‘Borderlands La Frontera’documented Gloria Anzaldúa’s experiences of existing in the borderlands of geography (Mexico and the US), culture (Indian-Mexcian-Anglo) and sexuality (as a queer woman). She subverted these artificially created boundaries by fusing poetry and prose, English and Spanish, and all aspects of her Chicana identity. One of the more striking aspects is Anzaldúa’s text was her gradual embrace of the supernatural and her reinterpretation of the mystical forces rejected by her society.

For Anzaldúa, the supernatural has been intimately tied to Chicano history and tradition. According to the myth, the Aztecs decided to settle on the land where an eagle sat with a writhing snake in its mouth (which also features on the Mexican flag) – a symbol of triumph for a civilization. She also talked about the three Chicana mothers: la Guadalupe, Chingada, and la Llorona who may presently be worshiped under different names, but their significance as old-world entities have remained the same to the Chicanos. Even on an everyday level, Anzaldúa recounted the Mexican love of storytelling the belief in superstitions into which she was socialized (which can still be seen in the way she narrates ‘Borderlands’). These beliefs, she recognized, are important ways of preserving indigenous spirituality that’s existence has been threatened by Western rationality and modernity.

But the problem is not just that these spiritual elements are in danger of being exterminated from the outside but also from within. She talked about how the myths and images of her people where dismissed as being irrational and pagan by white rationality. But more so, she pointed out how Chicano glorify myths which perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes by emphasizing submissiveness in women. One such instance was the story of Guadalupe who had been sanitized of her ambiguity and rebellion to be equated with the chaste and sacrificial Virgin Mary. But, even in her new sanitized image, she is held in regard as the patron saint of the poor and marginalized, whether they were the wrong race, sexuality or gender. Guadalupe can signify a greater emancipation from more ingrained divisions designed to suppress the wholesomeness of the feminine experience (the dangerous aspects and the maternal qualities). Anzaldúa did not necessarily suggest a subversion of the same gendered stereotypes so that women can dominate over men. Instead, she argued that the separation and subordination of masculine and feminine, the spiritual and the religious close off the possibilities of a multiplicity of identities and experiences which can bring meaning into our lives.

In reinterpreting Guadalupe, Anzaldúa attempted to redeem the otherworldly aspects of herself. Her unique take on her spirituality came from her position as a queer Chicano-Mexican woman, someone who has been on the borderlands of her community, as well as the modern world. She particularly recounted the time she drank the blood which gushed from a snake bite, feeling herself becoming snake-like. Anzaldúa went into great detail describing the importance of the serpent in pre-Columbian America as a feminine entity with a deep connection spirit world – that which wad both dangerous and familiar. Her snake-bite incident allowed her to tap into what was spiritual and powerfully feminine and that which society fought hard to repress. This may not refer to any particular aspect of her life, but it was a recognition of instinctive forces which gave her life meaning in a way organized religion could not. It also connected her to Coatlalopeuh, the indigenous manifestation of Guadalupe that represented the inexplicable and mystical. In recognizing Coatlalopeuh’s wholesomeness, perhaps she could recognize the harmony between the rational and supernatural within herself.

The conquering of rationality/organized religion over the mystical/supernatural is seen by Anzaldúa as a largely gendered process with multiple layers. One cannot ignore modernity and its benefits, but should also recognize its limitations as being oppressive and exclusionary. Especially to the women of color, Anzaldúa’s piece calls for a recognition of the ambiguities of our lives. To suppress the otherworldliness of our lives is to submit to language which seeks to subdue our potential wholesomeness. The way to subvert that tyranny is to allow for the existence of multiple identities and multiple possibilities.  

The most striking thing about Borderlands is probably its sheer unapologetic tone and non-standard structure. Anzaldua makes a point of demanding engagement on her ground, never translating herself for the audience, or apologizing for aspects of her context that might incite derogation from epistemic white morality or ‘knowledge’. This is specifically interesting for me, as I wrote my first blog on Rigoberta Menchu’s need to both translate herself into English to promote her people in an acceptable, legitimate, accessible language, and to defend those actions that she saw as otherwise ‘backwards’ on the white scale.

This then is Anzaldua’s rebellion against that need – a rebellion that is embedded into the structure of her writing as much as it exists in what she writes. The most obvious aspect of her demand for being ‘met halfway’ as she puts it, is her refusal to translate. The text is exquisite, not just in its refusal to engage only in English, but also in its subversion of English,

I read it, thinking of the production of ‘objective’ knowledge and the standardized structures there-of; the patterns of academic speech that provide the ring of authority – of ‘objective’ knowledge – white language, white knowledge. Anzaldua challenges them in form, structure and content. She switches her bilingual way through reminiscence, analytic discussion, theology, mythology, poetry, dreams, eloquently jagged edges to each transition of both content and language. The theme of borderlands demands a borderland language and a borderland structure – almost gratingly jagged edges and jarring multiplicity are only too appropriate. Her sentences swing from standard paragraphs to oddly structured, fractured, poetically repetitive – demanding engagement with her, beyond the text, from moment to moment.

When describing her experiences of the supernatural, her dreams and omens feature mythological beings – the serpents of womanhood, La Larona weeping for her stolen children. And yet – her point is not that this proves the existence and intercession of these beings, but the impact of the borderlands in its many forms upon her own consciousness. The spiritual is the expression of the conflict, of oppression, of society itself, to her. There is the borderland of subjectivity and objectivity that she straddles, that her writing straddles – the mind, the body, spiritual experience and societal analysis.

The borderlands of the text – between ‘knowledge’ and – let’s encompass poetics, spirituality and mythology into ‘intuition’ – between genders, between races, between textual styles, are not just explained, they’re demonstrated. In centralizing her own position within these borderlands, in centralizing her own experiences, spiritual, racial and familial, Anzaldua exposes the potential in these borderlands – in existing in multiple, overlapping possibilities and identities. Consider the example of the text itself – in its overlapping, strange existence, in its ability to defy pigeonholing or any limitation, any border defining its meaning. It is subjective and prescriptive, poetry and analysis, religion and sociology, biography and seminal text. It is English and not.

In living within this textual, linguistic borderland, it expands in meaning, in possibilities, just as Anzaldua offers meaning and possibility from within all sorts of borderlands.

Kimberle Crenshaw argues that a single axis framework marginalises those who face the brunt of multiple oppressions. She argues that feminist theory and antiracist policies are limiting and fail to take this into account. She advocates for a rethinking of framework that is not equal to the sum of sexism and racism but rather takes into account their interaction. Crenshaw illustrates her argument by pointing towards courtroom proceedings that did not take seriously the plight of black women. The law does not cater to their experiences and tries to fit them within either discrimination against women or black people but not both, together. Court cases would give importance to discrimination based on existing categories; but those were based on either white women or black men, and there was no room for black women and their experiences.  Crenshaw emphasises how the multiple oppressions places the burden on those who have been marginalised doubly to bring their struggle to the forefront.

bell hooks, too argued that the feminist movement in the United States did not represent the experiences of black women nor it make space for black women to voice their concerns. It is important to recognise the multidimensionality of experience and to think about multiple interlocking sets of powers. At the same time it is important to be wary of essentialising the subject.

Judith Butler argues against naturalising experiences and using categories to fight for justice because they are exclusionary. Hers is an important insight because a liberation that is revolutionary and can overthrow power completely can only be all inclusive if it based on a common thread that is not based on experience born out of nature. Perhaps, a humanity that is not based on an established universal experience can unite the marginalised and allow for a liberation that frees all from the violence inflicted upon them. I question if such a universal humanity can be established since experience and identity do increasingly drive people towards liberation struggles. Perhaps for such a struggle to even be possible, there has to be a larger recognition of the existence of multiple dimensions of violence and for radical empathy to drive people’s political agendas.

The politics of intersectionality is important because experience holds significance but it is important to understand the limits of an intersectional approach and to challenge it when it becomes limiting. Butler also leaves us with the question of what to make of experience if we remove it as the basis for our politics? Whether an overthrow of the oppressive power relations can be based on shared humanity? Where does that leave us as organisers and as political agents? How would such a movement be organised? How will it function and how will play out in reality rather than ideas? Is it being too optimistic about the world and the possibilities that exist? Or can it be a source of direction, hope and alignment that does not prioritise one experience over the other? Does Butler’s subject and its liberation leave no space for experiences to be valued? 

In Aint I woman, Bell Hooks challenges the language used in feminist discourse to understand and analogue the circumstances of women and the conditions of blacks. The sentence alone, according to Hooks, stated and thus created a reality where all women were white and all blacks were men. Hence, language itself “had no place for black women”.  This helped inspire a critique and deconstruction of the narrow categories of both “women” and “race” and bring about an intersectional analysis of socio-economic divisions. For this blog, I will be focusing on the intersectionality of black women.

The term intersectionality was coined by Kimberly Crenshaw in 1989, when she attempted to name the oppression that black women faced all fronts. And, though at times the wording seems clunky, one cannot deny their importance. It emphasizes that people can be disadvantaged by several discriminations. It acknowledges people’s experiences in order to comprehend how there are different avenues for marginalization and how these avenues overlap. Kimberly Crenshawstated that the goal of intersectionality was “to facilitate the inclusion of marginalized groups for who it can be said “when they enter, we enter[1]“.

For Kimberly Crenshaw, as with Bell Hooks, the Combahee River Collective and other black female activists, the first goal was to name the oppression. They wanted bring to light, a systematic subjugation that had been largely ignored. According to them, black women were doubly oppressed; both because they were black and because they were women. Their unique position meant that they understood that “there is such a thing as racial-sexual oppression which is neither solely racial nor solely sexual[2].” For example “For instance, a black man and a white woman make $0.74 and $0.78 to a white man’s dollar, respectively. Black women, faced with multiple forms of oppression, only make $0.64[3]”. U Realizing the politics of intersectionality is vital to contesting the overlapping prejudices people face in their daily lives . Hence, the importance in intersectionality in understanding and fighting the overlapping prejudices that people face in their daily lives.

However, intersectional politics run the risk of creating hierarchies of oppression. Accepting that there are different avenues of oppression and that these avenues of oppressions overlap mean that at any point, there is always someone being oppressed. Then the question, arises, “what and who to fight for? There is also the problem of naming the oppression since the currently stated categories do not work for them. As one constantly keeps trying adding different types of oppression, the idea of fundamental oppression begins to crumble.

Another and bigger problem of intersectionality is that it leads to a politics of difference. That is the same problem that Judith Butler talks about in Politics of Performativity, according to her when an identity is naturalized, it is taken for granted. Judith Butler points to the subject of women as the basis of critique. According to her, when the subject of woman is naturalized, it no longer takes into account the power relations that created the subject in the first place. The same can be said for race or gender or even both. There is nothing natural about an identity they are produced because of hierarchy of power and we risk losing out on the productive element when we naturalize it. However, though intersectional politics can lead to this, it is not a naturalization of identity. Identity as Kimberly Crenshaw understands is a construct created out social reality and lived experiences and social position. While to simply define yourself with one identity is essentialist, accepting that a part of your multifaceted reality can be shared with others is not monolithic or essential and that is what intersectional politics tries to emphasize. Describing communal identity means trying to analyses the power relations that created those identities and imposed them on us in the first place. Intersectionality helps see through the naturalization by showing how different social realities both empower and restrict different people be it class, gender, sexuality, race etc. Being aware of these prejudices makes one aware of the sufferings in the world that one is not party to, rendering the veil as DuBois calls it.  Hence, there is great value in intersectional politics if we want to create a world where the most oppressed and vulnerable are listened to and protected.

[1] Crenshaw, Kimberle () “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum

[2] Ibid.

[3] Alemán, Rosa, “What Is Intersectionality, and What Does It Have to Do with Me?” YW Boston. April 25, 2018, https://www.ywboston.org/2017/03/what-is-intersectionality-and-what-does-it-have-to-do-with-me/.

Simply put, intersectionality is the understanding of multiple oppressions that one can be subjected to, and the consequent degree of marginalization. It focuses on interlocking oppressions, human agency, historical evolution of norms, and identity politics; each of which is a broad and complex topic. However, intersectional politics is not free of paradoxes. To me, the most interesting paradox is its power to be hopeful and hopeless at one time.

Beginning with how intersectional politics can lead to hopelessness, it produces a vast number of intersections such that it becomes impossible to know which should be emphasized at any particular time. Creating a hierarchy of oppressions is also a hopeless idea because it cannot be unanimous. For example, race would be on the top of the hierarchy for a black man, gender for a white woman, and both race and gender for a black woman. Then, from where does one start? Another cause of hopelessness stems from intersectional politics’ fixed conceptualizations of structure and power. In other words, by focusing on agency and experience, intersectionality reduces an individual to an essence, such that it takes differences for granted, and ignores how the difference is produced in the first place. As for power, hopelessness results from the nature of power to seep into all spheres of life and action. No one and nothing exists outside of power relations, and hence, there is no unlimited capacity of action. In this sense, intersectional politics becomes constraining.

However, at the same time, intersectional politics is also hopeful. It is empowering and liberating. By eliminating the dichotomy between nature and social, and material and discourse, Judith Butler suggests that identities are fluid. In other words, they are socially constructed. To restore given identities to history and not to nature means that there is nothing natural about being born, for example, as a black lesbian woman. As a result, there is room for movement; towards an identity that is not given by the system due to mere birth in it, but an identity that is taken upon willingly. Intersectional politics teaches one to argue to refuse to accept what was given as a natural norm. Then, intersectional feminists’ rejection of biological determinism against historical evolution becomes emancipatory. It allows space for change. Another way in which intersectional politics is hopeful is because it rejects binary identities. By claiming that identities are multiple, any attempt to pen one down as this or that becomes difficult. Then, humans cease to be understood as subjects because of subjugation. Instead, they become subjects because of their subjectivity. Intersectional politics enables them to exceed categories which have been imposed on them, and to view themselves through their own lived experiences. In other words, it allows humans to exist on their own terms. When they cease to take what was given to them as destiny or natural, they push towards destabilizing the norm and making themselves heard and seen. In this sense, intersectional politics is liberating.

To conclude, intersectional politics is hopeless and hopeful, and constraining and liberating, at the same time. However, it is not unproductive. Even if a new identity does not lie independent and outside of existing structures of power, it is productive to refuse the congenital identity and take up a new identity. Even if a struggle is carried out from a position within the existing structures of power, it is productive to be carried out. Even if one is faced with multiple oppressions that do not synthesize with the larger solidarity against oppression, it is important to speak about them. Identity does not mean complete escapism, struggle does not mean complete revolution, and uniqueness does not mean unimportant. Each of these matters. It matters because it disrupts the oppressor’s tactic of shutting down the oppressed through lies of ‘not yet’, ‘step by step’ and ‘not most urgent’. It matters because it makes space, little but alive. It matters because it is a refusal to be treated lesser. Therefore, to find unity in diversity and not be misguided by difference and categorization, and to keep trying to destabilize the norm from whatever position and to whatever capacity, should be the aim of intersectional politics.