Reading assignment for Monday, March. Chéla Sandoval’s “Mestizaje as Method: Feminists-of-Color Challenge the Canon” (from Living Chicana Theory) Your reply (under Comments) is due before class. Remember, you don’t need to answer all or even any of the questions, but your response should demonstrate you’ve done and thought about the readings. Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.
What is Sandoval’s “mestizaje method”? Be specific. How does it adapt and evolve from Anzaldúa’s borderlands theory? How does it give additional insight as to where Anzaldúa’s theory comes from?
Do you agree with Sandoval’s history of feminists of color? How does it connect with her method and Anzaldúa’s borderland theory? How does she interrelate her method with the publication history of Borderlands / La Frontera and This Bridge Called My Back?
What positives and drawbacks of Sandoval’s method can you see? How do the endnotes add to your understanding of Sandoval’s work?
I think this has been one of the hardest pieces for me to understand. I feel that Sandoval draws a lot from the theory and the historical context of the third world feminism. So through the publications of that time she tries to paint a picture of how la conciensia mestiza fits into the discourse but more over how to make use of it. I really liked how both Bridge and Borderlands is mentioned in this piece as we read both and she tries to make a connection between them.
Chéla Sandoval’s “Mestizaje as Method” is intricate but from what I understand it is very interesting. She is promoting an alliance among all races, genders, communities, etc., which she claims “Third World Feminism” accomplishes and was starting to be seen in the Civil Rights Movement. She argues that people of color during the Civil Rights Movement despite different ideas, experiences, and goals, they worked in a “coalitional form of consciousness opposed to dominating powers and oppressive racial and social hierarchies,” which translates into the “mestizaje consciousness” used by Feminists of color (pg. 356). Sandoval groups everyone as citizens/subjects who relentlessly resisted oppression and domination. Through “Third World Feminism” she acknowledges the different methods of resistance developed by subjugated people. I like that she calls them “skills” or forms of resistance. There are five technologies of power developed to resist: assimilationist mode, revolutionary mode, supremacist mode, separatist mode and the differential mode but are all deemed valid because of the differential strategy (pg. 361). Sandoval views them as tactics and does not criticize one better than the other but for women of color the “differential mode” has been the most deployed. However I can see how everyone adopts a tactic in order, to survive but they might evolve over time as society changes.
I like how she defined la conciencia de la mestiza. Similar to Anzaldúa’s view, in which this third space is the crossroads of cultures and geography, Sandoval also includes “races, nations, languages, genders, sexualities” (359). I like how she associates it with transformation and relocation. It seems that it is constantly improving and evolving and never staying in one spot. Reminds me of how Anzaldúa said that learning is a way to step out of your comfort zone. I’m wondering whom the jester is referring to in the paper.
I like how Sandoval shows in her writing that 3rd world feminism isn’t just one event that happened in history. She writes, “The mystery is the disappearing act: how this theoretical and methedological formulation, including the more technical aspects of what we now call mestiza femminism…continues to slip away from disciplinary understanding and recognition(354).” She is right with this quote because in high school when you learn about women sufferage it is like it was a time period of struggle, then it was solved.Even in the Oxford dictionary, she says this is how U.S. third world women are described (354). You don’t learn how their are so many aspects and issues of the womens movement dealing with race, gender, equality rights, etc, that start from the early 1900’s till today.
The reading by Sandoval was a little hard to comprehend. I found myself asking what is she trying to interpret, portray, or her overall point. This happened frequently especially in the section Mapping the Section, where Sandoval coins U.S. Third World Feminism. I felt it was very farfetched how she linked racial issues to feminism and those of a different race to being from a third world, as if every race was a minority. However I did understand and enjoy when she interpreted how these women of color share a mutual understanding of being oppressed and how they were coming together as one. I liked this section because I happen to agree; when women are being oppressed they share a commonality and therefore they come together to share their stories. Overall I felt this reading was very hard to interpret. It was dense and didn’t have many firsthand narratives in which I was able to relate to.
I agree with Kelsey and Michael I feel that Sandoval really emphasizes the idea that it is not just about one era or one struggle but the mixture and evolution of them. This really brings back to context the idea of borderlands and the picture that Dr. Perez put up on the board with all those issues including gender, race, class, religion, etc. I think that this piece touches upon the idea that it has been a mixture of these that Chicana feminism struggles have come down to. This piece also made me think about the ways in which Chicanas today deal with their struggles. Sandoval mentions how there have been these different tactics to work through these struggles, and I think that the different methods that each group uses to work through their struggle really says much about how hard it was for them. Today I think women are given a lot more freedom and that’s why most women no longer assimilate and conform to given restrictions or borders.
In the way that “Borderlands: La Frontera” was seen as a step after “Bridge”, Chela Sandoval takes what is presented third world and Chicana feminism up to that time a step further. “Bridge” took a stand. It gave voices to those “third world” women who were sick of being used for other purposes, and it affirmed that these women were ready to stand together. “Borderlands” took some of the bitterness explored in “Bridge”, the bitterness of living outside of and in between worlds of culture, race, gender, class, and sexuality, and began to formulate it instead as something to embrace. Sandoval takes Anzaldua’s embracing of this in-between space and embracing of the ability of fluidity to the next level, where she seriously applies it to US Third World Feminism as a tactic of resistance and progress. She argues that the mestiza (mixed race) consciousness, that consciousness of the in-between, can apply to all “third world” women. They live in several different worlds at once, and developed their fluidity as a survival tactic. Even when it is no longer needed strictly for survival, it can be a necessary tool for bonding, recognizing unique perspective, and using this in their fight.
Chela Sandoval is incorporating Gloria Anzaldua’s idea of chicana mestizaje or mestiza consciousness to describe its relationship to “U.S. third world feminist criticism” (p.353). Sandoval relates what Native American theorist Paula Gunn Allen’s evolving new identity and theory to Anzaldua’s “facultad.” This is the ability to perceive deeper into the soul. I think what Sandoval is connecting is that through la facultad the colonized is able to go through a transformation in developing a mestiza consciousness and see beyond what is physically present.
One of my favorite things to see and realize when reading over Chicana feminist and general Chicano writings is how much I can relate to them. In Mestizaje, Sandoval explains that depsite several differences at the root of their identities, the women of color who made up the “Third World Feminists” were surprised to “recognize in one another, profound similarities.” This is exactly what I got out of reading from This Bridge Called My Back and what I have experienced several times simply in conversations with my friends that come from minority backgrounds. I highly enjoy learning about the daily lives of people, now or in the past, just as much as learning about their histories and what makes up their culture and philosophies. I like knowing that we live very different, yet similar lives from the moment we wake up in the morning, to the time we clock out from too many hours of homework or spending time with the family, etc. I believe this is one of the points that Sandoval is making, that the U.S. created this idealistic vision of feminism that once again created walls amongst a community that actually defied those divisions. That despite different cultural, geopolitical, social, racial, and historical identities, the feminists of the time and now were sisters in the cause that they fight for. But I do wonder more about the reaction that women of the majority race thought of all this and how they participated. For example, I find myself asking how many white women attended the “National Alliance of U.S. Third World Feminists” and how did they respond/show support for the women of color who were present.
Third world feminism had confused me in when reading Sandoval’s piece the first time, but after discussing it in class and rereading the section I understand that it is much like Michelle had mentioned in class a short hand account of defining feminism within the United States and in broader terms inferring the different races. It was interesting to read about the National Alliance of the US and how it related to our reading with “This Bridge Called My Back” and how it attributes to the many women involved in activist movements within the feminist movement. One thing that I still have a hard time understanding is the theory behind the consciousness, Sandoval gives 5 key points but they seem broad and unrelated to the topic at hand.
I found it interesting that the U.S third world feminism was tried to incorporate every female as if there was no difference between them. And it was even stated that though there were obvious differences they had found some things in common. However not everyone was blind to this movement and in 1970 Francis Beale, a black feminist, wrote and published an essay that basically prophesied that the U.S. third world feminism would soon become a “white women’s movement”. Thus the need for a distinction between the U.S. third world feminism and 3rd world feminism was needed. Lowriding was a method used in order to distinguish the “third” in the U.S. third world feminist critical theory. Lowriding meant going about things a little differently that would develop imagery, methods and theory in order to “cruise” through any dominant meaning system. This would eventually lead to the division of the movement and the 3rd world feminism would rise up. Books such as Bridge would further distinguish the differences of women of color that were basically all thrown into one category. Many terms similar to mestiza, or Sister Outsider had been made to describe these women of color and the fact that they were dealing with a situation of having “mixed blood” and being an “outsider within.”