Week Six
In the past week we have read essays by Lorde and Anzaldua. In some ways the essays by both of these women are very similar, they both look challenge dualistic thought by discussing people caught between many identities. Upon further examination, however, it becomes clearer that Lorde and Anzaldua look into different aspects of this argument.
Lorde discusses her own identity being a black female lesbian and writes on how this creates views that coincide with each other, or rather how views from one identity intersect with another to create a consciousness that created from the crisscrossed views of many. We can use this consciousness to realize that power is not created because of one identity and then another, but rather the sum of all of those parts together and the result at the end.
Anzaldua proposes something a little different. She writes of a “hybrid� consciousness that, like Lorde’s is created by being more than, to use Johnson’s system, + or -, but Anzaldua suggests that a whole new consciousness is created. Not just the cross and intersection of views from multiple consciousnesses, but a result from views completely unique. Anzaldua discuss herself, being a Chicana woman who was not only from the “boarderlands� but felt that her own self was a “boarderland�.
Both authors make it clear that dualistic thought is far from the complete way of thinking. The essays do not make one author seem correct and the other not, but rather open it up to the existence of many consciousnesses and that the creation of them can be unique to a person, or a place.