of us means the denial of all of us and the violence within this is seen in how people like Anzaldua, despite making themselves visible, remain invisible.

La Frontera is an attempt to preserve and provide evidence of historical invisibility, but with that it also displays an effort to shift our understanding from an economy of loss, to an economy of abundance. Anzaldua calls for an acknowledgement of the struggle. She calls for a uniting of all those who live in the Borderlands, to come together and repeal our lifeworlds. To draw from one another and build a common culture because without that we will have nothing to hold us together.

(r)evolution

Gloria Anzaldua writes about revolution. A revolution that is necessitated by means of a specific kind of evolution. The process of evolution, one would assume, is naturally occurring; it is separate from notions of politics, norms, culture and so on. Yet she reveals, through her paragraph titled “Half and Half” that perhaps our expectations from nature are not neutral, are not apolitical after all.

Growing up is organic, is normal, is an “evolution” that is expected. Should that same organically mediated process defy the expectations or the wishes of the body, it is a sign of defiance. Something that must be addressed immediately, attacked and- in most cases- removed. A growth, an evolution, that defies expectations, becomes a revolution.

Gloria Anzaldua states how a muchacha was deemed one “of the Others” because her body did not conform to the process of evolution that the townspeople consigned to. Her body defied the binaries through which we make sense of the world in neat, calculated terms. A binary defied, as Anzaldua observes, does not -for some reason- induce the observers to perhaps create room for the intended individual; for some reason, our first instinct is to cast the individual aside as a freak, as a “deviation of nature”. An individual such as the muchacha,leaves the observer “horrified” at the way nature has been “inverted”.

This observation of nature being this or that begs the question: who are we to say what is and what is not natural? Who decides the terms on which nature functions, let alone the terms on which it is inverted?

Is it arrogance or is it cowardice that prevents us from seeing diverse peoples, people with different bodies, different skins, different features, as equally human? Gloria Anzaldua takes a very generous approach to this supposed “abnormality”: her point of view celebrates the individual’s “abnormality” as a physical manifestation of their “inborn extraordinary gift”. This romanticization might be her way of coping with the notion of diversity and its lack of acceptance into the mainstream. If they are not allowed to assimilate, then these “abnormal” individuals should stand apart with pride- atleast that is what Anzaldua seems to infer.

Yet one cannot help questioning, again, who decides what is and what is not an abnormality? Setting aside the question of whether or not this muchachatruly embodied the kind of personhood imposed onto her as a trans individual, there is a great deal more betrayed in the way that she is portrayed by others. It is interesting and of value, to note that there is an ‘other’ that is far more superior in its reach, in its influence, than this singular entity, this one Other. It is also important to remain cognizant of the fact that the only “abnormal” aspect of her existence lies in reference to her genitalia. Again, begging the question: what is so abnormal about a body that one is born into? One that has had no changes made to it, is naturally occurring, just like the existence of any other person.

A minor discrepancy, purely physical in nature, that takes nothing away from the richness of her personhood is somehow made the focal point of her existence. What Anzaldua offers, through this brief example, is perhaps a larger social commentary. A commentary on our obsession with and our fetishization of, these minor (supposed) discrepancies, ranging from sexuality to genitalia. A commentary on the notion of decision making that later constitutes a narrative; a narrative that the concerned individuals have no role in making.

Perhaps Anzaldua’s (romantic) acceptance of difference as an inherent gift has merit in the way it seeks to invert the terms by which ‘different’ people are addressed. It may be her way of celebrating a difference that is otherwise chastised. That understanding holds merit in itself.

Yet it is this confusion about what to call someone, how to talk to them and even look at them, that begs the question: perhaps our understanding of difference and our ways of dealing with difference speak volumes about us, and not the person we are commenting on. Perhaps it is more a projection of our own insecurities, a betrayal of our bigotry, than it is a judgement on the person we are evaluating. A person we place on a pedestal to dissect, to criticize, to shame, for simply existing in a way that does not conform to our expectations.

To have something as pure as existence, mediated through the lens of bigoted narratives is an evil that goes unquestioned because these Others, these sources of ridicule, reside along the margins of society. Anzaldua emphasizes, through this example of the muchacha, the absurdity of our obsession with bodies, with a specific kind of existence. An existence that does not require a label yet has one imposed onto it for the convenience of everyone but the individual in question.

Untranquil Histories and Malcolm

CLR James account of the Haitian revolution is one that is driven by accounts of individual figures namely Toussaint L’Ouverture and Mackandal whose liberation struggle preceded the French Revolution by a century .We can find a similar focus on individuals in Malcolm X’s speeches, the earlier ones especially, that place a lot of importance and responsibility on one individual- namely Elijah Muhammad. The individuals are larger than life but at the same time constrained by the very circumstances the history has placed them in. His description of slaving in the West Indies is one that provides a counter-narrative to white histories by challenging two primary assumptions espoused in them. The first one was that the violence, torture and trauma that took place within the institution of slavery was an exception. This can be also described as the good slave-owner /bad slave-owner argument. He supports his argument by referring to incidents like the Le Jeune case, where unchecked violence on the slaves by slaveowners went unpunished because of the collective resistance put up by the slaveowners who may not have indulged in the same violence but stood to lose power if any justice was dispensed. The other assumption his work refutes is one that paints slavery as a thing of past that is disconnected from modernity. CLR James goes on to argue that everything about slavery in the West Indies was modern- almost all of what the slaves ate and wore was imported and the economy they contributed to itself was a product of modernity.

CLR James’ writing punctures the narrative around plantations that white histories try to project- one that glosses over the violence of slavery to paint an idyllic image of plantations in the Caribbean Islands. The violence is described in graphic detail from the moment of the slaves’ capture following detribalisation to their harrowing journeys first to slave ports and then to the New World. He does not spare any detail in his discussion of the many terrors and tribulations of the Middle Passage and the back-breaking work that is demanded of the slaves in the plantations once they arrive in the Caribbean. He offers no sanitised or deodorised account of slavery in Haiti because he is not writing to ease the conscience of white readers. He begins his book by making it clear that The Black Jacobins would not recount history with tranquility; tranquility in narration is the purview of great English writers alone.

In something that Fanon comes to share with him, CLR James does not concern himself with appeasing white readers by providing a watered-down description of slavery and what followed. Here, we can also draw similarities between the content of Malcolm X’s speeches and CLR James’ writing; both choose to distance themselves from narratives that centre themselves around the convenience of the dominant white population. Both show no concern for the white population, they do not feel the need to package their demands and sentiments in a manner that promises rewards to the white population for their support. In God’s Judgement of White America, Malcolm X expresses his disdain for the white liberal saying that the only difference that exists between a white liberal and a white conservative is that the former is more deceitful. He dismisses the possibility of ever working with white liberals or appealing to their sentiments when he says that white liberals lend vocal support to the black struggle only so they can use the black people as a tool in their ever “football game”. All white liberals offer is superficial changes to the black population. In the same speech, Malcolm X goes on to warn the listeners about white America’s impending doom. There is no question of there being an escape from this Day of Judgment that awaits the white population of America and even if there is one, the burden of the salvation of white man is not on him. He is not worried about the doom and his tone throughout is very matter-of-fact, with references from Scripture about the downfall of other civilisations who had rejected their prophets.

Both Malcolm X and CLR James complicate their analyses of race by exploring the gradation and differences that exist within the black population. CLR James describes a privileged class of slaves- those who worked as foremen, cooks and other household servants. It was the accounts of these relatively privileged slaves that were used to romanticise slavery in the Caribbean. This minority of slaves looked down on those who toiled in the fields and often used their close relationship with the slaveowner to improve their education. Christophe and Toussaint L’Ouverture both belonged to this category of slaves and were given greater opportunities and liberties than those allowed to the ordinary slave who performed backbreaking work in the fields. Those who bore the brunt of slavery were the ones who resisted these institutions. Their resistance culminated into rebellions, the greatest of which was led by Mackandal. The trope of the House Negro and the Field Negro is employed by Malcolm X to explain the difference between what he describes as the old Negro and the New Negro. The Old Negro aligned closely with the Uncle Tom stereotype- he lived with the master, ate with the master and wore the master’s hand-me-downs. His association with the white master was such that he was unable to discern between his interests and the master’s, going out of his way in ensuring that the master’s interests were not threatened. The field Negro was the one who was assigned the most difficult tasks and therefore had no concern with the maintenance of the status quo. Since he suffered the worst under slavery, he would take up any opportunity of running away that he could find without any qualms about the master’s interests. Malcolm X argues that in the twentieth century, the House Negro lives on in what he describes as the old Negro- usually middle class black people who have been educated in elite institutions . The old Negro has no interest in dismantling the existing system; he is satisfied as long he can ensure some of this system’s rewards for himself- education, wealth and prestige. He identifies more closely with the white man than his fellow black people which is why he does not want a complete overhaul of the existing system. He is embarrassed of his color. The New Negro, much like the field Negro, constitutes the majority of the black population that suffers in ghettos and slums with little opportunity for upward social mobility. They are the ones who are not ashamed of what they look like. Unlike the older brand of Negro, the New Negro does not have the objective of appeasing the white masters. These distinctions within the black community are integral to historical analysis because they help place movements and historical figures in a specific context that shapes their politics instead of painting a one-dimensional image of the black (wo)man.

Concerning Intersectional Politics

In a world where the cries for democracy seemingly coincide with the ideals of Western liberalism, the ‘free’ world in other words, the cries of minorities and women lie crushed beneath the patriarchal majority’s jackboot as they have for thousands of years. The branch of feminism which we know as intersectionality caters to this problem. Breaking down the political and social structure with regards to gender discrimination, it delves into the alarming problems associated with the ideas of seemingly flawless systems in the free world as well as blatantly totalitarian systems.

The productivity of intersectionality relies, as the word indicates, on the multifaceted deviance from mainstream politics to what we refer to as identity politics. Intersectionality brings to light the many faces of oppression often ignored or glossed over in the face of seemingly bigger issues such as race, religion etc. It is due to intersectionality that there is resistance in favor of the doubly, triply and so on, oppressed members of society. Take African American women, for example. In light of their people’s history in the United States, the idea of racial equality has remained prevalent at the forefront of the civil rights movement. The women were considered victims of merely racial prejudice and not gender based prejudice. This double oppression was ignored in the face of the race question and therefore without intersectional politics these intricate, societal foundations for discrimination never come to light. Take African American women who are part of the LGBTQ community. They suffer what we can call a triple form of oppression i.e. racial, sexual and gender-based discrimination. Without intersectional politics only the racial part would have ever come to light though usually people under the weight of this three-tier oppression have their voices drowned out altogether.

Conclusively, intersectional politics can be productive in shedding light on multifaced forms of oppression instead of ignoring the rest and focusing on the one big question. Moreover in their deviance from mainstream politics provides a different perspective that might cater to the needs of the minorities and women in society. Unlike mainstream politics, intersectional politics leave out nothing and no one in their many pronged approach towards long established hierarchies and other structures in society.

La facultad

“Pain makes us acutely anxious to avoid more of it, so we hone that radar. It is a kind of survival tactic, that people caught between the worlds, unknowingly cultivate.”

In the chapter ‘Entering into the Serpent’, Gloria Anzaldua introduces the concept of la facultad, which she defines as the ability to capture the depth of the world and the soul by breaking the habitual modes of seeing reality and perceiving consciousness. La facultad is ‘excruciating’; because it is enabled through fear, because only those who live in the borderland experience it, because it does not reside in reason but in the body, and because it is born not out of choice but out of compulsion; to protect, to survive. In other words, la facultad is to know that you are living in a borderland, to experience oppression as a part of existing, to feel fear and pain as an ever-present emotion, to be alert of a continuously lingering danger, and then, to live in a way that is reactionary. Reactionary because it is a reaction to birth in the borderland. It is to be shaped by, and refracted through the white male lens. It is to live in ‘half and half’, and never as a whole. It is to suffer from ‘absolute despot duality’ such that you are reduced to either this or that. It is to be looted and silenced. It is to survive from within the power webs that aim to kill.

Anzaldua’s la facultad resonates with Frantz Fanon’s notion of the world ‘divided into two’, and native percipience. In ‘The Wretched of the Earth’, Fanon talks about how “the native is always on the alert, for since he can only make out with difficulty the many symbols of the colonial world, he is never sure whether or not he has crossed the frontier.” The people on the border live a life of duality, denial, and dichotomy. They experience pain because they are unable to find themselves a ‘home’ where they belong. They experience fear because they are constantly being treated like a nobody. They are pushed to a ‘zone of non-being’, such that they are invisible, and assured to remain so by looting their language, and silencing their histories. However, for Fanon, pain and fear makes the ‘colonized man an envious man’ such that he desires to replace the colonizer and become the persecutor. He is dehumanized, and desensitized. On the contrary, for Anzaldua, pain and fear can open new possibilities if it is experienced by those that live on the borderlands but are not caught in the mode of acceptance and victimization. In other words, la facultad can be an opportunity.

La facultad is destructive and creative at one time. It is created when ‘one’s defenses and resistance’ are destroyed. In other words, it is here then, that pain becomes a survival tactic. Pain and fear destroys, but at the same time, it forces to know and see differently. If to know is to conquer, then for Anzaldua, to know is to achieve la facultad, and to conquer is to survive. To be able to achieve la facultad is to reject singularity; of past, present and future alike. Instead, it is to open up the creation of new possibilities, interception of multiple ways of being, and acceptance of plural futures.

This is the journey that Anzaldua undertakes for the creation of a new Mestiza consciousness. Rebirth, for Anzaldua then, is the realization of a human existence which transcends class, race, gender and sexuality, and wherein all people are of the same level as others.

A Secret Language

Gloria Anzaldua, in Borderlands, describes her position as an ‘in-between’ who belongs to a community existing at the border of Mexico and the USA. Her inbetweenness is not only evident through the struggles of belonging that she describes but also through the way she narrates them. Anzaldua presents a mixture of prose and poetry. She does not stick to one form just like she does not use a single language to explain her experience. Anzaldua’s chapter, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” describes how as a Chicano woman, her language became a “synergy of two cultures with various degrees of Mexicanness or Angloness” (63). Her accent, pronunciation, and vocabulary were different from both Mexicans and Americans. The borderland had a language of its own and this language became a signifier of her difference. At home, she was considered not Spanish enough, and in school she was asked to speak in proper English. This led to a “kind of dual identity” which “internalized the borderland conflict” in a way that at times, Anzaldua felt that one identity cancelled out the other, leaving her as “nothing” and “no one” (63). The power of language and how it is able to create and represent identity is what was most striking in this text; Anzaldua shows that one needs to take ownership of language to be truly free. It resonates with me because a similar kind of juxtaposition of languages is happening with Urdu and English in postcolonial Pakistan.

Anzaldua refers to a “tradition of silence” which all marginalized people are forced to follow. She starts with an example of language being “a male discourse” (54). As a woman, she had always been taught that “well bred girls don’t answer back” (54). Some words in her language were only “derogatory if applied to women” and some words did not even have a feminine plural. It was not only that women were silenced because of cultural norms that associated silence with good breeding, but also the language itself gave them no words to speak. Anzaldua thus shows that language is molded by whoever is in power. It is a male discourse, and a white male discourse at that.

When the white man’s language is spoken by anyone who is not of the same race, it can be seen in a few ways. One way to look at it is to see it as the white man’s victory because he has been successful in enlightening the less intellectual beings. Another way, the one I think Anzaldua too proposes, is to see it as the colored person’s reclamation of power. If one establishes that the white man’s language is the language of power, whoever makes use of it should be understood as exercising that power. Chicano Spanish is the language spoken by the people on the peripheries who are otherized by their colored peers. One reason they speak both English and Spanish is because of their location. Another is that they feel powerless when they are rejected by both sides of the border. They speak the languages that they consider their own but that have been used as a tool oppression against them in order to empower themselves. These multilingual people then codeswitch and form a new “forked tongue,” a “secret language” (55). By creating the Chicano Spanish, these people took ownership of both the languages by molding them in their ways. It helped them communicate and gave them the sense of belonging which neither English nor Spanish could. This language consisted of “archaisms” of Spanish language as well as “anglicisms” which resulted from the English language being imposed on Spanish speakers. In this way, it had the essence of both the languages.

However, Anzaldua mentions how even then, these people were constantly reprimanded. They were blamed for “speaking the oppressor’s tongue by speaking English” or for speaking “poor” and “illegitimate” Spanish (55, 58). These attacks diminish their “sense of self” (58) and force them to prove to one another who the real Chicano person is, not recognizing the fact that “there is no one Chicano language just as there is no one Chicano experience” (58).

This chapter on language is relevant to postcolonial states as reclaiming language is a part of the decolonizing project. If we take Pakistan as an example, and consider the imposition of the English language in the subcontinent, we can still see how people here are trying recover from the colonial hangover. The people here are multilingual and they too codeswtich between English and their local languages in daily conversation. The language spoken in Pakistan isn’t simply Urdu or Punjabi or any other regional language. It is a mixture of the local language and the colonizer’s language and it has become to norm across classes. Every now and then, someone on social media points out how sentences like “She was karing this (doing this)” with both English and Urdu words are funny. People view them as a joke. I propose, they are not a joke. They are, as seen through Anzaldua, a way of reclaiming power by reclaiming language.

Lastly, Aznzaldua also mentions how she would rather write without having to translate her words. In this chapter, she uses many Spanish phrases and she translates most of them because she is writing for an English speaking reader. This reminded me of Moni Mohsin’s The Diary of a Social Butterfly which is a novel of fiction and warrants no comparison to Anzaldua’s work except that Mohsin uses codeswitching and writes the entire novel in a language only decipherable to those who not only speak English and Urdu but also are familiar with the grammatical norms through which they’re juxtaposed. Anzaldua seems to be reaching towards a similar kind of goal; she wants to be herself unapologetically and rightfully points out that language plays a key role in doing so. Until she is able to achieve this kind of decolonization and freedom, she acknowledges that she will be bound and her language will be considered illegitimate.

The Alien Consciousness and the Queer Identity

‘The mestizo and the queer exist at this time and point on the evolutionary continuum for a purpose. We are a blending that proves that all blood is intricately woven together, and that we are spawned out of similar souls.’

In the chapter titled ‘Towards A New Consciousness,’ Anzaldua explores a theme that has been centric to the text as a whole; the emergence of a new ‘alien consciousness,’ viewed in the light of queer philosophy. To be queer, in Anzaldua’s sense is to refuse rigidity- to challenge conformity. It is daring to sway from the path constructed and dictated for you by the dominant paradigms in society; to deviate from a constructed norm, and in doing so, to embrace the uniqueness of one’s own identity. Queerness, however, as Anzaldua thinks of it, is not just queerness in sexuality- but queerness across all borders, including the borders of language, ethnicity, and sex.

Evident throughout the text in her shifts from English to Spanish, Anzaldua’s life embodies what it means to exist in the in-between. She writes of how her culture is a mixture of many different races and cultures, and of how her lesbian identity is comprised of both male and female aspects. The contradictions of the state of simultaneity in both being and non-being are best articulated in the following lines:

‘As a mestiza I have no country, my homeland cast me out; yet all countries are mine because I am every woman’s sister or potential lover. (As a lesbian I have no race, my own people disclaim me; but lam all races because there is the queer of me in all races. I am cultureless because, as a feminist, I challenge the collective cultural/religious male-derived beliefs of Indo-Hispanics and Anglos; yet I am cultured because I am participating in the creation of yet another culture.’ [italics my own]

Out of this spawns what Anzaldua refers to as ‘the alien consciousness,’ or the consciousness of the borderlands. It is a consciousness that comes about through a process of unlearning and relearning; a process that necessitates a productive outcome through the challenging of patriarchal and colonial violence and domination. Anzaldua writes about the role of consciousness in her queer identity, ‘Being lesbian and raised Catholic, indoctrinated as straight, I made the choice to be queer… It’s an interesting path, one that continually slips in and out of the white, the Catholic, the Mexican, the indigenous, the instincts… It is a path of knowledge-one of knowing (and of learning) the history of oppression of our raza. It is a way of balancing, at mitigating duality.’

To be queer, whether in the sexuality sense or in the linguistic sense, whether consciously or unconsciously, is thus an act of rebellion-an act of courage. The very manner in which Anzaldua’s text does not stick to a single language, as is the accepted practice in writing, is an act of rebellion. ‘Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, … my tongue will be illegitimate.’ Similarly, she writes regarding the new consciousness of queer sexuality, ‘Only gay men have had the courage to expose themselves to the woman inside them and to challenge the current masculinity.’

To live in the borderlands is to struggle for acceptance in a society that denied you it- but at the same time, it is also the burden of carrying multiple races, multiple sexualities, multiple identities on your back. The role of the queer, the embodiment of the crossroads, is to link people with each other; to man the forefront of all liberation struggles, because none have suffered injustices and displacement to the extent that they have- and survived despite all odds.

‘We are the chile colorado,
the green shoot that cracks the rock.
We will abide.’

splits me, splits me

“What we are suffering from is an absolute despot duality that says we are able to be one or the other”

Anzaldúa, describes the tendency to force people to fit into one category or the other based on nature, culture or identity. This cartesian duality of mind and body, represented as culture and nature, man and woman, white rationality and indigenous savagery and in other various forms carries with it the reduction of possibility of other ways of being. It deems all that is not “natural” as deviant. Anzaldúa mentioned how women themselves have limited possibilities because there is no room for different ways of being. Those who don’t fit into these binaries are those who are on the borderlands, they are those that are considered subhuman, inhuman and nonhuman.

These borderlands are created not only physically, but also sexually, psychologically and spiritually. Those who belong to the half and half, and those who do not align with these binaries are in the struggle of mitigating their duality. Of having to live with the fear of not belonging and the trauma of being silenced and the immobility associated with that. There is a turmoil that this process of violence causes, where language and identity continues to change.

There are ways that those on the borderlands come to terms with their situation and location. Anzaldúa referred to the use of Chicano Spanish that is born out of the need to have a distinct language. Those on the borderlands make ways for the alien to become familiar but it stays uncomfortable at the same time. The history of conquest, imperialism, displacement, genocide, and war have led to the production of borderlands, it has allowed for the borderlands to be separated from identity and history. The discomfort and the pain due to living on the borderlands is expressed by Anzaldúa:

“staking fence rods in my flesh,

splits me splits me”

Her own experiences as a Chicana, lesbian woman of colour placed her in a vulnerable position where she faced rejection. She described the possibility within the borderlands of finding home, where there is room for her and those who are half and half: “this is my home, this thin edge of barbwire.”

Anzaldúa, in her life seems to strike that balance between the universal and the particular. While holding onto her Chicana identity, she is able to distinguish between the injurious aspects of her culture but at the same time not does not immerse into whiteness. She is called a sell out, a betrayer by her own, but they are also those who silenced her. It is this silence that Audre Lorde refers to:

“What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?”

The transformation of this silence to language is important and through her writing Anzaldúa breaks this silence and her beautiful instructive wisdom is encapsulated in her words:

“And if going home is denied me then I will have to stand and claim my space, making a new culture – una cultura mestiza – with my own lumber, my own bricks and mortar and my own feminist architecture”

Anzaldua’s journey towards a new conscience

Anzaldua in Borderlands carves out a beautiful journey towards a “new conscience” which begins from imagining new possibilities that results in the emergence of a new Self. It is this creation of a Self that I found most striking, particularly because I feel that Fanon and Anzaldua share the same passion and need to create this new Self as a diagnosis against the colonial forces which have rejected them the status of human.

It starts off with the realization that concepts can not be held in “rigid boundaries” for “rigidity means death.” This fear of death gives rise to seeing what was otherwise invisible-the countless doors to possibility which frees an individual from set patterns and goals and move towards a “more whole perspective, one that includes rather than excludes.” This inclusion is unprecedented one that was never experienced in the bifurcated world that has always existed and continued to oppress people like Anzaldua on the basis of their colour, gender, sexuality. It is the same compartmentalized world which Fanon talked about that was divided along rigid lines between those who possess the world and those who borrow it, the haves and the have-nots, the whites and the envious .Thus erasing all traces of heterogeneity. However, Andzaldua is seen as doing exactly the opposite that is retrieving this heterogeneity.

If the rigid boundaries dictated centering of the world to one location, to one way of living, the opening up of new possibilities meant decentering of the universe which gives rise to multiplicity of centers. It must be noted, however, that this is not a time of replacing one social order with another social order, one norm with another norm, one rigidity with another rigidity but it’s a time of closure. It’s a time of possibility.

It is for the longest time, our future belonged to Europe. Its values dictated the norm. But this time of possibility means that the future is not centered on one location. It does not belong to Europe. The future too needs to pluralize.

And it is this through this understanding, that Anzaldua presents a diagnosis which lies only in healing the split between this bifurcated world, “between the white race and the coloured, between males and females” that we see a multiplicity of the futures emerging and it is within this future that we see the birth of a new self.

This entails that you collect the pieces of yourself which were given to you and imposed on you when you first arrived in this world. It is then that you deconstruct them and after this tedious job you construct another image of yourself-an image that Anzaldua calls an “alien consciousness, a conscious of the borderlands.” Because it is the conditions in the borderland which enable her to be different and thus know the world differently where she has the courage to imagine “disengaging from the dominant culture and cross the border into a wholly new and separate territory”

She therefore calls herself “an act of kneeding , of uniting and joining that not only has produced both a creature of darkness and a creature of Iight, but also a creature that questions the definitions of light and dark and gives them new meanings.” It is questioning the very boundaries that has enabled her to break these rigid realities and live a new life with a new Self which will in her best hopes bring an end to rape, violence and war. Like Fanon, Anzaldua finds the answer to colonization in opening up possibilities and allowing a new self to emerge which requires “massive uprooting of dualistic thinking in the individual and collective conscienceness.” It sure is a long struggle but a struggle which is worth every sacrifice, every pain.

Politics of Writing

Norderlands La Frontera argues the need for living in “crossroads” and “confluence” whilst representing this idea in its own form. Anzaldua integrates her language, uses poetry to illustrate this point. Her piece becomes the breaking of the intellectual borderland. In this we can see the structure of the Borderlands La Frontera as a Meta form of resistance, breaking down the conformity and showcasing deviance in writing.

The text vacillates between Spanish and English. This Illustrates her point:

Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano Texas Spanish, Tex-Mex and all the other languages I speak, I cannot accept the legitimacy of myself. Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate

Anzaldua demonstrates the oppression that takes place through language. Being caught in her hybrid identity, neither her Spanish nor her English is seen as proper. There is a clear delineation in linguistic borders. Accented English is not real English, nor is “Anglosized” Spanish. From the offset individuals like Anzaldua are caught in the borderland. However her conscious use both languages is rejection of these constructed borders. She does not simply adhere to the English or the Spanish speaker. She allows the “chromosomes [to] cross over”, embracing the ambiguity of her “hybrid identity”. The “tyranny” of language is subverted by her un-translated use of Spanish. One is not prized over the other, one in fact coexists with the other; becoming borderless.

Her writing becomes an example of deviant literature. It consciously disregards the mainstream ethics of writing. The dichotomy of the “rational and “irrational, magic and reality and real and imaginary” is broken through her use of poetry and fiction. Anzaldua explains this point:

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 by remaining flexible is she able to stretch the psyche horizontally and vertically.

The rational is not the only tool one should use, this represents another constructed border. La facultad -“sensing,” a quick perception arrived at without conscious reasoning- is shown to be vital. The idea of logic as being the only way to know is challenged. Anzalduas use of personal and literary forms break the established structure of argumentative pieces. The magical is intertwined with the “real”. She provides a piece of writing that is “less literal and more psychic”. It shows us that one no longer needs to dwell on the imposed cold styles, that disregard the various elements of knowledge.

Her use of free verse poetry with varying structure can also be seen as a comment. Her poems at the end of the book serve as a good example. There is no repetition in the placements of the stanzas, indicating a completely free, borderless form. However the poem right after conforms more to a block structure. The sentence “to live in borderland means” is used at the start of every stanza. The difference in the existing borderland and the borderless land is made explicit just by these two poems. There is constraint in the “To live in the borderland poem”, it is rigid, which to her is “death”. It captures the demarcated spirit of the borderland world, it also lists down what it means to exist in this space. The poem preceding it however escapes all “logical” sequence, dwells in the unknown, rejects confining the stanzas into an ordered structure. It therefore becomes “a walk from one culture to the other”, one language to the other or one way of knowing to the other. It does not attempt to know all, but accepts the ambiguity of the hybrid world, deconstructing the borders that have been artificially built up.

Borderlands La Frontera echoes many ideas of intersectional politics. It however takes it one step forward by providing a means of learning, writing and knowing that is distinct from the rigid, demarcated and strictly regulated world we know.

“Neither eagle nor serpent, but both. And like the ocean, neither animal respects borders”