El propósito de la tesina presente es analizar la manera de expresar las dificultades de una identidad híbrida en dos poemas contemporáneos de dos escritoras de origen latinoamericano, Gloria Anzaldúa y Julia Alvarez. Se han analizado los dos poemas elegidos teniendo en cuenta la perspectiva de una identidad híbrida y los problemas que ello conlleva en una sociedad llena de normas y fronteras entre grupos étnicos, culturales y sexuales. Después del análisis de los poemas sigue una comparación entre los resultados de la investigación y finalmente presentamos nuestras conclusiones. El estudio muestra que a pesar de que los poemas parezcan muy diferentes se han encontrado puntos de relación, como por ejemplo la similitud de los mensajes principales de los poemas; que necesitamos aceptar las mezclas de culturas, etnias y sexos. / The purpose of this study is to analyse the expression of the difficulties with a hybrid identity in two contemporary poems written by two authors from Latin America, Gloria Anzaldúa and Julia Alvarez. The analysis of the two poems take into account the perspective of a hybrid identity and the problems that this entails in a society filled with rules, standards and boundaries between different ethnic, cultural and sexual groups.  The analysis of the two poems is followed by a comparison of the results of the investigation and ultimately is presented the conclusions. The study shows that the poems share several respects, despite that they at first seems very different. An example is the similarities of the main messages that the poems convey, that we need to accept the mix of cultures, ethnics and sexualities.

The writings and life of Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa (1942-2004) have had an immense impact in a variety of disciplines. Her oft-cited text Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987) is included in many university courses’ reading lists for its contributions to discourses of hybridity, linguistics, intersectionality and women of color feminism, among others. Unfortunately, most scholars content themselves with the intricacies of Borderlands to the neglect of her corpus of work, which includes essays, books, edited volumes, children’s literature and fiction/autohistorias. This analysis presented here wishes to expand our understandings of Anzaldúa’s work by engaging with her pre- and post-Borderlands writings in an attempt to highlight the unrecognized contributions Anzaldúa offers to feminist theory, spirituality, spiritual activism, queer theory, expansive ideas of queerness and an articulation of alternative, non-Western epistemology. This project offers close readings of published and archival Anzaldúan text and draws parallels between her life and her writing.

My focus for this essay is on understanding the rhetorical process that occurs when people come together despite their differences—that is what rhetoric is all about. Kenneth Burke argues that this process, for alienated people especially, happens poetically, more than semantically because there are too many differences to overcome semantically between alienated people and the dominant community. This essay is about how the rhetorical process of identification as described by Burke helps us to explain how we cross barriers that divide people who are different to create moments of mutual understanding—identification. In this essay, I look at the experience of reading Gloria Anzaldúa's work from the rhetorical perspective that Burke's theory of rhetorical identification provides. In the case of Borderlands, Anzaldúa helps us understand how an alienated person can prompt a momentary, present space of shared experience through poetic language.

The Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa Papers, 1942-2004 are located in the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. They contain published and unpublished works along with photographs, correspondence, artwork, notes, interviews, etc. As a woman of color who is interested in issues of social justice, disrupting dominant ideological binaries, and intersections of race, class, and gender, Anzaldúa has much to offer the field of rhetoric and communication studies. The purpose of the study is to derive Anzaldúa’s theory of social change. As a woman of color, Anzaldúa simultaneously aligns and differentiates herself from the Chicano movement and the feminist movement. Citing her, and other Chicana feminists concerns, she uses a theory of the B/borderlands as a generative theory from which she theorizes using nepantla and images. Her theory of social change is implicit and available to rhetors upon an examination of the official and unofficial texts available in her archive. Diana Taylor’s concepts of the archive (official texts) and the repertoire (unofficial performances and iterations) are used to examine Anzaldúa’s archival collection. The artifacts included an examination of Anzaldúa’s birth certificate and corrections compared with a short story “Her Name Never Got Called.” In addition a documentary Altar is examined and compared with conversations that led to its creation. An analysis of Anzaldúa’s archive suggests that there is an oscillation between the official archives and the unofficial performances. These movements reveal Anzaldúa’s favor for images as instrumental in her theory-making process; they reveal her imagistic theory of social change. Applying a theory of discourse from the borderlands that emerges out of the archive of Anzaldúa will make rhetoricians better equipped to study texts that speak back to dominant discourses and refuse oppressive binaries. / text

Em um mundo cada vez mais transnacional e multicultural, a identidade cultural é formada por meio de um processo constante de mobilidade e deslocamentos, resultando na formação de identidades culturais diaspóricas. Tais identidades culturais híbridas e heterogêneas se caracterizam por travessias de fronteiras e limitações impostas à construção da subjetividade. O presente estudo consiste em uma análise interpretativa de representações de identidades culturais diaspóricas em dois escritos autobiográficos ficcionais: Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), de Gloria Anzaldúa e Zami A New Spelling of my Name, a biomythography (1982), de Audre Lorde. As representações de identidades culturais diaspóricas desenvolvidas em ambos os textos produzem efeitos que desestabilizam a política de representação da identidade cultural articulando identificações e desejos informados por hibridismo e diferença bem como reconstruindo a categoria da experiência e a produção do conhecimento através da ficcionalização da construção da identidade. O objetivo é investigar como as vozes narrativas projetam representações de identidades culturais diaspóricas simultaneamente resistentes e marginais em relação à cultura hegemônica. Tais representações são analisadas à luz do seguinte referencial teórico: a reconstrução da categoria da experiência de Joan Scott; a teoria dos conhecimentos situados de Donna Haraway; e uma estratégia crítica que propõe uma intersecção entre argumentos advindos do pensamento feminista e pós-moderno, que postulam a identidade como um constructo fluído, múltiplo, e instável, sustentada em The Politics of Postmodernism, de Linda Hutcheon; a coleção de ensaios editada por Linda Nicholson, Feminism/Postmodernism; e The Postmodern Condition, de Jean-François Lyotard. O referencial teórico oferece uma perspectiva privilegiada para a investigação de representações de identidades culturais que questionam a concepção de identidade como fixa autônoma e anterior ao contexto sócio-histórico no qual a identidade e sua representação são formadas. / In an increasingly transnational and multicultural world, cultural identities are shaped through a constant process of mobility and displacements, resulting in the formation of diasporic cultural identities. These hybrid heterogeneous cultural identities are characterized by multiple crossings of borders and limitations imposed on the construction of a sense of subjectivity. The present study consists of an interpretative analysis of representations of diasporic cultural identities in two fictional autobiographical writings: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987) and Audre Lorde’s Zami A New Spelling of my Name, a biomythography (1982). The representations of diasporic cultural identities developed in both texts produce disruptive effects on the politics of representation of cultural identity by articulating identifications and desires informed by hybridity and difference as well as reconstructing the category of experience and the production of knowledge through the fictionalization of the construction of identity. The objective is to investigate how the narrative voices project representations of diasporic cultural identities simultaneously resistant and “marginal” to the hegemonic culture. These representations are analyzed under the following theoretical framework: Joan Scott’s reconceptualization of the category of experience; Donna Haraway’s theory of situated knowledges; and a critical strategy that proposes an intersection of arguments derived from feminist and postmodern thinking, which posit identity as a fluid, multiple, and unstable construct, supported on Linda Hutcheon’s The Politics of Postmodernism; the collection of essays edited by Linda Nicholson, Feminism/Postmodernism; and Jean-François Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition. The theoretical framework provides a privileged perspective to investigate representations of cultural identity that question the conception of identity as fixed, autonomous, and prior to the social-historical context in which identity and its representation are shaped.

Em um mundo cada vez mais transnacional e multicultural, a identidade cultural é formada por meio de um processo constante de mobilidade e deslocamentos, resultando na formação de identidades culturais diaspóricas. Tais identidades culturais híbridas e heterogêneas se caracterizam por travessias de fronteiras e limitações impostas à construção da subjetividade. O presente estudo consiste em uma análise interpretativa de representações de identidades culturais diaspóricas em dois escritos autobiográficos ficcionais: Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), de Gloria Anzaldúa e Zami A New Spelling of my Name, a biomythography (1982), de Audre Lorde. As representações de identidades culturais diaspóricas desenvolvidas em ambos os textos produzem efeitos que desestabilizam a política de representação da identidade cultural articulando identificações e desejos informados por hibridismo e diferença bem como reconstruindo a categoria da experiência e a produção do conhecimento através da ficcionalização da construção da identidade. O objetivo é investigar como as vozes narrativas projetam representações de identidades culturais diaspóricas simultaneamente resistentes e marginais em relação à cultura hegemônica. Tais representações são analisadas à luz do seguinte referencial teórico: a reconstrução da categoria da experiência de Joan Scott; a teoria dos conhecimentos situados de Donna Haraway; e uma estratégia crítica que propõe uma intersecção entre argumentos advindos do pensamento feminista e pós-moderno, que postulam a identidade como um constructo fluído, múltiplo, e instável, sustentada em The Politics of Postmodernism, de Linda Hutcheon; a coleção de ensaios editada por Linda Nicholson, Feminism/Postmodernism; e The Postmodern Condition, de Jean-François Lyotard. O referencial teórico oferece uma perspectiva privilegiada para a investigação de representações de identidades culturais que questionam a concepção de identidade como fixa autônoma e anterior ao contexto sócio-histórico no qual a identidade e sua representação são formadas. / In an increasingly transnational and multicultural world, cultural identities are shaped through a constant process of mobility and displacements, resulting in the formation of diasporic cultural identities. These hybrid heterogeneous cultural identities are characterized by multiple crossings of borders and limitations imposed on the construction of a sense of subjectivity. The present study consists of an interpretative analysis of representations of diasporic cultural identities in two fictional autobiographical writings: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987) and Audre Lorde’s Zami A New Spelling of my Name, a biomythography (1982). The representations of diasporic cultural identities developed in both texts produce disruptive effects on the politics of representation of cultural identity by articulating identifications and desires informed by hybridity and difference as well as reconstructing the category of experience and the production of knowledge through the fictionalization of the construction of identity. The objective is to investigate how the narrative voices project representations of diasporic cultural identities simultaneously resistant and “marginal” to the hegemonic culture. These representations are analyzed under the following theoretical framework: Joan Scott’s reconceptualization of the category of experience; Donna Haraway’s theory of situated knowledges; and a critical strategy that proposes an intersection of arguments derived from feminist and postmodern thinking, which posit identity as a fluid, multiple, and unstable construct, supported on Linda Hutcheon’s The Politics of Postmodernism; the collection of essays edited by Linda Nicholson, Feminism/Postmodernism; and Jean-François Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition. The theoretical framework provides a privileged perspective to investigate representations of cultural identity that question the conception of identity as fixed, autonomous, and prior to the social-historical context in which identity and its representation are shaped.

Em um mundo cada vez mais transnacional e multicultural, a identidade cultural é formada por meio de um processo constante de mobilidade e deslocamentos, resultando na formação de identidades culturais diaspóricas. Tais identidades culturais híbridas e heterogêneas se caracterizam por travessias de fronteiras e limitações impostas à construção da subjetividade. O presente estudo consiste em uma análise interpretativa de representações de identidades culturais diaspóricas em dois escritos autobiográficos ficcionais: Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), de Gloria Anzaldúa e Zami A New Spelling of my Name, a biomythography (1982), de Audre Lorde. As representações de identidades culturais diaspóricas desenvolvidas em ambos os textos produzem efeitos que desestabilizam a política de representação da identidade cultural articulando identificações e desejos informados por hibridismo e diferença bem como reconstruindo a categoria da experiência e a produção do conhecimento através da ficcionalização da construção da identidade. O objetivo é investigar como as vozes narrativas projetam representações de identidades culturais diaspóricas simultaneamente resistentes e marginais em relação à cultura hegemônica. Tais representações são analisadas à luz do seguinte referencial teórico: a reconstrução da categoria da experiência de Joan Scott; a teoria dos conhecimentos situados de Donna Haraway; e uma estratégia crítica que propõe uma intersecção entre argumentos advindos do pensamento feminista e pós-moderno, que postulam a identidade como um constructo fluído, múltiplo, e instável, sustentada em The Politics of Postmodernism, de Linda Hutcheon; a coleção de ensaios editada por Linda Nicholson, Feminism/Postmodernism; e The Postmodern Condition, de Jean-François Lyotard. O referencial teórico oferece uma perspectiva privilegiada para a investigação de representações de identidades culturais que questionam a concepção de identidade como fixa autônoma e anterior ao contexto sócio-histórico no qual a identidade e sua representação são formadas. / In an increasingly transnational and multicultural world, cultural identities are shaped through a constant process of mobility and displacements, resulting in the formation of diasporic cultural identities. These hybrid heterogeneous cultural identities are characterized by multiple crossings of borders and limitations imposed on the construction of a sense of subjectivity. The present study consists of an interpretative analysis of representations of diasporic cultural identities in two fictional autobiographical writings: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987) and Audre Lorde’s Zami A New Spelling of my Name, a biomythography (1982). The representations of diasporic cultural identities developed in both texts produce disruptive effects on the politics of representation of cultural identity by articulating identifications and desires informed by hybridity and difference as well as reconstructing the category of experience and the production of knowledge through the fictionalization of the construction of identity. The objective is to investigate how the narrative voices project representations of diasporic cultural identities simultaneously resistant and “marginal” to the hegemonic culture. These representations are analyzed under the following theoretical framework: Joan Scott’s reconceptualization of the category of experience; Donna Haraway’s theory of situated knowledges; and a critical strategy that proposes an intersection of arguments derived from feminist and postmodern thinking, which posit identity as a fluid, multiple, and unstable construct, supported on Linda Hutcheon’s The Politics of Postmodernism; the collection of essays edited by Linda Nicholson, Feminism/Postmodernism; and Jean-François Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition. The theoretical framework provides a privileged perspective to investigate representations of cultural identity that question the conception of identity as fixed, autonomous, and prior to the social-historical context in which identity and its representation are shaped.

Chicana Literature: A Feminist Perspective of Gloria Anzaldúa's Identity Politics Doctoral Thesis Mgr. et Mgr. Tereza Jiroutová Kynčlová 2017 ABSTRACT In the analyses executed in the present doctoral thesis, Chicana literary production emerges as a complex example of a strategic and reflexive instrumentalization of literature in the form of a political and activist tool contributing to Chicanas' gender and cultural emancipation on the one hand. On the other hand, within the Chicana/o context, literature is employed for perfecting the politics of recognition of the marginalized nation typified by the specificity of its geographic, cultural, and social location on the U.S.-Mexico border where a plethora of socially constructed categories interact and intersect. The doctoral thesis further provides a gender analysis of literary representations of Chicana/o lived experience by Chicana feminist writers in general and by Gloria Anzaldúa in particular, and investigates how these representations help shape feminist thought not only in relation to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, but within and beyond the United States. Moreover, the thesis supplies an interpretation of Anzaldúa's reconceptualization of the border concept as a pertinent means for comprehending Chicanas'/os' socio-cultural context and for forging a...

What if the narrative of hope, in fact, is hopeless for the oppressed? Even oppressive? If hope is hopeless, can hope be found in the middle of hopelessness? The aim of this study is to define a hopeful and sustainable theology of hope for the oppressed.  This study is a literature analysis on three authors offering different perspectives on oppression, as well as various models of hope. By connecting the lynching era of black americans in Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone, theories on affect in relation to oppression in Grave attending by Karen Bray, and the conflict of borders and dualism in Borderlands by Gloria Anzaldúa the study seeks to discuss hope in relation to oppression.  The literary material is initially categorized by each author separately and analyzed with three identical topics. The first topic- Oppression, defines how each author describes oppression. In the second topic- The Utopian Hope, hope is problematized in relation to oppression in the light of models presented by the author. Ultimately the third topic, The Hope of Gap, seeks to define how hope for the oppressed can be found in between hopelessness and hope.  The analysis indicates several problematic effects of a dualistic view of hopelessness and hope, effects that rather result in hopelessness than hope. To form a hopeful theology for the oppressed the analysis instead emphasizes the importance of the gap inbetween as a vital link between hopelessness and hope. Each author addresses this with different models, but with similar functions in transcending dualisms. In relation to Cone the gap can be understood as telling the stories of hopelessness as a source of hope. Bray highlights the importance of the grave in the christian narrative, as the gap connecting the crucifixion and resurrection where emotional affects such as grief, anger, sorrow, anxiety and depression are expressed. Anzaldúa defines the gap as a borderland, nepantla, which is a hybrid and performative state of change and becoming that she means has been cut straight through by unnatural oppressive boundaries.  In conclusion a hopeful hope for the oppressed confirms hopelessness and hope, as mutually dependent in a dialectical relationship, rather than as antagonists.

This thesis explores literary code-switching, i.e. multilingual aspects within a single speech, as a key polyphonic structural element in the selected works. First, it analyzes Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands: The New Mestiza = La Frontera (1987) as a work, where the author seeks to establish a literary tradition that would reflect the life in borderlands and the given community through a new language. Secondly, the language of photography and multilingual speech patterns in W. G. Sebald's The Emigrants (1992) are considered as vital elements of the authenticity play. The following chapter deals with Franz Kafka's short stories, where gestures form an essential part of, if not the whole stories, and determine the fragmentary nature of such writing. Finally, the importance of language of power, the discourse of social realism altogether with their emergence into private and intimate discussions through repetitions and variations is commented upon in Václav Havel's play The Garden Party (1963).