Gloria Anzaldúa's Womanist Idea a Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor
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GLORIA ANZALDÚA’S WOMANIST IDEA A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE TEXAS WOMAN’S UNVIERSITY DEPARTMENT OF MULTICULTURAL WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES BY JESSICA SADR, B.A., M.A. DENTON, TEXAS DECEMBER 2018 Copyright Ó 2018 By Jessica Sadr DEDICATION For those of us living in the cracks betWeen worlds. May we continue to heal ourselves and each other. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project would not have been possible without the expertise and mentorship of my dissertation chair, Dr. AnaLouise Keating. Thank you for your commitment to my research and for encouraging me every step of the way. Many thanks to my committee members, Dr. Agatha Beins and Dr. Jessica Smartt Gullion. I appreciate your time and energy. Jillian Morales, thank you for your administrative support. Dr. Sara Ishii, thank you for our weekly writing sessions and for our meaningful friendship. Lindsey Bartgis, thank you for walking this journey with me from day one. My archival research of The Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa Papers (1942-2004) was funded in part by the Center for Mexican American Studies and the Benson Latin American Collection at The University of Texas at Austin. I am grateful to the intellectual community cultivated by Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa for supporting my ideas. Reanae McNeal and Dr. Audrey Lundahl, thank you for having been part of my research and writing process. Thank you, Julia Weinstein Wolfe and Michelle Brown, for giving me perspective When I needed it the most. And thank you to all my family, friends, advocates, and healers who held me up over and over again. Finally, I am grateful to Malcolm Regan for patiently holding space for my intellectual and emotional growth throughout our years together. And thank you to Spock, who is alWays by my side. iv ABSTRACT JESSICA SADR GLORIA ANZALDÚA’S WOMANIST IDEA DECEMBER 2018 My dissertation, Gloria Anzaldúa’s Womanist Idea, is a womanist textual analysis of Chicana queer-feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldúa’s lesser-known scholarship. While Anzaldúa is heralded for her groundbreaking 1987 text, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, she continued to develop her ideas into the tWenty-first century. Furthermore, The Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa Papers (1942-2004) contain 128 linear feet of mostly unpublished materials, which scholars have yet to thoroughly examine. Combined, this archive and Anzaldúa’s tWenty-first-century publications, offer neW directions for Women’s and gender studies—directions that could enhance the field’s understanding of Anzaldúa’s most complex thought and generate novel solutions to social injustices. A womanist analysis of Anzaldúa’s “beyond-Borderlands” scholarship is unique because Anzaldúa is typically read through a feminist lens. While feminism has made important contributions to transformational scholarship and activism, it is not the only liberatory mode of thought and action available to us. Womanism is a social change perspective developed and articulated by Black women and other women of colors. A social change praxis informed by the belief that all people—human and nonhuman—as v Well as nature/the environment, the cosmos, and spiritual realms are inextricably interrelated, womanism is invested in bridging communities across difference and enabling collaborative action toward universal wellness, which is characterized by enhanced agency, mobility, and stability for all groups. In this dissertation, I put Anzaldúa’s theory of conocimiento and related theories including neW tribalism, nepantleras, la naguala, and spiritual activism into conversation With womanism to demonstrate how Anzaldúan thought and womanism can enrich each other and how scholars and activists can implement Gloria Anzaldúa’s womanist idea to resist oppression and cultivate individual and collective transformation. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION ............................................................................................................ iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................ iv ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................. v Chapter I. GLORIA ANZALDÚA BEYOND BORDERLANDS, WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES BEYOND FEMINISM ........................................................ 1 Womanism ................................................................................................. 4 Womanism and/or Feminism? ............................................................. 7 Profound Inclusion ............................................................................. 12 Radical Interrelatedness ..................................................................... 13 Sincere Invitation ............................................................................... 15 Womanist Methodology ........................................................................... 17 Post-Oppositionality .......................................................................... 17 Politicized Spirituality ....................................................................... 21 Research Questions .................................................................................. 25 (The Path of) Conocimiento ..................................................................... 26 Stage Six: Nepantleras ....................................................................... 28 Stage Seven: Spiritual Activism ........................................................ 29 Data .......................................................................................................... 30 Rationale .................................................................................................. 32 Chapters ................................................................................................... 33 Conclusion ............................................................................................... 34 II. MESTIZA CONSCIOUSNESS, CONOCIMIENTO, AND THE WOMANIST EVOLUTION OF ANZALDÚAN THOUGHT .................................................. 36 Centering Mestiza Consciousness, Excluding Conocimiento ................. 41 Activating Identity Saliency on the Path of Conocimiento ............... 44 Conocimiento: Anzaldúa’s Most Expansive Philosophy ......................... 47 Conocimiento’s Profound Inclusion .................................................. 50 Conocimiento’s Radical Interrelatedness .......................................... 57 vii Conocimiento’s Sincere Invitation .................................................... 60 Conclusion ............................................................................................... 62 III. WOMANIST WAYS OF DOING: GLORIA ANZALDÚA’S POST-OPPOSITIONAL PRAXIS ...................................................................... 65 Part One: Oppositionality & Post-Oppositional Praxis ........................... 68 Oppositional Identity Politics ............................................................ 72 Post-Oppositionality .......................................................................... 76 Part TWo: Nepantleras are Post-Oppositional .......................................... 79 Willingness to Witness and Listen ..................................................... 81 Willingness to Adapt and Compromise ............................................. 83 Willingness to be Vulnerable and Transparent .................................. 85 Willingness to be Honest and Uncomfortable ................................... 89 Caveat ...................................................................................................... 92 Conclusion ............................................................................................... 93 IV. WOMANIST SPIRITUAL ACTIVISM: GLORIA ANZALDÚA’S POLITICIZED SPIRITUALITY ......................................................................... 95 Key Terms and Ideas ............................................................................... 97 Spirituality.......................................................................................... 97 Spirit-phobia .................................................................................... 102 Anzaldúa’s Impact ........................................................................... 106 Anzaldúan Spiritual Activism ................................................................ 110 Ritual as Politicized Spirituality ...................................................... 113 Analyzing Anzaldúan Ritual ............................................................ 118 Cultivating Inner Calm .............................................................. 120 Invoking Imagination and Creativity ......................................... 122 Connecting to Nonhuman Realms ............................................. 124 Conclusion ............................................................................................. 129 V. MAKING SPACE FOR WOMANISM IN WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES ........................................................................................................... 131 Spirituality in Women’s and Gender Studies ......................................... 139 Locating Womanism in Women’s and Gender Studies ......................... 144 Teaching Womanism in Women’s and Gender Studies ........................ 152 Teaching Womanism-in-Action