FORGING A NEW TYPE OF FEMINIST IDENTITY: CHICANA FEMINISM, FEMININITY, AND THE INSTITUTION OF MEMORY

Drawing on Jan Assmann’s interpretation of cultural memory as devoid of any racial/biological component, as well as James Clifford’s repudiation of the notion of cultural purity, the paper redefines memory as a mentally configured cultural institution, claiming that any reconfiguration of group identity is an act of symbolic violence. By emphasizing the crucial role that identity plays in understanding the fundamental themes tackled by Chicana literature—patriarchal oppression, racial terror, domestic abuse, sexism, homophobia—, the paper illustrates the extent to which the ethnic-gender binomial, i.e. belonging to a group that faces bias on various levels (femininity, Mexican American genealogy and, sporadically, sexual minority status), stands at the very core of the desire to redefine identity that largely fuels contemporary Chicana prose.

FORGING A NEW TYPE OF FEMINIST IDENTITY: CHICANA FEMINISM, FEMININITY, AND THE INSTITUTION OF MEMORY

Drawing on Jan Assmann’s interpretation of cultural memory as devoid of any racial/biological component, as well as James Clifford’s repudiation of the notion of cultural purity, the paper redefines memory as a mentally configured cultural institution, claiming that any reconfiguration of group identity is an act of symbolic violence. By emphasizing the crucial role that identity plays in understanding the fundamental themes tackled by Chicana literature—patriarchal oppression, racial terror, domestic abuse, sexism, homophobia—, the paper illustrates the extent to which the ethnic-gender binomial, i.e. belonging to a group that faces bias on various levels (femininity, Mexican American genealogy and, sporadically, sexual minority status), stands at the very core of the desire to redefine identity that largely fuels contemporary Chicana prose.

Towards a Geography of trauma: From El plan spiritual de Aztlán to the Birth of Chicana Spìritual Feminism

The paper explores the unbreakable link between Chicana literature and its political/ ideological/militant/subversive component, based on a new interpretation of “cultural nationalism.” Explaining the sociopolitical motivations that led to the California student revolts of the 1960s and the Chicana Movement’s Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, I also discuss the ensuing falling-out between the feminine/feminist faction of the Movement and its androcentric majority. I draw on the formal/conceptual/linguistic hybridity of Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera as a metaphor for the radical character of the entire Chicana literary phenomenon.

Transculturation in the Chicana Women Writers Prose: Gloria Anzaldúa and Margarita Cota-Cárdenas

The aim of this paper is to discuss the concept of transculturation on the basis of Chicana literature created in the American Southwest. First, the historical, social and cultural context of the Chicana culture formation in the Mexican-American border space is explained. Secondly, transculturation is presented as a European and a genuine Latin American concept of local cultural hybridity, with the emphasis put on the contributions by Wolfgang Welsch and Fernando Ortiz. Thirdly, a general characteristic of Chicana literature is provided, with a special attention paid to linguistic and cultural identity issues. In the analysis of the discursive strategies used by Chicana women writers, two fundamental hybrid Chicana texts are taken into consideration: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/ La Frontera and Margarita Cota-Cárdenas’s Puppet. The analysis reveals that code-switching and interlinguistic translations are the basic forms of character construction and explain the complex situation of the Mexican minority in the USA. Finally, both texts seem to require a hybrid bilingual reader due to their heterogeneous bilingual form and subjects treated.