Sin Verguenza: Chicana feminist theorizing.(Critical essay)

MY FIRST ATTEMPT TO PUBLISH in an academic journal healed a deep and painful wound I had received during my graduate training. In the classic, social science convention, I was taught to write with so-called objectivity or distance and to eliminate from my dissertation traces of my own voice or experience. Although it made no sense to me, I was obedient and hid my injured soul from my peers and professors. Therefore, I was surprised and elated to receive a rejection letter from Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies that demanded as a condition of consideration for publication that I write myself (back) into my analysis of la quinceanera, a fifteenth-birthday celebration for girls that marks gender/sex and culture for mexicanas in Chicago. The condition gave me permission to include myself in the text without fear, without shame. It felt as if I had found a home in feminist scholarship because clarification of the author's standpoint or positionality was fundamental, an essential aspect of theory-making.

Twelve years have passed since my rite of passage into feminist academic publishing, and the period has witnessed the recognition of the autobiographical voice as a methodology of feminist scholarship, particularly in U.S. Third World feminist studies. (1) From my observations as editor of Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social, Gloria Anzaldua's work was crucial in advancing this methodology, and I am convinced that the major reason for her prominence in Chicana feminist theory is her argument for multiple subject positions--race, class, gender, and sexuality along with additional social factors such as immigration, language, religion, and nationality. Not that this advance was always greeted enthusiastically: the 1980s and 1990s also demonstrated strong resistance to autobiographical styles, testimonio, and the personal essay written by women, particularly women of color and lesbians. (2) For example, during this period ethnic studies, postmodern analysis, and mainstream feminist scholarship stridently opposed or conspicuously ignored the autobiographical and creative prose of Anzaldua, labeling it poetic but not theoretical, and, worse, divisive or irrelevant. Soe domains, such as cultural studies, appropriated her work without granting her recognition. (3) Nonetheless, within Chicana feminism, the developments of Anzadua's Borderlands/La Frontera and This Bridge Called My Back that she coedited with Cherrie Moraga are here to stay, and the centrality of a method that draws on personal experience, private memory, testimonio, life history, or creative nonfiction is evident in all of the books under review here.

In what follows, I examine the major developments or themes in six books of Chicana feminist thought. That Chicana feminism encourages the use of the autobiographical voice would be the first theme. Arguably even more important is the second theme, one that the autobiographical voice already signals: Chicana feminism advances a transdisciplinary method (4) that surfaces in the structure and organization of the projects as well as the stylistic blending of genres. This crossing and untying of disciplinary boundaries, this methodological innovation with its simultaneous political and theoretical transformations, is a major advancement of Chicana feminist thought. It is significant for two reasons: its cross-disciplinary method produces social change, and it aligns formerly separate fields.

Eden Torres's explanation of her cross-disciplinary methodology is a useful guide here. In the opening pages of Chicana without Apology/Chicana sin Verguenza: The New Chicana Cultural Studies, Torres clarifies that her intention in the book is to "broaden the scope of cultural studies discussions and practices ... [in order to] provide general insights for all people interested in forming successful coalitions for radical political work" (2). Torres uses a hybrid methodology that is characterized by transference and change. More than the implied mixing under rubrics of multi- or interdisciplinary studies, transdisciplinary projects operate against boundaries, dismantling the disciplines in the moment that they are used and renovated. In Torres's own words, it is an "unapologetic challenge to the traditions and systems that have tried to silence Chicanas and so many others" (2). Torres confesses that she draws on "the knowledge left to me by grandmothers and great aunts ... and several wise Chicana mentors." "Following [their] advice ..., I have taken theories and concepts from a wide range of disciplines and combined them with the lessons I've learned through observation and experience. What emerges as I close my eyes to compose, listening to the voices of all the precious women in my life, is the theory and language of struggle and endurance" (2).

A third theme is also evident in Torres's autobiographical narrative that recalls her conversations with her mentors and guidance from her elder kin: Chicana feminist thought emerges from collaboration and discussion. Whether single-authored books or anthologies, Chicana feminist theory develops from and through partnerships and conversations or, as the five editors of Chicana Feminisms: A Critical Reader note, "the process of debate and dialogue ... has always been integral to Chicana feminist theory and practice" (1). These editors' reference to the process of debate and dialogue is intended to signal the historical challenge Chicanas have made to "masculinist projects, such as the Chicano movement, or within predominantly white, middle-class feminist circles" (1), but also point beyond, accounting for both gender and race, respectively.