Queering and gendering Aztlán
Anzaldúa's feminist reshaping of the Chicana/o nation in the US–Mexico borderlands
pp. 145-166
in: Jessica Elbert Decker, Dylan Winchock (eds), Borderlands and liminal subjects, Berlin, Springer, 2017Abstract
Through the creative writings of Gloria Anzaldúa, Jiroutová Kynčlová reveals a feminist borderland reconceptualization of Aztlán, where patriarchy is subverted through combinatory narrative structures that merge the personal with the grand historical. These queered narratives of territory and family undermine hierarchical authority by transforming nationalistic male sovereignty into an inclusive non-heteronormativity. Anzaldúa emphasizes that external forces of oppression are not the only kinds that marginalized Chicana/o subjects confront; the dominant hierarchical distinctions are also internalized, creating subjects that perceive themselves as abject. Jiroutová Kynčlová suggests, following Anzaldúa, that queer identity (which Anzaldúa identifies as parallel to her notion of mestiza consciousness) offers a path of resistance to heteronormative, hierarchical, and androcentric discourse and its corresponding power structures, where borderland spaces can become sites of transformation.