Gloria Anzaldúa Analysis

Superior Essays
Addressing the complexities articulated within the act of ethnic identity enunciation, the art of writing is granted the power of eliciting a counter discourse. Ethnic identity, be it a heterogeneous construct fashioned by and through the narrative it sustains, unravels the interplay between competing discourses of power .To transcend the boundaries of marginality infused in the supremacy given to certain languages over others, voicing minorities plight of exclusion can only be maintained through the re- appropriation of their own linguistic medium .In the same way that language creates and determines discourse, identity is re-constructed; it is manifested in the very act of writing and narrating the shared experience of a given …show more content…
The inclusiveness of mestiza identity fashioned by the interplay between the fictional and the poetic helped the writer re-define her identity beyond the limits of the classical dichotomies. For Anzldùa , the detrimental relationship between language and identity is at the core of the politics of re- presentation and subversion , thus ,her experimentation with innovative writing techniques in order to reflect the aptitude of the mestiza to transgress and re-create. In this way,the narrative comes to embody the ideal of "border crossing" she calls for by means of rebellion against hegemonic structures imposed on ethnic …show more content…
This hybrid style is best illustrated in the second section of the chapter entitled “Overcoming the Tradition of Silence” constructed through the weaving of the poetic with the prosaic and the English with the Spanish medium. It opens up with an introductory epigraph in Spanish and ends up with a short poem written by Jewish writer Irena Klepfisz. Internalizing the feeling of being at the periphery due to language dispossession , the narrative has been granted the power of subversion against an established and an institionalized tradition of silencing. By merging both the English and the Spanish languages, the narrator unravels the hybrid consciousness of the border; for the new mestiza consciousness to emerge, a dialogic use of the medium of expression is to be underpinned. Not only does linguistic hegemony stems from the dichotomies self and other but also from the discourse of patriarchy. Recalling the instant when she heard the feminine plural of “we,” nosotras, the writer stresses the role of discrourse as a strategy of existence .It is only through language that the marginalization- centralization processes operate. In this regard, the writer argues that : “We are robbed of our female being by the masculine plural. Language is a male discourse” (Anzaldùa 54 ).As such, decolonizing gendered

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