“The Borders of the Frame:" Chicanx Feminism and the Problem of Representation
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Authors
Arellano, Jose Antonio
Issue Date
2020
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Other
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Abstract
This essay studies the formally innovative and captivating works of Gloria Anzaldúa, Ana Castillo, and Alma Luz Villanueva to show how their texts published in the 1980s confront representational problems that Chicanx writers of the 1960s and 1970s had not addressed. Even though a coterminous development called postmodernism had begun to “problematize” the very concept of representation as it had been understood, the most well-known Chicanx writers of the previous decades had created works of literature that unproblematically claimed to speak for a Chicanx community. 1 During the 1960s and 1970s, a distinctly Chicanx literature was presented as able to consolidate a collective identity and ensure that this identity is institutionally recognized within the United States as part of its history. 2 For Chicanx feminists, however, the very term “Chicano” appeared too exclusionary, overtly gendered and nationalistic, and therefore not representative of their own experience. 3 As I will show in what follows, Chicanx feminists took seriously postmodernism’s challenge to the established academic discourses and institutional systems claiming to make knowledge available neutrally. They highlight the process of representation in their texts, presenting it as a vexing issue to be circumvented if it is not resolved.
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Forma Journal
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2578-4889