On Queering Mestizaje 1
Arrizon Alicia. Queering Mestizaje: Transculturation and Performance. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2006.
Queering relates to refusing or resistance to occupy or be identified with a single subject position. Queer subjects occupy an identity “in between” (hybrid), which is useful to de-essentialize identity.
Mestizaje, as a postcolonial condition, has been both an ideology linked to nationalist narratives and to an (oppositional) identity linked to power struggles over representation, autonomy and authenticity in Latin America. On one hand, mestizaje provides a narrative that gives meaning and direction to colonial violence and processes of transculturation through the idealization of Spanish and Indigenous blood (note that the blood is the metaphor to talk about filiation and genealogies of race) and gives historical meaning to racialized bodies. This narrative represents the colonial encounter as a racialized and gendered romance between the male Spanish conquistador and the “Indian” women, a narrative that stands for the violence of the actually exploitative relationship between Spanish men and Indigenous women. Just as multiculturalism does in their abstract celebration of cultural difference, the ideology of mestizaje mascarades the actual power differences and relations based on racism and racialization.
Modern narratives need an 'other' to construct the 'self', but the dialectics of dominant/subordinate are way more complex, so we speak of 'contact zones' (Arrizon quotes ML Pratt and Cherríe Moraga in this notion) where bodies are constituted in opposition as a result of particular power structures, and perform 'difference' according to historical imaginaries. Inspired by Anzaldúa and Sandoval, Arrizon suggests that 'mestizaje' is a site for the potential articulation of an oppositional consciousness, that is, instead of adscribing certain pre-fixed meanings and contents to what mestizaje means, suggests we should keep it open as a “borderland” identity, or an epistemological disposition that resists (Western) hegemonic discourses and knowledge.
Mestizaje, “as an imaginary site for racialized, gendered, and sexualized identities, [...] raises questions about historical transformations and cultural memory across Spanish postcolonial sites”, and has become a way to speak about difference not necessarily from an essentialist perspective of identity, but as a political category of resistance to Spanish colonialism and US imperialism. Arrizon's stance is to introduce a “queering” of mestiza politics as a way to read critically and challenge normative discursive practices. By queering mestizaje we get rid of all discussions around authenticity and instead of looking for origins to sustain identity, we “recognize the continuing influence of cultural performances” (3). Only then a transcultural paradoxical feminism will be able to effectively engage with paradoxical, incomplete and hyphenated identities.
Queering relates to refusing or resistance to occupy or be identified with a single subject position. Queer subjects occupy an identity “in between” (hybrid), which is useful to de-essentialize identity.
Mestizaje, as a postcolonial condition, has been both an ideology linked to nationalist narratives and to an (oppositional) identity linked to power struggles over representation, autonomy and authenticity in Latin America. On one hand, mestizaje provides a narrative that gives meaning and direction to colonial violence and processes of transculturation through the idealization of Spanish and Indigenous blood (note that the blood is the metaphor to talk about filiation and genealogies of race) and gives historical meaning to racialized bodies. This narrative represents the colonial encounter as a racialized and gendered romance between the male Spanish conquistador and the “Indian” women, a narrative that stands for the violence of the actually exploitative relationship between Spanish men and Indigenous women. Just as multiculturalism does in their abstract celebration of cultural difference, the ideology of mestizaje mascarades the actual power differences and relations based on racism and racialization.
Modern narratives need an 'other' to construct the 'self', but the dialectics of dominant/subordinate are way more complex, so we speak of 'contact zones' (Arrizon quotes ML Pratt and Cherríe Moraga in this notion) where bodies are constituted in opposition as a result of particular power structures, and perform 'difference' according to historical imaginaries. Inspired by Anzaldúa and Sandoval, Arrizon suggests that 'mestizaje' is a site for the potential articulation of an oppositional consciousness, that is, instead of adscribing certain pre-fixed meanings and contents to what mestizaje means, suggests we should keep it open as a “borderland” identity, or an epistemological disposition that resists (Western) hegemonic discourses and knowledge.
Mestizaje, “as an imaginary site for racialized, gendered, and sexualized identities, [...] raises questions about historical transformations and cultural memory across Spanish postcolonial sites”, and has become a way to speak about difference not necessarily from an essentialist perspective of identity, but as a political category of resistance to Spanish colonialism and US imperialism. Arrizon's stance is to introduce a “queering” of mestiza politics as a way to read critically and challenge normative discursive practices. By queering mestizaje we get rid of all discussions around authenticity and instead of looking for origins to sustain identity, we “recognize the continuing influence of cultural performances” (3). Only then a transcultural paradoxical feminism will be able to effectively engage with paradoxical, incomplete and hyphenated identities.
But the interesting thing is that mestizaje is not already "queer." I mean, if the queer is hybrid (as you suggest), the mestizaje is already a form of hybridity, and yet doesn't seem to challenge normative identities or the status quo at all.
ReplyDeleteWhich might make us wonder, perhaps, about how radical a step "queering" really is.