V. Airbrushing the History of Feminism: ‘Race’ and Ethnicity Miriam GLUCKSMANN In the now received history of feminism, a much repeated criticism is that second wave feminists did not pay any attention to race or class. For a good decade now, countless student essays rehearse what has almost become a mantra, that feminist theory divided into the three ‘strands’ of liberal, socialist/Marxist, and radical/separatist, and that the young white middle-class feminists who peopled the 1970s and early 1980s women’s liberation movement in the USA and UK ignored and excluded black, Asian, ethnic minority and migrant women. It was only in the late 1980s and 1990s, the story goes, that a new focus on identity and difference facilitated recognition of differences between women, including those associated with race and ethnicity. Post-structuralism and postmodernism are presented as contemporaneous and often as linked with this recognition, since both developments emphasize heterogeneity in contrast to the presumed earlier monolithic homogeneity. A trawl of introductory texts (e.g. Beasley, 1999; Freedman, 2001; Tong, 1992) undertaken for this article confirms the prevalence of this received interpretation. Of course, history is always written from the standpoint of the present. At a distance of 30 years, it is entirely understandable that the emergence of ideas over a half or even a whole decade can no longer be appreciated and instead become assimilitated into a static position or strand of thought. The view of successive, if not progressive, ‘waves’ is now being effectively challenged (Hemmings, 2005). A metaphor of multiple skeins and twisting threads may be more appropriate. In writing the history of thought, each new generation is prone to stress its difference (‘advance’) from the one immediately preceding it, while relying on it for information about the one before. Reconstructing the past is hence a continuing dialectic of erasure and recuperation, and it is to recuperation and recovery that I now turn. Feminism & Psychology © 2008 SAGE (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) http://fap.sagepub.com, Vol. 18(3): 405–409; 0959-3535 DOI: 10.1177/0959353508092096 406 Feminism & Psychology 18(3) I want to suggest that this received history distorts the reality of the women’s movement in the 1970s, its involvement and support for anti-colonial struggles across the world and its concern for the unequal and subordinate position of migrant women in Britain. The relative absence of working-class and migrant women from the movement was considered a problem at the time. Even if such politics was not always reflected in feminist theoretical texts of patriarchy or re/production, it was evident in the pamphlets and conference proceedings of the time, and in many publications and research monographs, including ethnographies. This contention relies on personal knowledge gained as a participant in the British Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) from its early days. And as the author of a workplace ethnography that centred on migrant and minority ethnic women (Women on the Line published under the pseudonym of Ruth Cavendish [1982]) I have a vested interest in correcting misconceptions! Although published in 1982, this ‘research’ was conducted in 1978–9 as an attempt to understand why and how the women’s movement failed to involve migrant and working-class women by engaging with their experiences. The analysis of cross-cutting divisions between and among women of different ethnic groups, women and men, and people at different positions in the employment hierarchy could easily be rewritten in terms of intersectionality. By the time I went to work in the factory, I had already taught women’s studies in three universities, and my surviving course notes include sessions on the situation of Afro-Caribbean and Asian women in Britain (their diverse histories and cultures, the specific circumstances of their migration as well as their position in Britain vis-à-vis white women and black or Asian men); the history of slavery and women’s resistance to it; maids and madams in South Africa; the continuing impact of colonialism on family structure and gender relations. The important point is not my teaching but that source material and a growing literature were available to me (and others) to draw on, and that the content resonated with ongoing debates. My experience was not unique and I mention it only as an example. Indeed, many of the young women who formed the WLM, especially those on the Left, were already familiar with questions of race and colonialism from their prior support for anti-imperialist struggles. The Vietnam movement preceded the WLM, and we knew about the crucial role of women in the National Liberation Front. Similarly the importance of women fighters to the liberation struggles of Mozambique, Angola and Guinea Bissau and to resistance against US-backed military dictatorships in South and central America were well publicized. We were familiar with Fanon’s (1965) comments on the revolutionary potential of the veil in the Algerian fight for independence, and with Angela Davis’s (1971) essay on the forms of slave women’s resistance to their masters and mistresses. In 1967, Stokely Carmichael had appeared at the Politics of Liberation conference in London and dismayed many women by his vicious sexism that undermined an otherwise sympathetic support for the US Black Power movement. In this way, the emergence of the WLM occurred within, and was coloured by, a context Special Feature: GLUCKSMANN: Airbrushing the History of Feminism 407 where questions of racial domination and opposition to colonialism were central to the political agenda. At the same time, cultural and political/material issues were not counter-posed to each other. A political liberationist perspective was inextricably linked to understandings of cultural difference and appreciation of the burgeoning black feminist literature of the time (e.g. Merle Collins, Paule Marshall, Gayl Jones, Gloria Naylor and Jamaica Kincaid as well as the better known Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and Audre Lorde, and see Evans, 1983). Many of the early campaigns touched on the situation of black and Asian women in Britain. The long running Grunwick strike for union recognition for Asian women workers is probably the best-known example. But I have a clear memory of campaigns around immigration issues, notably where British-born women had gone to India, had children and returned with them to the UK only to be subjected to intrusive physical examination and racist allegations that the children were not theirs and denied entry. The Women’s Movement (WM) demand for ‘Free abortion and contraception on demand’ was altered to the ‘Right to control our own bodies’ in the light of evidence that black women were being forcibly sterilized and in opposition to the use of the injectible contraceptive Depo-Provera on migrant women in the UK and in developing countries. A collection of writings from the WLM 1969–72 includes two pieces on black women (Wandor, 1972), Amrit Wilson’s widely read book Finding a Voice, about Asian women in Britain appeared in 1978, and in the same year the Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent (OWAAD) was formed. (This was also the period of IRA bombings in Ireland and the British mainland and Irish feminists in Britain began to organize on their own account). Ethnic minority women engaged in self-organization from that time, culminating in the sustained critique of white feminism and fleshing out of the contours of black feminism in the early 1980s. Hazel Carby’s essay ‘White Woman Listen!’ (1982) and the Feminist Review special issue ‘Many Voices, One Chant: Black Feminist Perspectives’ (1984) had a major impact on the course of the WLM. The trenchant critiques of feminist theory’s preoccupation with production and reproduction, and implicit universalizing of the western nuclear family structure, female dependency and male power were powerful and well targeted, uncovering an unrecognized racism within the movement. Many other examples could be adduced to show that race and ethnicity were issues for feminism many years before our contemporary texts would acknowledge them. The black critiques of white feminism also preceded the shift to identity politics and post-structuralism by a good few years, and were not simply the outcome of the espousal of ‘difference’ as a theoretical construct (e.g. hooks, 1981; Hull et al., 1982; Lorde, 1984). The black critique was influential and effective and my argument is not about that. The charge that the women’s movement ignored or excluded minority ethnic women hit many targets, and responses to it were an integral part of the history of the time. So my argument is not with the black critique but rather with the later selec- 408 Feminism & Psychology 18(3) tive history, and feminism’s silencing of its own past. The vehicle for doing this is the continuing use of categories (the ‘strands of feminist thought’) that become more reified the more they are reproduced, and the equation of ‘difference’ with diversity and heterogeneity. But why the airbrushing out of race and ethnicity from 1970s and early 1980s British feminism? Possible reasons include the shift to identity politics and the ‘academicization’ of feminism from the late 1980s and 1990s.The politics of the time had been to transcend given identities inherited from histories, social or individual, in the belief that we were working towards a more inclusive and transformative future of greater but not uniform equality. The focus was on what you were aiming at, the political goals you were pursuing rather than your origins and where you came from. Naïve and utopian as this now sounds, it echoed the wider international politics of the time. Another reason for the erasure is that histories of feminist thought concentrate overwhelmingly for their historical sources on feminist theory and ignore almost completely the campaigns and practice and political activities of the women’s movement. While the latter were concerned with class and race, and with the lives of working-class and migrant women, the former centred on more abstract theorizing of the relation between capitalism and patriarchy, and how this affected social institutions and people. In so doing, it tended to universalize what was specific to white western experience, especially American and western European. In the WLM theory and practice co-existed, even if not always happily or in agreement! Histories of feminism would be truer to the past if they accorded attention to practice as well as theory. I have relied on my own memory and experience in making the case, but there are good archives with collections documenting the campaigns and political activities of feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. To recuperate the past from its current silencing may require different kinds of research and exploration. REFERENCES Beasley, C. (1999) What is Feminism? London: Sage. Carby, H. (1982) ‘White Woman Listen! Black Feminism and the Boundaries of Sisterhood’, in Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (ed.) The Empire Strikes Back, pp. 212–35. London: Hutchinson. Cavendish, R. (1982) Women on the Line. London: Routledge. Davis, A.Y. (1971) ‘Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves’, Black Scholar 3: 2–15. Evans, M. (ed.) (1983) Black Women Writers: Arguments and Interviews. London: Pluto Press. Fanon, F. (1965) ‘The Veil’, in Studies in a Dying Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press. Feminist Review (1984) Special issue 17: ‘Many Voices, One Chant: Black Feminist Perspectives’. Freedman, J. (2001) Feminism. Buckingham: Open University Press. Special Feature: GLUCKSMANN: Airbrushing the History of Feminism 409 Hemmings, C. (2005) ‘Telling Feminist Stories’, Feminist Theory 6(2): 115–39. hooks, b. (1981) Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. London: Pluto Press. Hull, G., Scott, P.B. and Smith, B. (1982) All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, but Some of Us are Brave. New York: Feminist Press. Lorde, A. (1984) ‘An Open Letter to Mary Daly’, in Sister Outsider, pp. 66–71. Freedom, CA: Crossing Press. Tong, R. (1992) Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction. London: Routledge. Wandor, M. (ed.) (1972) The Body Politic: Women’s Liberation in Briatin 1969–1972. London: Stage 1. Wilson, A. (1978) Finding a Voice. Asian Women in Britain. London: Virago. Miriam GLUCKSMANN is Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex, UK. She has longstanding interests in feminism and gender and has published widely, including several books on women’s work and employment. A second edition of Women on the Line is forthcoming from Routledge in 2008 under her own name. She was active in the British Women’s Movement from 1970, taught Women’s Studies courses from then, and was co-author of the Red Collective’s The Politics of Sexuality in Capitalism (1978[1973]). She recently completed a three-year programme of research on ‘Transformations of Work: New Frontiers, Shifting Boundaries, Changing Temporalities’ as an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Professorial Fellow. ADDRESS: Department of Sociology, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK. [email: glucm@essex.ac.uk] V I V E N C I A S : Re p o r t s f r o m t h e fi e ld A Z T L Á N AS A PALIMPSEST: FROM CHIC ANO N ATIONALISM TOWARD TRANSNATIONAL FEMINISM I N ANZA LD ÚA’S B O R D E R L A N D S B r e n da Wa t t s Southwest Missouri State University Springfield, MO A b s t ra c t Although it has long been one of the founding concepts of Chicano identity, explored as myth, history and as a cultural utopia to be achieved in works by many Chicano writers, the idea of Aztlán presented by Rodolfo ‘‘Corky’’ Gonzales in ‘‘El plan espiritual de Aztlán’’ is not the same as when presented by later Chicano writers, most notably Gloria Anzaldúa. In Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, a key work of Chicana feminism, borderlands theory, queer theory and transnational feminism, Anzaldúa articulates a politics of Aztlán. Using Daniel Cooper Alarcón’s concept of Aztlán as a metaphorical palimpsest, I argue that earlier Chicano movement views of Aztlán resurface in Borderlands, reasserting foundational concepts of Chicano nationalism at the same time that Anzaldúa rewrites them in her own feminist critique and reworking of the Chicano Movement to create a space for a transnational feminist practice. Although explicitly denying the utility of latinidad as a unifying concept for achieving political and social change, Anzaldúa does argue for a new mestiza consciousness that opens up the nationalist theories of Chicano identity to the space of the transnational. Ke y wo rds Aztlán; Chicano; transnational; feminism; latinidad; Anzaldúa Latino Studies 2004, 2, (304–321) c 2004 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1476-3435/04 $30.00 www.palgrave-journals.com/lst A z t l á n a s a P a l i m p s e s t B r e n d a Wa t t s -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------305 The idea of Aztlán – the reputed home of the Aztecs before they founded Tenochtitlán – has long been one of the founding concepts of Chicano identity, explored as myth, as history, and as utopian goal in works by many Chicano writers. Its importance to the Chicano Movement and the literary growth that the movement produced can be seen in many foundational documents, beginning with ‘‘El plan espiritual de Aztlán’’ (Gonzales, 1969). Nevertheless, the idea of Aztlán presented in these early texts is not the same Aztlán presented in works by later writers, most notably Gloria Anzaldúa, in her seminal 1987 work, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Although she describes notions of latinidad as not enough in and of themselves to overcome racism, sexism and homophobia (87), in Borderlands, Anzaldúa expands on a purely nationalistic construction of Chicana identity, to encompass a larger representation of its relevance for all Latinos’ identities. In Borderlands, Anzaldúa theorizes Aztlán as a new geographical, spiritual and intellectual homeland for border crossers of all races and ethnicities, while still perpetuating its mythic status as a location of Chicano identity. Daniel Cooper Alarcón (1997) calls the legend of Aztlán, ‘‘[p]erhaps the most enduring legacy of the Chicano movement’’(10). Cooper Alarcón asserts that like history itself, the idea of Aztlán is a metaphorical palimpsest in constant process of change and revision (3). In describing it as a metaphorical palimpsest, Cooper Alarcón traces its appearances in different texts from Mesoamerican and colonial histories of Mexico to key texts of the US Chicano Movement, noting the political and cultural importance of each revision, each modifying the mythic idea of Aztlán without obliterating its earlier significance. Aztlán first appears in Aztec mythology as the ancient home of the Aztec nation to the north of Tenochtitlán (Cooper Alarcón, 1997, 5). It is mentioned in the Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e Islas de Tierra Firme, first published in 1581, written by the Spanish missionary Diego Durán (25). Similarly, John Chávez’s The Lost Land, a history of the southwestern United States, describes how a practice of referring to the area that is now the US Southwest as Aztlán developed during the 16th century (Chávez, 1991, 8). Portraying the Southwest as an Edenic place of immense wealth, populated by mythical inhabitants, came to an end in the 17th century, as later explorers rejected the idea of Aztlán when reality failed to live up to the myths. The idea of Aztlán all but disappeared as a political and cultural concept until its rediscovery by Chicano Movement activists. Cooper Alarcón (1997) traces its re-emergence to a specific event, the Chicano National Liberation Youth Conference in Denver in 1969, where Rodolfo ‘‘Corky’’ Gonzales presented ‘‘El plan espiritual de Aztlán’’ (22). Its revolutionary nature is quickly apparent in its opening paragraph, which states: ‘‘In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal ‘gringo’ invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlán from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land latino studies - 2:3 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------306 of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny’’ (Plan 1). The document goes on to identify Aztlán as both ‘‘the northern land’’ of the Chicanos and as the independent nation that inhabits it. Gonzales states: ‘‘Aztlán belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent’’ (1). In this manner, Chicanos are imagined as both the rightful inheritors of a pre-Columbian indigenous past and as cultural brothers to all Latinos. The foreign Europeans he describes are the Anglo majority of the United States, whom he condemns for their oppression and exploitation of and racism against the Chicano people. In his presentation, Gonzales highlights the key role of nationalism in the struggle for achieving the goals set forth in the plan, which states unambiguously that ‘‘Nationalism as the key to organization transcends all religious, political, class and economic factions or boundaries. Nationalism is the common denominator that all members of La Raza can agree upon’’ (2). ‘‘El plan espiritual de Aztlán’’ unites the Chicano people by imagining them as ‘‘a nation autonomous and free – culturally, socially, economically, and politically’’ (3). Although the idea of Aztlán is inherently transnational in nature in originating in the mythic Aztec homeland that predates both Mexican and US territorial claims to what is now the US Southwest, the centrality of cultural nationalism to the Chicano Movement is insisted upon in ‘‘El plan espiritual de Aztlán,’’ downplaying the transnational origins of the idea of Aztlán. Ignacio M. Garcı́a (1997) specifies the importance of Gonzales’ epochmaking speech, which turned Aztlán into an organizing metaphor for Chicano Movement activists, allowing them to unite heterogeneous elements under one political and social ethos of self-identity and community empowerment, while advocating racial solidarity, social, and political change for Mexican-Americans (Garcı́a, 1997, 3). Chicanos rewrote Aztlán as their spiritual and geographical home. It became the founding myth of chicanismo, which Garcı́a defines as ‘‘the collective defensive and offensive mechanism that the Mexican American community uses to combat racism, discrimination, poverty, and segregation, and to define itself politically and historically’’ (4). According to Garcı́a, by urging the young activists to retake Aztlán, Gonzales fought a history of cultural stereotypes of Mexican Americans as violent, passive underachievers, whose lack of success in achieving the ‘‘American Dream’’ could be traced to fundamental flaws in their historical and cultural make-up. Gonzales replaced those negative images with images of a proud Aztec past, present success and hope for the future. Cooper Alarcón (1997) agrees with Garcı́a about the importance of ‘‘El plan espiritual de Aztlán’’ in reformulating the idea of Aztlán for the US Chicano Movement, and about the centrality of Aztlán as an organizing metaphor for movement activists. However, he also stresses the changing relationship of the A z t l á n a s a P a l i m p s e s t B r e n d a Wa t t s -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------307 Chicano community to the idea of Aztlán. According to Cooper Alarcón, while the idea of Aztlán has been used to legitimate Chicano political identity, functioning as a powerful unifying symbol, it has also been criticized as being ahistorical, monolithic, and unresponsive in its emphasis on collective experience over individual differences (5). He lists the ways in which the idea of Aztlán has ‘‘been used to obscure and elide:’’ (1) the disturbing tendency to focus only on the relationship between Chicano communities and the dominant Anglo culture, at the expense of any discussion of the complex, diverse character of Chicanos and their relationship with other ethnic groups; (2) the tendency to focus on the Southwest, minimizing the attention paid to Chicanos who live in other geographic regions; (3) competing claims to the Southwest – which Aztlán is often intended to be synonymous with – by Native Americans, Asian Americans, and African Americans; (4) the ongoing dialect between Chicano and Mexican culture(s) and the effects on these culture(s) of continued Mexican emigration to the United States; and, as the work of Norma Alarcón suggests, (5) the complex inter-relationship of subjectivity, agency, and privilege. (8–9) Although Cooper Alarcón (1997) only hints at it in mentioning the work of Norma Alarcón, one of the key failings of early Chicano views on Aztlán and of the early Chicano movement itself was its denial of the equal importance of women within the revolution. Deborah L. Madsen (2000) explains that during the height of the Chicano movement, ‘‘The gendered voice of the Chicana was marginalized as issues of racial discrimination took precedence over those of gender’’ (17). Alma M. Garcı́a (1997) describes how, as the Chicano Movement failed to take gender oppression into account, this lack of attention to Chicanas and their needs ‘‘gave rise to a parallel movement of ideological opposition’’ – Chicana feminism (3). She describes this as a further development of chicanismo itself, enlarging its ideals to include a focus on gender as well as race oppression (3). As described by Garcı́a, these Chicana activists did not reject the idea of Aztlán, but rather expanded it to include a feminist focus. Madsen describes the importance of these writers in developing a new Chicana feminism that worked to bridge the gap between feminism and the Chicano Movement. She cites Anzaldúa as one of several Chicana writers who were equally disenfranchised by the patriarchal and homophobic Chicano movement and the often racist and predominantly Anglo-American women’s movement of the same era (19). Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, along with the groundbreaking 1981 anthology which she co-edited with Cherrie Moraga, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, became the founding texts of a new Chicana feminism, a feminism which reaches out to the Chicano community, remaking the Movement as it seeks to include those female and queer voices silenced in its discourse (Anzaldúa and Moraga, 1981). Alarcón (1998) describes how this new Chicana feminism has reinvigorated the latino studies - 2:3 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------308 Chicano Movement (372). This conceptual development applied also to other ethnic and progressive communities in the United States that sought to achieve many of the aims of the original Chicano Movement through a process of dialogue and coalition-building. Garcı́a describes this shared struggle, which focused on ‘‘the multiple sources of oppression generated by race, gender and social class’’ (4). Through the work of Chicanas and other feminist women of color, the Chicano Movement could thus be re-envisioned as part of a larger struggle for civil rights and economic and social justice in the United States, one that included the civil rights struggle of African Americans, the feminist movement and the anti-Vietnam war movement. Garcı́a concludes: ‘‘Thus, a Chicana feminist movement represented a struggle that was both nationalist and feminist. Ultimately, the inherent constraints and cross-pressures facing Chicana feminists within the Chicano movement led to the broader development of Chicana feminist thought’’ (4). As Norma Alarcón, Caren Kaplan, and Minoo Moallem make clear in their introduction to Between Woman and Nation (Alarcón et al., 1999), ‘‘Women are both of and not of the nation’’ (12) and as such are both policed and limited by a nationalist discourse that seeks to incorporate them in their role as mothers while simultaneously denying them recognition as citizens, and are also resistant to that discourse. Cynthia Enloe (1989) argues that the tendency of nationalist ideologies to ignore women’s needs and experiences makes women more likely to organize politically at other than the national level, which can be clearly seen in the development of Chicana feminism as described by Garcı́a. Enloe states that paying attention to gender would profoundly change politics on the local, national, and international levels by revealing how those levels are connected in women’s experiences: ‘‘If more nation-states grew out of feminist nationalists’ ideas and experiences, community identities within the international political system might be tempered by cross-national identities’’ (64). While Enloe describes crossnational identities, I believe her idea corresponds to what other scholars prefer to call the transnational. By reaching out to the possibility of dialogue and coalition with other feminists, both inside and outside the United States, Chicana feminists opened up the cultural nationalist focus of the Chicano Movement to create an increasingly transnational ideology of identity. These feminists re-imagined Aztlán, exchanging its isolationism and sexism for a new, broader interpretation of a Chicano homeland. In The Aztec Palimpsest, Cooper Alarcón calls for a new use of Aztlán as a metaphorical palimpsest in order to counteract the ahistorical and homogenizing tendencies of the use of the myth of Aztlán in Chicano Movement discourse of the 1960s and 1970s. In doing so, I argue, he is calling for nothing other than the acceptance of new definitions of Aztlán, such as that already developed by Anzaldúa in Borderlands. Laura Elisa Pérez (1999) describes the continued importance of Aztlán to both Chicana and Chicano cultural practices, while at the same time A z t l á n a s a P a l i m p s e s t B r e n d a Wa t t s -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------309 recognizing the differences between them: ‘‘Constructed through the willful acts of a collective Chicana/o imagination, Aztlán exists as an invisible nation within the engulfing ‘imagined community’ of dominant US discourse’’ (19). Pérez refers to Benedict Anderson’s (1991) view of the nation as an imagined community, created by the readers of the same texts. She affirms that although Anderson’s definition refers to nation-states, his description of the construction of those nation-states as imagined communities could also refer to the creation of Aztlán (40). Describing the importance of the term nation in reference to the idea of Aztlán, she says: While the struggles continue, the collective power claimed by the Native American, the Chicana/o, the African American, and the Queer defining themselves as nothing less than nations has produced the real effects of greater cultural and physical survival of these oppressed and ‘minoritized’ groups, while transforming the nation into a more democratic one. These alternately imagined and lived nations have transformed our understanding and experience of what the nation means. (41) Although their ideas of Aztlán are clearly different, the seed of that difference can be seen in both the original Chicano Movement theorizations of Aztlán and in Anzaldúa’s rewritings of them. In what ways does the idea of Aztlán presented in Borderlands/La Frontera differ from the definitions of Aztlán put forth by the early Chicano Movement activists who authored El plan espiritual de Aztlán? Employing Cooper Alarcón’s concept of Aztlán as a palimpsest, an historical and cultural text in the process of continual revision, I read Aztlán in Anzaldúa’s book as a refashioning of the Chicano homeland that differs from Chicano Movement depictions of Aztlán in addressing many of the very issues that Cooper Alarcón enumerates as being ignored by earlier activists, without totally rewriting their nationalist focus. Specifically, Anzaldúa rewrites the Chicano Movement idea of Aztlán in her formulation of a feminist transnational mestiza politics, focusing on ongoing issues of Mexican immigration, race, gender and culture throughout the United States. What is different in Borderlands is precisely that Anzaldúa envisions women and homosexuals of both sexes as constituents of her imagined community, in contrast to traditional nationalist discourses, which deliberately leave them ‘‘unimagined.’’ The first chapter of Borderlands, ‘‘The Homeland, Aztlán/El otro México,’’ refers to the US Southwest not only as Aztlán, but also as el otro México, the other Mexico. Anzaldúa begins the chapter with a song lyric from Los Tigres del Norte that explains how the US Southwest is the other Mexico: El otro México que acá hemos construido el espacio es lo que ha sido territorio nacional. latino studies - 2:3 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------310 Este el esfuerzo de todos nuestros hermanos y latinoamericanos que han sabido progresar. (Anzaldúa, 1987, 1) The lyric establishes the US Southwest as the other Mexico by referring to its construction by Latin American laborers, and then to how it formed part of the national territory of Mexico before 1848. Thus, Anzaldúa includes Latinos as well as Chicanos in her history of Aztlán. After briefly mentioning how Chicanos have seen the US Southwest, Aztlán, as their true homeland, Anzaldúa describes how the physical border between the US and Mexico divides the ‘‘Borderlands’’ and its people. She describes the border as a: 1,950 mile-long open wound dividing a pueblo, a culture, running down the length of my body, staking fence rods in my flesh, splits me splits me me raja me raja This is my home this thin edge of barbwire (2–3). Anzaldúa describes the steel curtain dividing Tijuana from San Diego, and the entire physical and political border between the United States and Mexico, as a wound that divides a people and culture that are essentially Mexican. According to Anzaldúa, in addition to creating divisions between people of the same culture, the border is an artificial construct that mars nature. She chronicles how the earth, the sea, and the wind cross the chain link fence at will: But the skin of the earth is seamless. The sea cannot be fenced. el mar does not stop at borders. To show the white man what she thought of his arrogance, Yemaya blew that wire fence down (3). Describing the image of the border as a wound, she depicts the steel fence posts ripping her flesh, splitting her apart. Spacing in the poem visually evokes the artificial space imposed by the border fence, as words which should only have one space between them, such as ‘‘me raja me raja’’ are further separated. She concludes: This land was Mexican once, was Indian always A z t l á n a s a P a l i m p s e s t B r e n d a Wa t t s -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------311 and is. And will be again (3). In the separation in the line ‘‘And will be again,’’ Anzaldúa evokes the time between the present and the future when her vision is realized. She concludes the poem in Spanish, crossing linguistic and cultural borders as easily as she describes Mexican kids in Border Field Park crossing the chain link fence in order to retrieve their soccer ball in previous verses (2). Describing herself as a bridge between the dominant Anglo culture in the United States and the world of the wetback, the illegal immigrant, she nevertheless concludes by describing herself as culturally Mexican. This does not mean that she embraces a Mexican political identity, but rather a cultural one. The poem closes with a hopeful image of connections being made across the border. However, the lines ‘‘This land was Mexican once,/ was Indian always/ and is./ And will be again,’’ perhaps more clearly than any other, encapsulate her politics of Aztlán. The US Southwest is described not only as having Mexican and indigenous history and cultural traditions, but as being essentially Indian both now and in the future. The vision of the US Southwest as Aztlán, both the ancestral homeland of the Aztecs and the cultural and geographical home of all Chicanos is repeated in the concluding paragraphs of the narrative first part of Borderlands, recalling the discourse of early Chicano nationalists. Anzaldúa describes how she and her family members labored in the field together, remembering ‘‘the four of us kids getting off the school bus, changing into our work clothes, walking into the field with Papı́ and Mamı́, all six of us bending to the ground’’ (91). These images reveal the idea of Aztlán to be a palimpsest, a document continually erased and being remade in a process that blurs but does not completely destroy or cover up earlier notions of Aztlán; thus Anzaldúa’s theorization of Aztlán as an imagined political and cultural space reveals early Chicano Movement ideas of Aztlán as a clear part of its foundation. Repeated images of herself and her family members planting and harvesting crops and her conclusion that ‘‘Yes, the Chicano and the Chicana have always taken care of growing things and the land,’’ (91) echo and reinforce this key statement in ‘‘El plan espiritual de Aztlán:’’ ‘‘Aztlán belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops’’ (Plan 1). Anzaldúa’s repeated agricultural imagery thus reinforces a traditional politics of Aztlán, asserting her right to the land she has worked. Chicano nationalism is revealed as the roots of Anzaldúa’s feminist transnational politics. However, Anzaldúa differs from early Chicano Movement discourse in fully historicizing Aztlán, presenting it as in no way monolithic or ahistorical. Instead, she focuses on the region as being inhabited by a variety of peoples over time: the Indians who walked across the Bering Straits, descendants of the Cochise people, the Aztecs, their descendants, Spanish conquistadors, accompanied by Indians and mestizos, and finally Anglos who arrived in the area in the 1800s (Anzaldúa, 1987, 4–6). She describes current inhabitants of Aztlán latino studies - 2:3 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------312 above all as mestizos, inheritors of indigenous, Anglo, and Mexican cultures and of the conflicts between them. Critics have cited the singular importance of Borderlands in creating a new paradigm for understanding Chicana identity. Marı́a de los Angeles Torres (1998) credits Anzaldúa with forcing ‘‘a reexamination of the prevailing rigid categories of ethnicity and gender that had emerged from the 1960s’’ (177), while Chela Sandoval (1998) characterizes her new mestiza consciousness as being far more influential than any other type of Chicana feminism developed in the late 20th century (352), calling it ‘‘the contemporary imaginary that is reforming disciplinary canons’’ (353). She describes its singular importance as a type of differential criticism, which became the overriding strategy of US third world feminism (361) in its struggle to ‘‘equaliz[e] power on behalf of the colonized, the nation-, class-, race-, gender-, and sexually subordinated’’ (362). I believe that as a contemporary imaginary, Anzaldúa’s borderlands theory exemplifies a transnational politics that reforms both literary and political space, arguing for a theoretical and political hybridity, or mestizaje, that blends elements from indigenous, Chicano, and Anglo cultures to create a new borderlands subjectivity. Anzaldúa (1987) describes the origins of a new mestizo race in the Conquest, and the subsequent decimation of the Indian populations along with the creation of a ‘‘new hybrid race’’ of both Indian and European descent (5). She acknowledges the influence of Mexican philosopher José Vasconcelos’ (1966) view of la raza cósmica in her own theory of mestiza consciousness. She celebrates Vasconcelos thus: Opposite to the theory of the pure Aryan, and to the policy of racial purity that white America practices, his theory is one of inclusivity. At the confluence of two or more genetic streams, with chromosomes constantly ‘crossing over,’ the mixture of races, rather than resulting in an inferior being, provides hybrid progeny, a mutable, more malleable species with a rich gene pool. From this racial, ideological, cultural and biological cross-pollination, an ‘alien’ consciousness is presently in the making – a new mestiza consciousness, una conciencia de mujer. It is a consciousness of the Borderlands (77). Anzaldúa paraphrases Vasconcelos in her own elaboration of her theory of mestiza consciousness, rewriting and expanding upon his notion of a cosmic race. Like Vasconcelos’, her view of mestizaje is universal in referring to all racial mixtures in the Americas, and thus becomes an inclusive theory of ethnicity and identity that could easily support the notion of a broader Latino political and cultural subject. Nevertheless, it again reveals Chicano nationalist roots. Anzaldúa’s positive reading of Vasconcelos is incomplete in failing to address the unfortunate Eurocentric, racist, and classist foundations that underlie his conceptualization of mestizaje, but her failure to do so is hardly unique. Instead, it is another example of a continuing legacy of earlier Chicano Movement texts in A z t l á n a s a P a l i m p s e s t B r e n d a Wa t t s -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------313 Anzaldúa’s work. Luis A. Marentes (2000) describes the centrality of race to all of Vasconcelos’ writing, even before what he calls his later ‘‘utterly offensive racist and anti-Semitic ravings’’ (60), which followed his failed presidential campaign of 1928 (14). In these later works, Vasconcelos ‘‘concocted international conspiracies linking Jews, Protestants, Freemasons, Bolsheviks, and Wall Street bankers in an effort to rule the world, and expressed his admiration for the fascist regimes of Francisco Franco in Spain and Benito Mussolini in Italy’’ (Marentes, 2000, 15). Marentes summarizes the tendency of Vasconcelos’ readers to divide his works into an early revolutionary period of progressive ideals and a later period of increasing bigotry and paranoia, explaining that ‘‘many of those who are quick to condemn the later conservative Vasconcelos still celebrate his notion of a cosmic race as a pluralistic and all-inclusive understanding of Latin American race and culture’’ (103). He traces similar appropriations of Vasconcelos’ racist theorizations by indigenista proponents in Mexico, who embraced Vasconcelos’ notion of a cosmic race destined to outlast and outshine the Anglo race, exemplified by the United States (60). This positive spin on Vasconcelos was continued in the 1960s and 1970s Chicano Movement, with the slogan that Vasconcelos composed in 1921 as the motto for the National University of Mexico, ‘‘Por mi raza hablará el espı́ritu appearing on the covers of the journal Aztlán and accompanying publications of the Plan de Santa Barbara,’’ a document developed as a result of a movement conference in 1969 that called for the creation of Chicano Studies programs in universities (Marentes, 2000, 61). When Anzaldúa begins her essay on what she terms a new mestiza consciousness, she chooses the words ‘‘Por la mujer de mi raza/hablará el espı́ritu’’ (77), paraphrasing Vasconcelos’ famous slogan, rephrasing it to emphasize the essentiality of gender to her argument. Like the Chicano Movement writers who preceded her, she borrows his terminology and positive view of mestizaje while ignoring the racist foundations of his conceptualization of a cosmic race. These are clearly seen in La raza cósmica, as Vasconcelos discusses what he terms ‘‘inferior races’’ and the eventual perfection of the species through their disappearance. He states: ‘‘Los tipos bajos de la especie serán absorbidos por el tipo superior. De esta suerte podrı́a redimirse, por ejemplo, el negro, y poco a poco, por extinción voluntaria, las estirpes más feas irán cediendo el paso a las más hermosas’’ (52). Although he insists that the final result of this racial mixture will not be ‘‘precisamente el blanco’’ (52), he clearly privileges the Spanish side of the mestizo’s multicultural heritage, describing the Conquest in positive terms as the work of ‘‘grandes capitanes’’ all equal before the crown (26). Vasconcelos insists upon the importance of reclaiming and privileging this Spanish heritage, language, and culture, concluding that ‘‘Nosotros no seremos grandes mientras el español de la América no se sienta tan español como los hijos de España’’ (23). As expressed succinctly by Marentes, Vasconcelos’ writing ‘‘reveals a very Eurocentric conception of such a cosmic race, where the European races are the sole latino studies - 2:3 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------314 possessors of science and history. Racial mixture functions almost exclusively as an aesthetic addition to a Latin and Catholic racial and cultural tradition, which overdetermines such a mixture by creating the necessary historical conditions for its appearance’’ (60). Can an antiracist theory of mestizaje based conceptually on racist underpinnings function for antiracist ends, or will it only reaffirm and fall victim to the racist foundation of its origins? One answer is seen in the success of the Plan of Santa Barbara, which was often published accompanied by Vasconcelos’ famous slogan. Mario Barrera (1988) credits the plan with the institution of many Chicano Studies programs in the southwest and Midwest, and the consolidation of various Chicano student organizations under the umbrella of MECHA (43). Another answer is seen in the success of Gloria Anzaldúa’s work and its profound influence on feminism, Chicano scholarship and border studies. An analysis of Anzaldúa’s development of what she terms her own reading of Vasconcelos’ idea of mestizaje in Borderlands reveals the significant differences between his concept of la raza cósmica and her new mestiza consciousness. Although Anzaldúa bases her theory of mestizaje on Vasconcelos’ work, her formulations differ from his in privileging a conscious psychological and spiritual blending of cultures within each individual, a process that can occur in one generation, rather than the centuries-long selective breeding project that Vasconcelos advocates. She describes her own political, cultural, and spiritual mestizaje as an inner struggle between the various cultures that made her: ‘‘Being tricultural, monolingual, bilingual, or multilingual, speaking a patois, and in a state of perpetual transition, the mestiza faces the dilemma of the mixed breed: which collectivity does the daughter of a darkskinned mother listen to?’’ (78). Anzaldúa’s description of the inner turmoil of the mestiza differs clearly from Vasconcelos’ belief in the clear superiority and homogenizing influence of Spanish culture and Catholicism that he claims as cultural inheritance for the members of his cosmic race. Instead of privileging one culture over others, she describes how Chicanas receive multiple and opposing messages as commonly held beliefs of Anglo, Mexican, and indigenous cultures conflict, attacking each other. Anzaldúa insists that the work of the new mestiza is first to examine her own beliefs and multicultural history, deciding what to keep and what to abandon: ‘‘She puts history through a sieve, winnows out the lies, looks at the forces that we as a race, as women, have been a part of. Luego bota lo que no vale, los desmientos, los desencuentros, el embrutecimiento. Aguarda el juicio, hondo y enraı́zado, de la gente antigua. This step is a conscious rupture with all oppressive traditions of all cultures and religions. She communicates that rupture, documents the struggle. She reinterprets history and, using new symbols, she shapes new myths’’ (1987, 82). This is also the process that Anzaldúa uses in appropriating Vasconcelos’ work for her own ends, abandoning the racist elements of his theory of A z t l á n a s a P a l i m p s e s t B r e n d a Wa t t s -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------315 mestizaje while using his concept of a utopian spiritual process that would result in the creation of a new mestizo race to develop her own idea of a new mestiza consciousness. Through a process of deconstruction and reconstruction of a personal and cultural history and mythos, Anzaldúa is able to move forward from ambivalence to achieve what she terms the new mestiza consciousness. Anzaldúa describes the working of this new consciousness in utopian terms, heralding the willingness to embrace contradictions and working toward synthesis as an answer to the problems of racism, sexism, and homophobia. According to Anzaldúa: ‘‘A massive uprooting of dualistic thinking in the individual and collective consciousness is the beginning of a long struggle, but one that could, in our best hopes, bring us the end of rape, of violence, of war’’ (80). The new mestiza is ‘‘cradled in one culture, sandwiched between two cultures, straddling all three cultures and their value systems’’ (78). The borderlands culture in which Anzaldúa was raised is neither coterminous with the larger Anglo culture of the United States nor with the dominant Mexican culture across the border. It is a hybrid culture, blending elements from both and combining them with indigenous beliefs and traditions specific to the ‘‘Borderlands.’’ The elements of this new border culture include language traditions (59), musical genres and typical foods (61) and a shared history of struggle as a people (63). Anzaldúa begins this history with the speeches and marches of César Chávez, followed by the publication of I Am Joaquı́n and the formation of Texas’s La Raza Unida party to signal the emergence of Chicano self-recognition as a people (63). By describing the border zone as a geographical region with its own history and mestizo culture that is neither Mexico nor the United States, Anzaldúa crosses the political borders of nations, revealing them to be historical and political constructs that work to divide social identities. Anzaldúa’s new mestiza consciousness leads to a politics of mestizaje as well, as she calls for an end to racial prejudices, sexism, and homophobia. She insists: ‘‘The struggle is inner: Chicano, indio, American Indian, mojado, mexicano, immigrant Latino, Anglo in power, working class Anglo, Black, Asian – our psyches resemble the bordertowns and are populated by the same peopley Nothing happens in the ‘real’ world unless it first happens in the images in our heads’’ (87). After this first step of resolving the inner struggle, the new mestiza then works to change society through a process of coalition building with like-minded people of all races and genders, regardless of class or national origin. While the inner struggle is one of rewriting history and myths, the external one is teaching and sharing these new foundations for a shared cultural experience. Again, Anzaldúa’s project differs radically from Vasconcelos’, although both focus on a rewriting of history. Vasconcelos begins his rewriting with a mythical Atlantean past predating indigenous American civilizations (20) and then establishes the importance of a latino studies - 2:3 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------316 worldwide historical struggle between ‘‘los dos tipos humanos más fuertes y más disı́miles: el español y el inglés’’ (21). Tracing the struggle through European history and through the colonization of the New World and what he describes as its eventual unforeseen domination by Anglo Saxons (31), he concludes with what he sees to be their fatal flaw: their failure to mix with people of other races and their actual extermination of indigenous peoples (32). In contrast with what he sees as the United States’ racist mission of domination, he proposes Latin America as a site of a divine mission: The creation of a new race that will replace all others, thus ending the cultural and political hegemony of the United States and the white race (33). In contrast, Anzaldúa does not describe physical mestizaje as an end in itself, nor does she seek to end political, ethnic and cultural differences in the Americas through her new mestiza consciousness. Instead, she calls for a recognition and celebration of these differences within a larger US society composed of people of all races and a subsequent change in US–Mexico relations. She begins her revision of history with the first migration of people across the Bering Straits, noting that ‘‘The oldest evidence of humankind in the US – the Chicanos’ ancient Indian ancestors – was found in Texas and has been dated to 35,000 B.C.’’ (1987, 4). She quickly follows this by identifying the first sign of civilization in the Americas as the ‘‘20,000-year-old campsites of the Indians who migrated through, or permanently occupied, the Southwest, Aztlán – land of the herons, land of whiteness, the Edenic place of origin of the Azteca’’ (4). While Vasconcelos describes history itself as the creation, rise and fall of different races as each comes into power and eventually falls into decadence (20), Anzaldúa explains history’s importance as a powerful weapon in the struggle for political and social change within the United States: ‘‘The whites in power want us people of color to barricade ourselves behind our separate tribal walls so they can pick us off one at a time with their hidden weapons; so they can whitewash and distort history. Ignorance splits people, creates prejudices. A misinformed people is a subjugated people’’ (1987, 86). While Vasconcelos writes American history focusing on the struggle for dominance between Anglo Saxons to the north and the descendents of Spain and Portugal to the south (21), Anzaldúa’s rewriting of history is at once more personal and more specific, centered in the Rı́o Grande valley in which she grew up. She traces its history from its mythic past and present as part of Aztlán, through its exploration and settling by ‘‘Spanish, Indian and mestizo ancestors’’ (1987, 5) beginning in the 16th century, illegal Anglo migration into Texas in the 1800s (6), and the loss of almost half of Mexico’s national territory, including Texas, in the US–Mexican War (7). She then traces her own family history in the Rı́o Grande Valley, describing the effects of racism, drought, agribusiness, and economic crisis on the inhabitants of the valley that she calls ‘‘this borderland between the Nueces and the Rı́o Grande’’ (90). She summarizes the valley’s history after the Conquest by stating: ‘‘This land has survived possession and ill-use by five countries: Spain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the US, the Confederacy, and A z t l á n a s a P a l i m p s e s t B r e n d a Wa t t s -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------317 the US again. It has survived Anglo-Mexican blood feuds, lynchings, burnings, rapes, pillage’’ (90). While Vasconcelos describes the ancient indigenous Atlantean civilization of the Americas as the end of that race, because ‘‘En la Historia no hay retornos, porque toda ella es transformación y novedad. Ninguna raza vuelve; cada una plantea su misión, la cumple y se va’’ (30), Anzaldúa insists on the essential Indian nature of her homeland, concluding the prose section of Borderlands by repeating the lines ‘‘This land was Mexican once/ was Indian always/ and is./ And will be again’’ (1987, 91). In her insistence on a specifically indigenous border cultural identity that outlasts what she depicts as transitory political claims to her homeland, Anzaldúa most forcefully develops a politics of Aztlán. I see Anzaldúa’s new mestiza consciousness as an example of a feminist transnational political subjectivity and practice. Her transnational politics are clearly seen as she discusses economics and migration in the ‘‘Borderlands.’’ Her feminism becomes clear in her special attention to the ways in which Mexican indigenous women who are poor and cross the political and cultural borders between Mexico and the United States are exploited by Anglo, Chicano, and indigenous cultures, as well as by the economic forces of transnational capital. Alarcón notes that many Chicana writers ‘‘explore their racial and sexual experience in poetry, narrative, essay, testimony, and autobiography through the evocation of indigenous figures’’ (375) in which ‘‘the Chicana position, previously ‘empty’ of meanings, emerges as one who has to ‘make sense’ of it all from the bottom through the recodification of the native woman’’ (376) thus conjoining historical representations of the native woman (la virgen de Guadalupe, la Malinche, la Llorona) with the present-day speaking Chicana subject (376). In Borderlands, Anzaldúa describes how patriarchal Mexican and Chicano cultures have subverted each figure: ‘‘Guadalupe to make us docile and enduring, la Chingada to make us ashamed of our Indian side, and la Llorona to make us long-suffering people. This obscuring has encouraged the virgen/puta (whore) dichotomy’’ (31). She works to break down this dichotomy, insisting on a positive vision of female sexuality, seeing la virgen de Guadalupe as ‘‘the symbol of ethnic identity and of the tolerance for ambiguity that Chicanosmexicanos, people of mixed race, people who have Indian blood, people who cross cultures, by necessity possess’’ (30), la Malinche as having been betrayed by her culture rather than as being her culture’s betrayer (22), and la Llorona as both a representation of the Aztec goddess Cihuacoatl (35) and also as an abject and rejected combination of the other two figures (30). She re-envisions each as a powerful mother of Chicano culture through her rewriting of ancient Aztec myths and her valorization of a spiritual and historical tradition based on indigenous beliefs rather than any institutionalized religion (37). Anzaldúa contrasts current and past abuses of power within the borderlands with a utopian vision of hope for the region and for its people, based on the myth of the US Southwest as Aztlán. The difference between Anzaldúa’s theorization of latino studies - 2:3 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------318 Aztlán and the early formulations of Chicano movement activists is evident in her new mestiza consciousness, addressed not only to Chicanos but to all Latinos, American Indians, Blacks, Asians, and even Anglos. Although still nationalistic, Anzaldúa’s politics of Aztlán is also a politics of consensus-building and community formation beyond the boundaries of ethnicity and geographical location. In addition, where ‘‘El plan’’ calls for the unquestioning preservation of ‘‘cultural values of life, family, and home’’ (3), Anzaldúa examines the abuses and discrimination within these cultural values, calling her own culture to account for its misogyny and homophobia. Anzaldúa is particularly scornful of the way in which her culture has silenced and abused its women by requiring that they accept and accord with rigid gender roles and compulsory heterosexuality and motherhood. She requests a dialogue between Chicanos and Chicanas as well as a new vision of masculinity and a new men’s movement to end sexism (Anzaldúa, 1987, 84). In addition, Anzaldúa insists that Chicanos acknowledge and accept the contributions made to Chicano culture by gays and lesbians (85), whom she calls the ‘‘supreme crossers of cultures,’’ on account of their strong bonds with homosexuals throughout the world. She concludes: ‘‘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’’ (85). Although she clearly goes beyond early Chicano Movement views of Aztlán in her formation of a theory of mestiza consciousness, which addresses people both inside and outside the Chicano community, in other ways Anzaldúa does not stray far from the revolutionary ideals set forth in ‘‘El plan espiritual de Aztlán.’’ Her project remains a revolutionary one addressed first to Chicanas like herself, although admitting many others into the realm of its imagined community. Second, her project builds on and upholds many Chicano Movement ideals, including the defense and celebration of a unique Chicano history and culture within the United States. Finally, Anzaldúa (1987) presents herself as a revolutionary Chicana activist, addressing herself to ‘‘nosotros los mexicanos-Chicanos,’’ encouraging all Chicanos to continue the struggle begun in the Chicano Movement (63–64), to teach its history to new immigrant arrivals to the United States, and to learn the histories of Latin America in order to forge a new community (87). Although her ideas and goals are transnational, they are grounded in an earlier Chicano cultural nationalist myth and metaphor of Aztlán, an overarching metaphor that encompasses not only the border region of the US Southwest, but also a spiritual utopian homeland to be achieved when the goals of her new mestiza consciousness are met. The idea of Aztlán theorized by Anzaldúa in Borderlands/La frontera addresses many of the issues described by Cooper Alarcón (1997) as being ignored in early Chicano Movement notions of Aztlán. First, Anzaldúa separates her conceptual ‘‘Borderlands’’ from the physical border zone she describes in South Texas (Anzaldúa, 1987, iii). This enlarges her theoretical A z t l á n a s a P a l i m p s e s t B r e n d a Wa t t s -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------319 construct of Aztlán far beyond the geographic limits of the US Southwest. Second, by insisting on mestizaje as a basis for developing a new Chicana culture and conceptual framework, Anzaldúa breaks out of the Anglo/ Chicano binary described by Cooper Alarcón to discuss the interrelated and mutually conflicting elements of Native American, Mexican, and Anglo culture. Third, she focuses on both the history of migration in the US Southwest and on its continued effects on both Mexico and the United States. Finally, by focusing on her own identity as a Chicana lesbian in building her notion of Aztlán, she envisions both women and homosexuals as citizens of her imagined community, thus deviating strongly from traditional nationalist imaginings of the nation based on compulsory heterosexuality and the traditional family structure. Nevertheless, because the idea of Aztlán, in the words of Cooper Alarcón (1997), is a palimpsest, Anzaldúa’s new theory inherits a nationalistic focus on the Chicano people and traditional Chicano values based on the importance of the community over the individual and the maintenance of or return to an idealized notion of an agrarian lifestyle. Although she seeks coalition with Native Americans, Asian Americans and African Americans and with new Latino immigrants to the United States, and includes Latinos as well as Chicanos in her history of Aztlán, her formulations never fully subsume Chicana identity in either a generalized identity as people of color in the United States or as Latinas, insisting on the specificity of Chicana identity. In the fifth chapter of Borderlands, ‘‘How to Tame a Wild Tongue,’’ Anzaldúa describes the evolution of Chicano Spanish in the border zone. She consistently differentiates between Chicanas and Latin American women, a difference that begins with language itself: ‘‘Their language was not outlawed in their countries. They had a whole lifetime of being immersed in their native tongue; generations, centuries in which Spanish was a first language, taught in school, heard on radio and TV, and read in the newspaper’’ (58). In contrast with the Latin American women whom Anzaldúa describes as growing up immersed in Spanish, she describes Chicanas as speaking as many as eight different languages (55). Calling language a homeland, she insists upon the validity of each one, stating ‘‘I am my language’’ (59). In a later passage, she again stresses the specificity of her Chicana identity, describing people who use other labels, such as Spanish, Hispanic, Spanish-American, Mexican-American, Latin American, and Latin as ‘‘copping out’’ – acculturating and thus denying the particularity of their Chicano identity (62). Although Anzaldúa does state that the ‘‘Latinoist movement is good’’ she also insists that it is not enough, focusing instead on the historical and cultural specificity of Chicanos in her new inclusive theory of Aztlán (86). Rather than attempt to subsume Chicana identity under the umbrella of a larger shared Latino identity or political project, she seems to be incorporating Latino identity into a new politics of Aztlán itself as the ‘‘broader latino studies - 2:3 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------320 communal ground’’ (87) shared by the constituents of her new imagined community. With Anzaldúa, the idea of Aztlán moves from Chicano nationalism toward transnational feminism without losing its emphasis on the values placed on home and the land so sacred to early Chicano movement activists, but enlarges its own definition to address the issues of global migration, transnational capital and shifting identities, insisting always on the fluidity and permeability of categorizations and definitions. This Aztlán is not the same Aztlán presented by Rodolfo ‘‘Corky’’ Gonzales at the Chicano National Liberation Youth Conference in 1969. Instead it is a vision of Aztlán for all the linguistic, cultural and spiritual border-crossers that Anzaldúa addresses in her work. As a metaphorical palimpsest (Cooper Alarcón, 1997), Aztlán will continue to change and be redefined by succeeding generations of Chicano scholars, perhaps never completely erasing its earlier definitions. A u t ho r b i o g ra p hy Dr. Brenda Watts is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. Her research interests include Chicana literature, Latin American autobiography, border theory, and the transnational. Her dissertation, Historical Transgressions: The Creation of a Transnational Female Political Subject in Works by Chicana Writers (2000) explores the creation of a transnational female political subject in works by Gloria Anzaldúa, Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, and Erlinda Gonzales-Berry. Re fe r e n ce s Alarcón, Norma. 1998. Chicana Feminism: In the Tracks of ‘‘The’’ Native Woman. 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Alburquerque: University of New México Press. A z t l á n a s a P a l i m p s e s t B r e n d a Wa t t s -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------321 Cooper Alarcón, Daniel. 1997. The Aztec Palimpsest: Mexico in the Modern Imagination. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Enloe, Cynthia. 1989. Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. London: Pandora. Garcı́a, Alma M. 1997. Introduction to Chicana Feminist Thought: The Basic Historical Writings, ed. Alma M. Garcı́a, pp. 1–16. New York: Routledge. Garcı́a, Ignacio M. 1997. Chicanismo: The Forging of a Militant Ethos among Mexican Americans. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Gonzáles, Rodolfo ‘‘Corky’’. 1989. EL plan espiritual de Aztlán: In Aztlán Essays on the Chicano Homeland, eds. Rudolf. A. Anaya and Francisco A. Lomelı́, pp. 1–5. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. First Presented at the Chicano National Liberation Youth Conference in Denver, Colorado, 1969. Madsen, Deborah L. 2000. Understanding Contemporary Chicana Literature. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Marentes, Luis A. 2000. José Vasconcelos and the Writing of the Mexican Revolution. New York: Twayne Publishers. Pérez, Laura Elisa. 1999. El desorden, Nationalism, and Chicana/o Aesthetics. In Between Woman and Nation: Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms, and the State, eds. Caren Kaplan, Norma Alarcón and Minoo Moallem, pp. 19–46. Durham: Duke University Press. Sandoval, Chela. 1998. Mestizaje as Method: Feminists-of-Color Challenge the Canon. In Living Chicana Theory, ed. Carla Trujillo, pp. 352–370. Berkeley: Third Woman Press. Portions of this article were first published in 1995 under the title U.S. Third World Feminism in The Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing in the United States, eds. Cathy N. Davidson and Linda Wagner-Martin. Torres, Marı́a de los Ángeles. 1998. Transnational Political and Cultural Identities: Crossing Theoretical Borders. In Between Borders: U.S. Latinos, Latin Americans, and the Paradox of Interdependence, eds. Frank Bonilla, Edwin Meléndez, Rebecca Morales and Marı́a de los Ángeles Torres, pp. 169–182. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Vasconcelos, José. 1966. La raza cósmica: Misión de la raza iberoamericana. México: Aguilar. Latino Studies (2004) 2, 304–321. doi:10.1057/palgrave.lst.8600104 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Black Women's History, White Women's History: The Juncture of Race and Class Darlene Clark Hine Journal of Women's History, Volume 4, Number 2, Fall 1992, pp. 125-133 (Article) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2010.0223 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/363255/summary Access provided by Claremont College (22 Oct 2018 15:17 GMT) Internahonal Trends γν Women's History and Feminism: Black Women's History, White Women's History: The Juncture of Race and Class Darlene Clark Hine The Black women's history project is weU underway and yet I am troubled and concerned for reasons I shaU soon explain. But first the good news. Little did I susped in 1979, when I wrote my first essay in Black women's history entitled "Female Slave Resistance: The Economics of Sex," that within a decade there would exist over a dozen monographs and anthologies, a sixteen-volume series of articles and other writings, and scores of master theses and dissertations, not to mention a wide assortment of special reclamation projeds including the Black Women in the Middle West project, the Black Women's Oral History project of the Schlesinger Library, and the Black Women Physidans project of the Women's Medical CoUege Archives in Philadelphia. In addition SAGE: A Scholarly Journal of the Black Woman is published twice a year, and centers at Spelman CoUege in Atlanta, Georgia, and at Memphis State University in Memphis, Tennessee, concentrate on the Uves and experiences of Black and other women of color. During the past decade sessions on Black women's history have become almost commonplace at major historical conventions. Moreover, historical journals with increasing frequency have begun to pubUsh artides on Black women. Whereas I once lamented that the historical experiences of Black women had been neglected, obscured, distorted, or relegated to the back pages of our collective consdousness, such is not the case today. Black women historians have enriched our theoretical discourse and at the same time have reclaimed and made more visible the deeds of their and our forebearers. Their analyses of the intersedions of race, class, and gender, of womanist consciousness, and of the culture or art of dissimulation or dissemblance have chaUenged both Black and women's historians in profound ways. Furthermore, their contmuing search for new and more effective strategies to present, and metaphors to iUurninate, the new knowledge thus far created has inspired many to question and to review how we teach and understand both the poUtics and poetics of difference. In subtle and nuanced ways with neither fanfare nor dedaration, Black women © 1992 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 4 No. 2 (Fall) This article was first prepared for delivery at the breakfast meeting of the American Historical Association Committee on Women Historians, December 29, 1991, American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, IU. 126 Journal of Women's History Fall historians have put into motion a quiet inteUectual transformation. A passage from Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has resonance. He writes, ... during revolutions scientists see new and different things when looking with famiUar instruments in places they have looked before. It is rather as if the professional community has been suddenly transported to another planet where famiUar objeds are seen in a different Ught and are joined by unfamiUar ones as weU___In so far as their only recourse to that world is through what they see and do, we may want to say that after a revolution scientists are responding to a dUferent world.1 Since Black women entered the scholarly record, Black and white women's historians have been responding to a dUferent inteUectual world. Where this transformation, or indeed its precise contours, wiU lead us remains yet to be discovered. I am neither sanguine nor naive about the significance or impact of Black women's history. ActuaUy I have reason for disquiet. The reasons for my disquiet are varied but the two solutions are 1. that we all begin to do crossover history, and 2. that we look at class. AUow me to explain. In my survey courses I usually divide modern African-American history into four broad overlapping and interconnected themes in order to clarify the major political and economic developments, to explain the rise of competing ideologies, and to delineate the roles of representative individuals. The four broad themes are: the Civil War and Emancipation, the Great Migrations, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Changing Status of Black Women. The first three themes have and continue to command the attention of the vast majority of African-American historians of the post-slavery period. The fourth theme has been problematic. Explorations into the status of Black women over time, however, fosters the need to do inter- sectional analysis because for the most part this particular group of Americans has always occupied the bottom rung of any racial, sexual, and class hierarchy: as slaves they cost less than male counterparts; as free workers they were undervalued and negatively stereotyped. Thus few scholars deemed this segment of the population worthy of inteUectual inquiry. What lessons could the lives and experiences of shadow women possibly convey about the relations between men and women or Blacks and whites in this society that were not already known and documented? Also, on a more superfidal level, even some Black women scholars desired to eschew what they labeled the victimization of Black women and instead chose to focus on positive, creative contributions of super-achieving or transcen- 1992 International Trends: D. C. Hiñe 127 dent Black women as a means to empower themselves, their students, and their communities. The scholars of Black women's history have wrought well. We now know that Black women played essential roles in ensuring the survival of Black people under slavery and of Black communities in freedom. We know that oppressed people are able to develop, as the Ufe and writings of the antebellum free Black woman, Maria Stewart, revealed, a political agenda for Black liberation that pivoted on the emancipation and heightened consdousness of Black women. Even slave women such as Harriet Tubman and Harriet Jacobs resisted the imposition of beUefs that held them to be Uttle more than mindless mules of labor and sex objects. They too devised simple and complex strategies to chaUenge white and Black patriarchal domination. Slave women such as Sojourner Truth performed labor across the sexual divide and proved the Ue of feminine weakness. And as Melton McLaurin documents in Celia, A Slave, slave women fought and died in defense of their sexual beings.2 We now know that Black women's angle of vision enabled them collectively and individuaUy to fashion a world view, to assemble an arsenal of womanist strategies ranging from the culture of dissemblance and a deep spirituaUsm to the adoption of middle-class values and aspirations designed to shatter demeaning stereotypes of their humanity and of their sexuaUties. We know that the process of reimagining themselves was a serious, unrelenting battle that continues to this day. Through the myriad voluntary associations and club activities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Black women created and sustained innumerable churches, hospitals, schools, clinics, day care centers, neighborhood improvement projects, and protest organizations. Black women working in tandem with Black men founded migration clubs and relocated themselves and their families in western towns and northern dties. They too labored to create and sustain the separate paraUel institutional infrastructures that made Black survival possible in the age of Jim Crow. And throughout these survival struggles they played instrumental roles— although too often unheralded—in laying the groundwork for the modern rights revolution. Given these accompUshments, why the disquiet? Here is one site of my disquiet. Too Uttle attention has been devoted to the real working-class status of Black women. The paucity of sustained analysis on the over- whelming poverty of the vast majority of Black women has helped to foster erroneous impressions in the larger sodety of the mythical, heroic, tran- scendent Black woman able to do the impossible, to make a way out of no way. Accordingly, actual poor Black women, espedally those on weUare and single heads of households, are not only inadequately understood but 128 Journal of Women's History Fall are increasingly vilified in contemporary media coverage. They are depicted as one of the causes of our national economic woes and ironicaUy are held responsible by some for the growing economic, political, and social impotence of working-poor Black men. Discussions of radal and sexual oppression without intense grounding in the complexities and realities of class exploitation and inequalities has led to misplaced emphases. And such skewed perceptions of the reaUty of Black women's Uves leaves room for aU kinds of poUtical and inteUectual mischief. Black women historians need to readjust some of their attention to relating the history of Black women to the tremendous concentration of power, wealth, information, and social resources that remain in the hands of a fiercely intransigent and rrdUtantly reactionary white male eUte. In short, U we truly intend on doing intersectional analyses, then dass must occupy as much attention as race and sex. This of course brings me to the second major source of my disquiet. Black women historians must begin to research and write histories of white women. Why? Because we need to know more about them. Also, we need to break down intellectual and professional boundaries; and finally, we need continuaUy to refine and to make even more sophisticated our meth- odologies of intersectional analysis. Some Black women historians such as NeU Painter and WUma King have already completed editing projects of papers of southern white women. Recently I wrote an introduction to the new edition of Katherine Du Pre Lumpkin's autobiography, The Making of a Southerner.3 Now I suspect that many already over-burdened and overextended Black women historians wül chaff at this exhortation to cross the racial lines in their scholarship. I hear their questions. Won't writing about white women undermine and/or impede progress on the Black women's history project? There are so few of us doing this work as it is, why should we düute our energies? WiU researching and writing about white women enhance our understanding of the Uves and experiences of Black women, of white men, of Black men? But perhaps more pointedly, wül Black women historians achieve or receive authorial recognition within a stratified profession that has tended to categorize Black scholars as being in charge of Black history? Do Black historians who venture into "crossover history" risk more than they gain? I can offer no answers suffident to aUay these qualms. I can only suggest that the efforts extended to study others strengthen the understanding of that which is closest. For the next few pages I wiU concentrate on the autobiography of an aristocratic, southern white woman whose inteUectual journey made me want to know more about her. Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin's carefully construded, wincingly honest autobiography chronicles her own inteUectual transformation and conversion to the cause of racial equaUty and 1992 International Trends: D. C. Hiñe 129 social justice. Given the nature of her inteUectual and emotional heritage, the circumstances of her early upbringing, and the depth of the southern commitment to racial hierarchy and gender stratification, Lumpkin's rejection of the ideology of white supremacy and questioning of the status of women was downright radical. Lumpkin's observations about the Uves of white southern women antidpated by a generation the historical works of Anne Firor Scott, Jean Friedman, Jacqueline David HaU, and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin was born in Macon, Georgia, on December 22, 1897. She received her A.B. degree from a smaU coUege in Georgia, proceeded to earn her masters degree at Columbia University, and in 1928 earned her dodorate in economics at the University of Wisconsin. She taught economics and sociology at a number of women's coUeges, including Mount Holyoke and Smith CoUege. In addition to The Making of a Southerner (1947) and The Emancipation of Angelina Grimke (1974), Lumpkin pubUshed with Dorothy Douglas Child Workers in America (1937) and The South in Progress (1940).4 The first half of her book, The Making of a Southerner, lays out in graphic detail what it meant to be southern, white, female, and privüeged in the opening decades of the twentieth century. In the final sedions Lumpkin recalls the process of her transformation into a Uberal democrat, fuUy aware of the economic inequities, racial proscriptions, and sexual restrictions suffered by those other southerners who were poor white, Black, and/or female. To be sure, Lumpkin's voice is atypical but that is why her book is so arresting. Lumpkin painstakingly unravels the old tapestry of myths, distortions, and stereotypes that had blinded her to the existence of white poverty and black oppression. Epiphanies abound. After years of study and soul searching she exhibits a fuUy awakened racial consdousness and is aware of the sodal construction of and intersections of race, gender, and class: "What struck me now was the circumstantial convenience of a beUef in inferiority to the existence of a slave institution and the perpetuation of its aftermath."5 It is imperative to underscore the strategy Lumpkin employs in this autobiography. First she recaptures an inteUectual world which she had already rejected by the 1940s. Thus her treatment of slavery, of Reconstruc- tion, and of redemption is essentiaUy the version of reaUty that conditioned her chüdhood. They are tales told by her father. Such stories include descriptions of the birth of the Ku Klux Klan. She wrote: This much is certain. To my people, as to me in my chüdhood, who was reared in their history to those fateful months, no "two sides" to what happened was conceivable. To them there was but one side, 130 JOURNAL OF WOMEN'S HISTORY FALL made up of true Southerners engaged, they verily beUeved, in a struggle for existence, for this is what "white supremacy" was to them.6 Years of conditioning in the atmosphere of an ostensibly inviolate way of southern Ufe affected young Lumpkin and her brothers and sisters, though not as deeply perhaps as her parents would have wished. StiU she recaUed: It was inconceivable, however, that any change could be aUowed that altered the very present fact of the relation of superior white to inferior Negro. This we came to understand remained for us as it had been for our fathers, the very cornerstone of the South.7 Yet it was inevitable that cracks would appear in the inteUectual edifice so elaborately construded to subordinate Blacks and maintain white hegemony. For young Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin it began perhaps with a chance observation as her father brutaUy beat the family cook for commit- ting the dreaded offense of "impudence." The incident produced the first tremors of doubt and misgivings: Our Uttle Black cook, a woman smaU in stature though fuU grown, was receiving a severe thrashing. I could see her writhing under the blows of a descending stick wielded by the white master of the house. I could see her face distorted with fear and agony and his with stern rage.8 Here it is interesting to note that Lumpkin does not refer to "the white master" as her father, perhaps reflecting unconsdous distancing or per- haps she was simply being metaphorical. Nevertheless, having witnessed this scene, Lumpkin became blindingly aware that she was white. I began to be seU-conscious about the many signs and symbols of my race position that had been battering against my consciousness since virtual infancy.9 Lumpkin was too perceptive and too inteUigent to remain imprisoned by fabrications designed to buttress the institutions of white supremacy and the fantasies of the old order. The latter half of the autobiography is largely a tale of personal reconstruction, of her remaking of herseU into a southerner free from old biases and Ues. It is radicaUy different from the first part. In the latter chapters Lumpkin finds her own voice. She rejects the stories of her father and demonstrates the fruits of years of research and scholarship. In The South in Progress Lumpkin explained: I am mindful of how greatly we need to study our history. Southern problems cannot be understood fuUy except in the Ught of an exten- sive examination of our historical background___10 1992 International Trends: D. C. Hiñe 131 The problems explored in the last part include the desperate lives of croppers and farm laborers, workers in miU viUages and cities, Black peonage, the subjugation of women, the oppressive nature of southern religion, and the hypocrisy of Northerners concerning the treatment of African Americans. But it was the world of the "lower class" whites that enthraUed her just as it is the world of the working poor Black woman that enthraUs me. Lumpkin comments on every aspect of their desperate lives from the reUgious revivals to the inadequate schooling, the "immoral" liaisons, the violence, and the alcohoUsm. I am concerned about the desperate lives of Black women who cannot find jobs, secure education and training, obtain adequate access to health care for themselves and their chüdren; who are devastated by AIDS, drugs, and violence at every turn; and who are held responsible for aU the UIs confronting everybody in this society—a society that despairs of their very existence. Meanwhile, Lumpkin declared: In the Sand Hüls for the first time in my experience I had been set down to Uve day after day in dose companionship with deep poverty suffered by whites, a poverty to which I had not hitherto been imperceptibly hardened. ... I saw more than I otherwise would have." By the 1920s Lumpkin's search for a deeper understanding of the South and its people unveUed the "rigors of Southern destitution" of the white "lower classes." She concluded, after stints of working in the miUs and factories where she observed more poverty and hopelessness, that "the mass of whites in a purely economic sense also had their 'place/ in which they too seemed meant to stay."12 The autobiography ends with a resounding condemnation of assumptions that working-class whites and Blacks were kept separate because of "innate" and "inevitable" differences. Her critique of the economic forces that consigned the majority of its people to poverty led her to declare that "wage-earrdng whites and Negroes were, functionaUy speaking, not so untike after aU."13 Why should a Black woman historian concentrate on the autobiogra- phy of an upper-class white southern lady? The reasons are numerous. First, Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin's book is as effective an examination of what it takes to make one kind of white southerner as Benjamin Mays' Born to Rebel, Richard Wright's Black Boy, Anne Moody's Coming of Age in Mississippi, and Pauti Murray's Proud Shoes are descriptions of what went into the making of Black southerners. In many guises these autobiographies reveal the layered depth of different perceptions and experiences shaped by gender, race, and sodal status. 132 JOURNAL OF WOMEN'S HISTORY FALL Second, Lumpkin's autobiography opens a window onto the past attitudes and values that prevented eUte whites from seeing the harsh reaUties and often demeaning Uves led by Blacks, poor whites, and many women and their own roles in creating these Uves. Lumpkin was excep- tional in many ways, but most especiaUy in her abiUty to see beyond form and structure to essence. As is true of the autobiographical writings of several other atypical white southern women including LilUan Smith and Virginia Durr, Lumpkin has written a volume of Uluminating power. She penetrates the contradictions, the myths, and ironies so deeply embedded in southern culture—in its reUgion, its economy, its race relations, and its gender conventions. Hers is the poignant testimony of a woman steeped in traditions peculiar to her class and region who through education and wiU removed the cataracts of racism, curing herself of the blindness that hid pervasive and unrelenting white poverty and the grinding exploitation of agricultural, factory, and mill workers. ImpUdt in this discussion is the encouragement of white and Black women historians to pay more attention to the historical experiences of economicaUy distressed and exploited Black women. This is an appeal for aU historians of women to also engage in more "crossover history." When we are aU doing each other's history then we wiU register meaningful progress in the war against radsm, sexism, and class oppression. All barriers impeding our understanding of the past and interfering with our present and future struggle against patriarchy must be destroyed. Two points to reiterate. Lumpkin moved from discovery of class exploitation to a deeper understanding of radsm. I have moved from race and gender oppression to class exploitation. In short, I meet Lumpkin at the juncture of class, race, and gender. Finally, let me assure you that I seek no escape from this struggle to research, write, teach, and promote Black women's history. I beUeve that at this particular historical conjuncture it is imperative that some Black women historians treat white women as a means to enrich understanding of African-American women. In any event the time for cussing is past, now lef s get busy. NOTES 1 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). 1991). 2 Melton A. McLaurin, Celia, A Slave (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 3 Katherine Du Pre Lumpkin, The Making of a Southerner (Athens: Univer- sity of Georgia Press, 1991). 1992 International Trends.· D. C. Hiñe 133 4 Katherine Du Pre Lumpkin, The Emancipation of Angelina Grimke (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1974); Katherine Du Pre Lumpkin and Dorothy W Douglas, Child Workers in America (New York: International Publishers, 1937); idem, The South in Progress (New York: International PubUshers, 1940). 5 Lumpkin, Making of a Southerner, 228. « Ibid., 87. 7 Ibid., 128. » Ibid., 132. » Ibid., 133. ίο Ibid., 13. " Ibid., 182. '2 Ibid., 222. « Ibid. Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History Nancy Fraser To cite this version: Nancy Fraser. Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History: An Introduction. FMSH-WP2012-17. 2012. HAL Id: halshs-00725055 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00725055 Submitted on 23 Aug 2012 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History An Introduction Nancy Fraser N°17 | august 2012 An introduction to my forthcoming book, this essay takes a broad, sweeping look at second-wave feminism, situating the movement’s unfolding in relation to three moments in the history of capitalism. In the irst moment, feminism posed a radical challenge to the pervasive androcentrism of “state-organized capitalism�. �.. In the second, the movement unwittingly supplied a key ingredient of what Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello call the “new spirit� of neoliberal capitalism. In the third (present) moment, of capitalist crisis, feminists have the chance to reactivate the movement’s emancipatory promise. Working Papers Series Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme - 190 avenue de France - 75013 Paris - France http://www.msh-paris.fr - FMSH-WP-2012-17 Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History 2/14 Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History An Introduction Nancy Fraser August 2012 The author Nancy Fraser is Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics and at the New School for Social Research in New York. Currently Einstein Visiting Fellow at the Free University of Berlin, she holds the Chair «Rethinking social justice in a globalizing world» at the Collège d’études mondiales, Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme. She has published two books in French: Qu’est-ce que la justice sociale? Reconnaissance et redistribution (La Découverte 2005; 2nd edition 2011) and Le féminisme en mouvements. Des années 1960 au néolibéralisme (forthcoming from La Découverte in October 2012). Her English-language publications include Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space for a Globalizing World (2008); Adding Insult to Injury: Nancy Fraser Debates her Critics, ed. Kevin Olson (2008); Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange (2003) with Axel Honneth; Justice Interruptus: Critical Relections on the “Postsocialist” Condition (1997); and Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social heory (1989). The text his essay is the introduction to the forthcoming book under the direction of Nancy Fraser, entitled Le féminisme en mouvements : De l’insurrection des années 60 au néolibéralisme, to be published in French in October 2012 by La Découverte (Paris). Citing this document Nancy Fraser, Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History: An Introduction, FMSH-WP-2012-17, august 2012. © Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme - 2012 Informations et soumission des textes : wpfmsh@msh-paris.fr Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme 190-196 avenue de France 75013 Paris - France http://www.msh-paris.fr http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/FMSH-WP http://wpfmsh.hypotheses.org Les Working Papers et les Position Papers de la Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme ont pour objectif la difusion ouverte des travaux en train de se faire dans le cadre des diverses activités scientiiques de la Fondation : Le Collège d’études mondiales, Bourses Fernand Braudel-IFER, Programmes scientiiques, hébergement à la Maison Suger, Séminaires et Centres associés, Directeurs d’études associés... he Working Papers and Position Papers of the FMSH are produced in the course of the scientiic activities of the FMSH: the chairs of the Institute for Global Studies, Fernand Braudel-IFER grants, the Foundation’s scientiic programmes, or the scholars hosted at the Maison Suger or as associate research directors. Working Papers may also be produced in partnership with ailiated institutions. Les opinions exprimées dans cet article n’engagent que leur auteur et ne relètent pas nécessairement les positions institutionnelles de la Fondation MSH. he views expressed in this paper are the author’s own and do not necessarily relect institutional positions from the Foundation MSH. Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme - 190 avenue de France - 75013 Paris - France http://www.msh-paris.fr - FMSH-WP-2012-17 Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History 3/14 Abstract An introduction to my forthcoming book, this essay takes a broad, sweeping look at second-wave feminism, situating the movement’s unfolding in relation to three moments in the history of capitalism. In the irst moment, feminism posed a radical challenge to the pervasive androcentrism of “state-organized capitalism�. In the second, the movement unwittingly supplied a key ingredient of what Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello call the “new spirit�� of neoliberal capitalism. In the third (present) moment, of capitalist crisis, feminists have the chance to reactivate the movement’s emancipatory promise. Keywords feminism, capitalism, neoliberalism Le féminisme en mouvements : De l’insurrection des années 60 au néolibéralisme. Une introduction Résumé Une introduction au livre à paraître sous la direction de l’auteur, cet essai ofre un large balayage de la seconde vague du féminisme, et situe l’éclosion de ce mouvement en relation avec trois moments de l’histoire du capitalisme. Dans un premier moment, le féminisme pose un déi radical à l’androcentrisme du « capitalisme stato-organisé ». Dans un second moment, le mouvement fournit à son insu un ingrédient indispensable à ce que Luc Boltanski et Eve Chiapello appellent le « nouvel esprit du capitalisme ». ...
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