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To label a group as ‘other’ is to imply both a norm and a sharp distinction between it and its counterpoint. This serves only to reinforce an underlying assumption that one group is superior or proper, as Simone de Beauvoir wrote. The male/female binary she described, however, is far from the only such dichotomy in contemporary society. Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera discusses several such dichotomies and the author’s identity as a person who lies outside of many of the typical categorizations. It is a revealing work as a personal account as a subject of these systems of classification, and goes beyond much related feminist theory by describing a solution to the difficulties of living on the border of several completely different worlds and rôles. As the theory of the the people who live between these social roles— the mestizas— has matured, these ideas have been expanded upon by other feminist theorists, such as Susan Friedman.
The idea that a dichotomy often implies by a default or assumed natural state and an ‘other’ is well-established in feminist theory. As de Beauvoir wrote in her classic text The Second Sex: “[M]an represents both the positive and the neutral, as in indicated by the common use of man to designate human begins in general; whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity.”1 Anzaldúa has recognized the same attitude, and notes the way in which Chicano/a culture has “protected” women, who are “the stranger, the other”.2 As a feminist, she avoids the “rigidly defined roles” assigned to her as a woman, but since she also does not seek the role of a man in her culture (and it is not in any case available to her), she is left as an outsider.
In some senses, this problem is felt even more strongly by invisible minorities, who are not obviously identifiable as members of their subculture. Audrey Lorde has said that it is believed that Black lesbians have not been involved in the political struggles of Black people because they did not openly label themselves as such, and so were not seen.3 This has resulted in both heterosexism (the belief that heterosexuality is inherently superior to homosexuality) and homophobia (the fear of homosexuality in oneself and others) within the Black community. Anzaldúa has dealt with this by confronting people who are afraid of her sexual identity. In her culture, lesbian women are considered “of the Others”, and referred to as “mita’y mita” (half and half). Anzaldúa has reacted to to this by proclaiming her own (and most other) cultures to be flawed by the possession of an “absolute despot duality that says we are able to be only one or the other”.4
Like Lorde, Anzaldúa has difficulty identifying with the white feminists who were predominant in the second wave of feminism, and the white lesbians among them, since due to racism they are in a position of privilege. As someone who is half-Spanish and half-Native, she suffers the racism directed at both groups, and yet is accepted into neither. As a Mexican-American, she is perceived as a foreigner in both the U.S. and in Mexico. Ana Castillo is another feminist in this position. She describes how the American Left has sympathized with Central Americans, but has assumed that mestizas on both sides of the U.S./Mexican border have the ability to ‘pass’ for white at will and thus do not suffer significantly from racism.5 This ignores the history of Mexican-Americans, who were for example lynched and hanged alongside African-Americans in Texas and throughout the American Southwest. She believes that our culture is a “polarized world of contrived dualisms, dichotomies and paradoxes: light vs. dark and good vs. evil”, in which the mestizas are “the evil… or at least, the questionable”.6 Castillo was not assimilated into the dominant culture. She grew up in Chicago, a city known for distinct black and white districts but with large Mexican areas as well. The different ethnic groups had their own suburbs, stores, and churches, and the only tie the Chicano/a had with their white neighbours was that they worked in their factories.7
As a Chicana, Anzaldúa considers Aztlán her homeland. This territory has been a part of the American South-West since it was occupied in the early 1800’s by migrating whites, who eventually conquered it and much of Mexico, turning 100 000 Mexicans into Americans. Like most Chicanas, Anzaldúa’s parent’s land was taken from them by institutionalized racism in the early 1900’s, and her family became poor sharecroppers. These and other injustices have made some Chicanos consider the feminista (Chicana feminist) movement of the 1970’s to be a sell-out to white culture. These men believed that “racism not sexism was the greater battle”, and distrusted “any movement led by any sector of white society”.8 The feminist movement itself at the time was concerned almost exclusively with sex and gender, and had little concept of what it was like not to be white. Conversely, the Chicano movement was male-dominated and lacked understanding of women’s issues. Castillo concludes that the Chicana today is a countryless woman, belonging nowhere.9
The most hopeful chapter of Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera is the seventh, “La conciencia de la mestiza/Towards a New Consciousness”. Here, she describes how as a a person who falls along several borders, she is forced to decide between the commonly held beliefs of white, Mexican, and indigenous cultures. This has taught her that it is not useful to simply react against an idea, since “all reaction is limited by, and dependent on, what it is reacting against.”10 Instead, one must somehow merge the polar opposites and assume both stances, or abandon both approaches and
cross the border into a wholly new and separate territory… The answer to the problem between the white race and the colored, between males and females, lies in healing the split that originates in the very foundation of our lives, our culture, our languages, our thoughts.11
This “massive uprooting of dualistic thinking” can only be lead by the mestiza, who sit between the worlds and are thus able to communicate with each.
Despite best intentions, feminist discourse on race has often revolved around a white/other dichotomy which includes specific victims and victimizers. This often causes discussions of racism to collapse into an impasse of frustration and anger, in which both ‘sides’ become convinced that the other is too different to understand them.12 Friedman has identified four types of arguments (‘scripts’) concerning race and ethnicity in feminist theory: denial, accusation, confession, and relational positionality. The first three have been used to describe some race issues very successfully, but as they all imply a binary world-view, they are unable to help feminism move beyond racism. They describe the three stages of the argument: ‘“I’m not a racist, we are all women,’ says a white feminist. ‘You are a racist, you are different than me,’ says a woman-of-color feminist. ‘You are right, I am a racist,’ says a white woman.”13 These dialogues have done little to rectify the situation, and have their own problems. For one, by claiming ‘white’ and ‘other’ as diametric opposites, they perpetuate the fallacy of racial purity, when in reality neither ‘white’ nor ‘other’ are homogeneous ethnic groups. Friedman reminds us that many ethnically motivated wars have been fought both between ‘white’ Europeans and different non-European cultures. These binaries are also harmful in that they remove emphasis from any similarities the two groups might have.
Friedman instead would like to draw attention to the degree to which identity is context-dependent. One’s identity is defined in terms of our relationships with others and so it becomes different things as we interact with different people and cultures.14 This implies that any two people with a shared set of experiences should be able to discuss them together, if they make the effort. More specifically, Anzaldúa writes that she has learnt to become “an Indian in Mexican culture, to be a Mexican from an Anglo point of view”.15
Friedman warns that the use of the language of relational positionality comes with the danger of obscuring inequalities between different social groups by losing sight of important power differentials in the complex language of cultural relativism; hence, arguments must be grounded in empirical observations of inequalities in society, which necessarily involve dividing people into ‘races’ for the sake of measurement, thus making use of the descriptive power of the white/other binary.16 This level of careful analysis is lacking in Anzaldúa’s book, but like Friedman she describes a means for dealing with the ambiguity of pluralism, in which “nothing is thrust out… nothing abandoned”.17 Anzaldúa’s solution is to maintain an ambivalent tolerance toward the contradictions between various social rules, but is still able to resolve moral dilemmas. She attributes this to an ability to synthesize an identity from her several heritages which is “greater than the sum of its severed parts”,18 a mestiza consciousness which is able to direct her amidst the various cultures she straddles. She has therefore successfully used a series of cultural binaries to create an ability to see cultural dichotomies in a more catholic light.
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera, 2nd edition. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1999.
Castillo, Ana. “A Countryless Woman”. From Massacre of the Dreamers. New York: Penguin Books, 1995.
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex, H.M. Parshley, ed., trans. Knopf, 1993.
Friedman, Susan. “Beyond White and Other”. From Signs, v. 21, no. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Autumn 1995.
Lorde, Audrey. “I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities”. From Making Face, Making Soul Haciendo Caras, Gloria Anzaldúa, ed. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1990.