Anzaldua Questions
1. What is the effect of reading a piece that slides from one language to another? Does this draw you in or pull you out?
2. How does history impact this piece?
3. What are the borderlands? Do you have borderlands of your own?
4. How does Anzaldua construct and deconstruct identity throughout this piece?
posted by Natasha Luepke @ 6:20 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Nice! Writing 121 questions! I can play this game! I'll take question #3 for $500, please.
"Borderlands" is a significant word to use here because it implies so much. On the one hand, it is the obvious physical border of the U.S. and Mexico. On the other hand, it is a more abstract border, signifying (pun on Gates intended) cultural, linguistic, social, socioeconomic, and familial borders.
I wonder, though, about the connection of this piece to rhetoric. Admittedly, when I saw it included in this anthology, I wondered how Anzaldua relates to the teaching of writing or to the history of rhetoric. I see now, after reading Bizzell and Herzberg's introduction, that it does relate (of course). While not steeped in rhetorical terms, as other texts are, Anzaldua's piece exemplifies the complexities that contemporary society faces, which inevitably crosses over into academic disciplines.
B&H cite Andrea Lunsford, who calls this piece "a 'mestize rhetoric,' with 'mestiza' referring not only to the specific racial and cultural mixing that has produced the Mexican American people, but also to a more generalized concept of internal multiplicity, or complex identity, that is expressed in language drawn from a variety of cultural sources" (1583). In this passage, then, we can see that contemporary rhetoric has undoubtedly shifted since Antiquity. In the U.S., we see a multiplicity of languages, cultures, and ethnicities, and thus we cannot simply view society -- or even rhetoric -- in a single-faceted way. It is inherently complex, multivocal, political.
This reminds me of Stanley Fish's "Rhetoric," in which Fish claims that true rhetoricians use "language that is infected by partisan agendas and desires, and therefore colors and distorts the facts which it purports to reflect" (1611). For Fish, like Anzaldua, a politically-charged agenda is the driving force behind rhetoric, and is (I believe) something particularly unique to contemporary society -- something that, perhaps, Plato and Cicero would not have ever thought to encounter.
Great post, Sarah.
I was thinking, in response to your last couple of lines, that you're right: Plato and Cicero would have had a hard time even imagining a world full of such diverse ideologies and philosophies and perspectives as ours. They had a basic worldview, with particular values and beliefs, that they probably unconsciously assumed was the only worldview. They never had to consider or respond to rhetoric which came from radically different perspectives. They had to deal with perspectives that diverged from their worldview, but that very divergence (Plato thought the sophists were valuing the wrong thing, for example) was defined AS a divergence from the one main worldview. If that makes sense! :-)
Anyway, again -- great post, Sarah.
Surely you mean, "Good questions, Natasha."
;)
I'll take questions #1...
I took a few years of Spanish in high school and I still use a lot of it for work during the summer so I found myself trying to translate everything she was saying. It definitely drew me in but I could see how some students would choose to ignore this vital piece of the work (as you mentioned in class today).
More importantly, I think the effect of combining English with Spanish allows this piece to connect to more than just one audience. In the introduction, Lunsford says "she shifts from poetry to reportorial prose to autobiographical stream of consciousness to incantatory mythic chants to sketches and graphs." All of these elements combined into one autobiography make it something for everyone. (Cliche, I know.) Too bad Cicero never thought of that...
Yes, yes! I meant, great questions, Natasha! Of course! yes!
Okay... I choose question #1, too.
I found this piece kind of exciting to read, on one hand, but also kind of frustrating. I think part of me kept wanting to make it neater, more traditional (I guess).
It was exciting because I knew and could feel that something new and important was happening in the piece. Maybe I just felt excited that different voices were being heard. But, like I said, I have to admit that I kept feeling off-balance and a bit frustrated while reading it. Now that Megan mentions it, maybe it wasn't just the two languages (one of which is 95% foreign to me) that stirred up the piece for me but the switching of genres.
So the simple answer is it draws me in and pulls me out. But I think we need more, not less, writing like this. I'll get over the sense of discomfort. (And hec, maybe that's a lot of us need: discomfort for a while.)
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