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Speculative Realism, Visionary Pragmatism, and Poet-Shamanic Aesthetics in

Gloria Anzaldúa—and Beyond

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Speculative Realism, Visionary Pragmatism,
and Poet-Shamanic Aesthetics
in Gloria Anzaldúa—and Beyond

AnaLouise Keating

I felt a calling to be an artist, but an artist in the sense of a shaman—of healing

through words, using words as a medium for expressing the flights of the soul,
communing with the spirit, having access to these other realities or worlds.
—Gloria Anzaldúa, Interviews/Entrevistas

It is by now almost a commonplace among many feminist scholars to

criticize or even reject the “linguistic turn” in poststructuralist thought,
insisting that poststructuralism’s intense focus on language removes think-
ers from the embodied, material world. Adopting a dichotomous, oppo-
sitional stance and defining poststructuralist thought in overly simplified
terms, these critiques are somewhat reductive and thoroughly immersed
in the binary Eurocentric philosophical traditions they condemn.1 How-
ever, rather than criticize the critiques, this essay takes a different, more
speculative approach. Drawing on indigenous theories of participatory
language and Gloria Anzaldúa’s work, I develop a transformation-based
writing practice that I call poet-shaman aesthetics: a synergistic combina-
tion of artistry, healing, and transformation grounded in relational, indige-
nous-inflected worldviews.2 I focus especially on the physical dimensions
of Anzaldúa’s writing, where the words she uses, the metaphors she cre-
ates, emerge from and connect with her subjects and have physiological
and other material effects. Poet-shaman aesthetics represents an entirely
embodied and potentially transformative intertwining of language, physi-
ology/matter, and world. As I hope to demonstrate, poet-shaman aes-
thetics represents a linguistic “turn” indeed, but not the more commonly

WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 40: 3 & 4 (Fall/Winter 2012) © 2012 by AnaLouise Keating.
All rights reserved.
51
52  AnaLouise Keating

presumed turn away from material reality and our embodied flesh-and-
blood world.
In poet-shaman aesthetics, words do not simply point to this external-
ized material reality in some correspondence-type mode. Words neither
serve merely as a veil between ourselves and a more real (that is, more
tangibly material) world nor create our reality in some poststructuralist
approach (i.e., the “linguistic turn” I referred to above). My claim is far
more extreme: in poet-shaman aesthetics words have causal force; words
embody the world; words are matter; words become matter. As in sha-
manic worldviews and indigenous theories and practices—in which
words, images, and things are intimately interwoven and the intentional,
ritualized performance of specific, carefully selected words shifts reality—
poet-shaman aesthetics enables us to enact and concretize transformation.
Stories and metaphors are as real as dogs, cats, baseball bats, the idea of
God, nuclear fission, human beings, the chair you’re sitting on right now,
Buddhism, and bricks. LeAnn Howe makes a similar point:

I’m saying flat-out that speech acts create the world around us. And
those are primary, foundational. We can look at verbs and verb tenses,
especially in Choctaw, as a way of moving the mountain through the act
of speaking. That speech act is as powerful as number theory to nuclear
physics. Many non-Indians put all their faith in numbers, the power to
add them up to create or destroy. Natives, I think, on the other hand,
put our faith in speech. What is said. That’s why if you speak of death
to an individual or a thing, you make it happen. (Qtd. in Squint 2010,
219–20)

In Indigenous philosophies, words are not simply representational; they

are causal. Language can have material(izing) force.
I borrow the term “poet-shaman” from Anzaldúa herself, although she
uses it only once—in the aptly titled “Metaphors in the Tradition of the
Shaman,” where she describes her artistic vocation as a new form of sha-
manism. In this brief essay, drafted shortly after Borderlands/La Frontera:
The New Mestiza’s publication, Anzaldúa explains that when she wrote her
book, she was “trying to practice . . . in a new way”:
The oldest “calling” in the world—shamanism. . . . The Sanskrit word for
shaman, saman, means song. In non-literate societies, the shaman and
the poet were the same person. The role of the shaman is, as it was then,
to preserve and create cultural or group identity by mediating between
 Speculative Realism, Visionary Pragmatism, & Poet-Shamanic Aesthetics 53

the cultural heritage of the past and the present everyday situations peo-
ple find themselves in. In retrospect I see that this was an unconscious
intention on my part in writing Borderlands/La Frontera.
To carry the poet-shaman analogy further, through my poet’s eye I
see “illness,” lo que daña, whatever is harmful in the cultural or indi-
vidual body. I see that “sickness” unbalances a person or a community.
That it may be in the form of disease, or disinformation/misinformation
perpetrated on women and people of color. I see that always it takes the
form of metaphors. (1990, 121–22; her emphasis)

I’ve quoted this passage at length because it illustrates poet-shaman aes-

thetics’ radical creative power: defining illness broadly, to include the
effects of racism, sexism, and other destructive beliefs, practices, episte-
mologies, and states of being that occur at interlocking/overlapping indi-
vidual and systemic levels, Anzaldúa maintains that writers who take on
this poet-shaman role can assist in the healing process.3
In poet-shaman aesthetics, language can initiate physiological, material
change. This deeply embodied transformation directly links shamanism’s
shape-shifting power and Indigenous theories of participatory speech acts
with poetry’s intimate relationship with language. In poet-shaman aes-
thetics, images—whether visual, imaginal, and/or painted by words—are
interrelated to intuitive-emotional knowledge and conscious awareness.
As Anzaldúa explains in Borderlands/La Frontera, “An image is a bridge
between evoked emotion and conscious knowledge; words are the cables
that hold up the bridge. Images are more direct, more immediate, than
words, and closer to the unconscious” (1987, 91). While it might seem to
be common sense to dismiss this discussion as “simply” metaphoric and
thus limited exclusively to the power of disembodied, intangible words, to
do so overlooks the possibility that language’s causal power can provoke
additional material levels of transformation. According to Anzaldúa, these
linguistic images, when internalized, can trigger the imagination, which
then affects our embodied state—our physical bodies—at the cellular
level. Anzaldúa draws on her own experiences to illustrate language’s abil-
ity to effect physiological change, explaining:
Right after Borderlands/La Frontera came out, I focused on what was
weak or lacking in it and everything that was “wrong” with my life. I
repeatedly represented (both with pictures and words in my head and
with internal feelings) how things were in such a negative way that I
put myself in a disempowering state and eventually made myself sick.
54  AnaLouise Keating

As is true with all humans, the working of my imagination acted upon

my own body. Images communicated with tissues, organs, and cells to
effect change. Once again it came home to me how powerful the image
and the word are and how badly I needed to control the metaphors I
use to communicate with myself. Sí, la imaginación es muy poderosa.
(1990, 121)

After her book’s publication, Anzaldúa was dissatisfied with elements of

it. She dwelled on what she perceived as its flaws, just as she obsessively
reflected on other imperfections in her life. Focusing so extensively on
these limitations—thinking about, imagining, feeling the “negative” ele-
ments in her book and her life—drained her, and she became physically
ill. Literally, the thoughts made her sick. Anzaldúa attributes this decline
in her health to her imagination—not in that dismissive sense we some-
times hear (“You’re not really, physically sick; it’s all in your head”) but
rather in an embodied, concretized manner: “You’re really, physically sick
at least partially because of what’s in your head—because the words run-
ning through your head affected your behavior and body, working in con-
junction with other elements to make you physically ill.”
What should we make of these provocative interconnections between
mind, body, imagination, thinking, language, and health? Should we
criticize Anzaldúa for pointing toward (and possibly enacting) a type of
naive self-blame that does not adequately acknowledge systemic issues?
Should we praise her for developing a sophisticated theory of personal-
linguistic-physical agency? Should we both praise and condemn her for
positing but not fully developing this fluid, provocative theory? Rather
than answer these questions, I want to linger over, savor, and then build on
Anzaldúa’s radical relationship with words. In the following pages, I reflect
on Anzaldúa’s theory and practice of writing and language, using these
reflections to develop, in preliminary form, a poet-shaman aesthetics.
As the word “preliminary” suggests, these reflections and this theory are
ongoing and in process; they are open to revision and additional growth.
I draw from a variety of sources, including unpublished manuscripts,
interviews, and writing notas; published essays; my personal experiences
working with Anzaldúa as I edited Interviews/Entrevistas (Anzaldúa 2000)
and coedited this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation
(Anzaldúa and Keating 2002); and my current work as one of her liter-
ary trustees.4 Because I am—to borrow Patricia Hill Collins’s words—a
visionary pragmatist (Collins 1998, 188),5 I connect this scholarly analy-
 Speculative Realism, Visionary Pragmatism, & Poet-Shamanic Aesthetics 55

sis with more immediate aspirations and speculations: What can we learn
from Anzaldúa’s process? How can we apply her bold claims to our own
work? Poet-shaman aesthetics is my initial answer to these questions.
As my refusal to engage head on in an extensive debate about critiques
of the “linguistic turn” indicates, I also hope to model a nonoppositional
approach to scholarly dialogue and critique.

Speculation 1: Indigenous (Inter)Connections?

I come from a state (Texas) that decimated every Indian group, including the
Mexican indigenous. I don’t look European, but I can’t say I’m Indian even
though I’m three quarters Indian. But the issue is much more complex than how
many drops of indigenous blood Indians and Chicanas have. I’ve always claimed
indigenous ancestry and connections, but I’ve never claimed a North American Indian
identity. I claim a mestizaje (mixed-blood, mixed culture) identity. In participating
in this dialogue. . . . I’m afraid that what I say may unwittingly contribute to the
misappropriation of Native cultures, that I (and other Chicanas) will inadvertently
contribute to the cultural erasure, silencing, invisibility, racial stereotyping, and
disenfranchisement of people who live in real Indian bodies. I’m afraid that Chicanas
may unknowingly help the dominant culture remove Indians from their specific
tribal identities and histories. Tengo miedo que, in pushing for mestizaje and a new
tribalism, I will “detribalize” them. . . . Yet I also feel it’s imperative that we participate
in this dialogue no matter how risky.
Gloria Anzaldúa, “Speaking Across the Divide”

As this section’s epigraph indicates, Anzaldúa was deeply concerned by

the possibility that her references to indigeneity (which occur at various
points throughout her work) could be misconstrued as an invitation to
appropriate, distort, misuse, or in other ways disrespect Native peoples,
philosophies, and/or cultures. I share this concern—in terms of both
Anzaldúa’s work and my own. I’ve had misgivings about the decision to
describe my theory and practice of writing, language, imagination, and
transformation as poet-shaman aesthetics. Because shamanism is so often
associated exclusively with nonwestern indigenous cultures, will the use
of the word “shaman” inadvertently seem to authorize and/or enact an
appropriation/distortion of Indigenous thought? Is this relational aesthet-
ics too different from culturally specific forms of traditional shamanism or
from contemporary Western forms to be taken seriously?
56  AnaLouise Keating

However, after much intellectual wrestling and soul searching, I use

the term “poet-shaman aesthetics” for at least three reasons. First, Indig-
enous philosophies and worldviews can serve as crucial sources of wis-
dom, insight, and guidance for twenty-first-century life and disciplinary
knowledge structures. As numerous Native and non-Native scholars have
argued, contemporary human beings and societies must learn from Native
philosophies. Thus, for example, Gregory Cajete insists that the “ancient
idea of relationship [found in Native sciences and worldviews] must be
allowed to arise in our collective consciousness once again. In this perilous
world of the twenty-first century, it may well be a matter of our collective
survival” (2000, 105). Marilou Awiakta makes a similar point:

Like an individual, America can be whole only by going back to its

roots—all of them. My premise is this: the Native American story—and
the holistic mode of thought it embodies—springs from the original
root in our homeland. The story is designed to move among the strands
of life’s web both within the individual and within the community, to
restore balance and harmony. Its ancient ways offer a helpful pattern in
making new connections among our different people and academic dis-
ciplines. (1993, 155)

Poet-shaman aesthetics opens potential pathways we can follow and forge

as we attempt to “mak[e] new connections” (155).
Second, Indigenous philosophies offer a well-developed and thor-
oughly tested theory and praxis of dynamic language, or what Manu-
lani Aluli Meyer describes as the “causality in language”—words’ ability
to bring about physical change. As Meyer explains, drawing on both her
upbringing and her research with Hawaiian elders: “Words cause some-
thing. For Elders and our ancient people we had terms that allowed you
to enter a forest or show your good manners beside the ocean. We even
had people who could pray you to death. . . . words had a life, a resonance,
and a purpose in and out of schools” (2001, 197). Craig Womack makes
a similar point in his discussion of Cherokee incantations performed in
ritual-based ceremonies: “The words themselves can become entities; they
step into being. There are special verb forms that involve actualization, and
language is no longer referential; the words have become what is being
spoken about” (2008, 366). In these indigenous language systems, words
do not simply refer to, or represent, an already existing reality. Instead,
words emerge from this reality and can assist humans and/or nonhumans
 Speculative Realism, Visionary Pragmatism, & Poet-Shamanic Aesthetics 57

in creating or reshaping specific aspects of our world. This philosophy of

language’s causality is closely related to a metaphysics of interconnected-
ness that posits a relational, participatory worldview. As Cajete explains:

Native science continually relates to and speaks of the world as full

of active entities with which people engage. To our sensing bodies, all
things are active. Therefore, Native languages are verb based, and the
words that describe the world emerge directly from actively perceived
experience. In a sense language “choreographs” and/or facilitates the
continual orientation of Native thought and perception toward active
participation, active imagination, and active engagement with all that
makes up the natural world. (2000, 27, his emphasis)6

Finally, because Anzaldúa (whose work has inspired and in many ways
exemplifies my theory of poet-shaman aesthetics) has been accused of
appropriating and oversimplifying Indigenous cultures,7 it’s important to
directly address both the limitations and the strengths in her references
to indigeneity. In several places in her early work, Anzaldúa did indeed
rely on stereotyped thinking about indigenous peoples. It’s important to
acknowledge this oversimplification, locate it historically in the trajectory
of her career, and develop a nuanced response to questions of appropria-
tion and misrepresentation: On the one hand, we can praise Anzaldúa for
accepting and calling heightened attention to the indio aspects of her iden-
tity at a time (in the 1970s and early 1980s) when many mexicanos, teja-
nas, and Mexican Americans were ashamed of and entirely denied their
indigenous ancestry. On the other hand, we can criticize her for offering
monolithic, overly simplistic representations of Native women. And, on
the third hand, we can appreciate her process and recognize her willingness
to acknowledge her intellectual shortcomings and educate herself about
Indigenous peoples, philosophies, and issues. As we see in Anzaldúa’s
unpublished research notes and in late essays such as “Speaking Across the
Divide” (2003), she worked to recognize, address, and move through and
beyond her own desconocimientos, or blank spots.8
Here’s a lesson for us all: Anzaldúa models a type of intellectual humil-
ity (and therefore vulnerability) that we can learn from, modify, and adopt
for ourselves. None of us is perfect or all-knowing. We all have descono-
cimientos—areas of ignorance, blank spots in our existing knowledge,
gaps with significant ethical implications. However, these educational
and intellectual limitations should not serve as an excuse to avoid explor-
58  AnaLouise Keating

ing additional areas of thought, for such avoidance simply reinforces the
existing system, the unjust status quo. We, too, should work to recognize
these blank spots; we should educate ourselves and move forward. And
we should do so with humility and respect. From the 1970s until the end
of her life, Anzaldúa viewed Indigenous thought as a vital source of wis-
dom for contemporary and future life on this planet and elsewhere. She
believed that Native philosophies offer crucial alternatives to conventional
western thought. As she explains in her writing notas, “We’ve come to the
time of a shift in consciousness when entire civilizations change the way
they know about the world. We need a new and better method of thinking
about the world. A new mental operation to improve the human condition.
We get hints from the alchemic and shamanistic traditions of the past.”
As the word “hints” suggests, Anzaldúa did not try to “recover” “authen-
tic” ancient teachings and simply insert them into twenty-first-century
life. Rather, she learned from and built on Indigenous insights; she mixed
these insights with other philosophies, crafting an epistemology, ontology,
metaphysics, and ethics designed to address contemporary needs. From
the mid-1970s until the end of her life, she researched Náhuatl, Mayan,
Celtic, and other Indigenous philosophies and shamanic traditions, along
with the I Ching, Tarot, Sabian Symbols, and additional diverse forms of
knowledge.9 She displayed desconocimientos and made mistakes along
the way, but these limitations did not lead her to abandon her commitment
to Indigenous cultures and knowledge systems: She worked to address her
desconocimientos; she pushed herself to continue her explorations.

Speculation 2: Shamanic reading, alchemical thought

You put your faith on this: that some mysterious ordering faculty ultimately refines
the piece or that the components of the piece, the symbols, attracts the necessary parts
and the whole rearranges itself, that writing is an alchemical process demanding
dissolution in order that the transmutation of images and emotions into words may
occur. If you’ve done your job, the reader will also undergo an alchemical process.
—Gloria Anzaldúa, “Putting Coyolxauhqui Together: A Creative Process”

What does it mean to describe writing and reading as “an alchemical pro-
cess”? While it seems only logical to interpret this section’s epigraph as
metaphoric description—as Anzaldúa’s attempt to underscore her belief
 Speculative Realism, Visionary Pragmatism, & Poet-Shamanic Aesthetics 59

in the power of carefully crafted literature to inspire readers—her refer-

ence to alchemy has other meanings as well. Like the protoscience of
alchemy—which aspired to effect radical physical transformation (con-
verting base metals into gold, humans into immortal beings, and so on),
writing and reading can influence and transform our worlds, on mul-
tiple levels, including the material. According to poet-shaman aesthet-
ics, carefully crafted metaphoric language does not simply describe these
multileveled changes; it has the potential to assist us—to enact—these
transformations.
I experienced this alchemical process firsthand when reading one
of Anzaldúa’s unpublished short stories, which at the time was titled
“Entremados de PQ.”10 The story focuses on PQ, a tejana dyke rancher
graduate student, and her experiences as she obsessively reads and rereads
a mysterious book—so mysterious that it doesn’t even have a conventional
title. The glyph-titled book narrates the events of a character very similar to
PQ herself. As PQ is pulled into the book’s world, she experiences jarring
shifts in reality. One minute she’s lying in bed at her ranch, late at night;
then, suddenly, she’s drawn through the wall and reappears in a different
time and location: she falls into the middle of the afternoon, at the ranch
where her girlfriend, Bar-Su, lives with her mother. Here’s how Anzaldúa
describes this liminal shifting:
In bed, at the onslaught of sleep, [PQ] strains to hear the shrill whine of
a wire stretched to its breaking point. She stretches out her arms toward
the wall, her hands disappear. She pulls them back, examines them.
They look the same. She hears the voices. “Bar-Su?” she calls. Then she
remembers that Bar-Su is at her mother’s. Silence, the voices have van-
ished. No, there’s the whine. There behind her. The sound gets louder
and louder. Sweat breaks out under her armpits and adrenaline pumps
through her body. Swiftly she turns to where the sound is coming from,
and is suddenly caught off balance. Seeking to right herself, she floun-
ders, then grabs the bedpost. She feels her hand go straight through it
and her whole body falls into a thick wind, a gelatinous current. There is
no wall. She is alone, gulping . . . air. Alone, in air so thick and blue. Ha
cruzado. She has crossed over. She puts her hands to her face and then
behind her head, dropping her face between her arms to shield it as she
is whirled around and around. (Anzaldúa n.d.a)

After reading this story, I had a remarkable dream: Like PQ, I, too, fell into
or merged with a solid wall. In one of the most vivid, real dreams of my
60  AnaLouise Keating

life, I morphed, from my unified, solid, embodied self into countless mov-
ing atoms, or molecules, or energy strands, or vibrations, or .  .  . I don’t
know what/who; and in this very different state I (or perhaps not-I?) slid
through or slipped into, or became (part of) a wall, an alternate space, a
void filled with mysterious . . . stuff . . . It was amazing. My words here can-
not even begin to encapsulate this strange experience. What can I say? In
my dream, I physically transformed—the matter/vibrations of my dream-
body changed. It was a little bit like Star Trek, when Spock, Kirk, and the
others are beamed from their ship to a planet . . . No . . . This description
is entirely inaccurate. How can I describe . . . such an indescribable event?
My language falls short. Years later, I still lack the words, so I’ll rely on the
story’s description:

[PQ is] bombarded by the vibrations of sounds she cannot hear,

assaulted by murky objects that dive toward her then fall away before
touching her. Ah, she is about to grasp . . . an intimation of an absolute, a
law that will explain what is happening to her, but that too is jerked away
by el silencio just before reaching her. Dead stop. As though the world is
holding its breath. She is no longer watching but is caught in a gauze of
carded cotton, sticky like cotton candy. She can only move a few inches.
Even if she hacked herself free there might be a wall beyond this one, y
otra pared beyond the second. (Anzaldúa n.d.a)

Layers and layers and layers of oscillating walls, .  .  . representing, per-

haps, the layers of vibrational reality Anzaldúa wanted to dive into, swim
through, strip away, and/or merge with in her work (and possibly her life).
Or maybe my speculations are wrong. Maybe the worlds broke through
the story, broke through Anzaldúa herself and entered our world in the
story? Maybe the story tapped into what Jane Bennett calls “thing-power”
(2009, 2–6) or the “enchantment effect” (2001, 4)? I do not know.
But I do know this: the reality shifts PQ and I experienced indicate
some of the extreme effects poet-shaman aesthetics can have on readers.
As Anzaldúa explains in “Stories and Their Process,” an unpublished man-
uscript in which she summarizes, describes, and theorizes her Prieta story
cycle:
“Entramado y PQ” is an act of concretizing the text. .  .  . There was a
thin membrane around the fiction, [PQ] burst through it or it burst
through her. [It’s] a postmodernist story of what happens to a woman
whose physical world collides with first the reality of another world,
 Speculative Realism, Visionary Pragmatism, & Poet-Shamanic Aesthetics 61

and secondly with the projected reality of a text. . . . It is not another
world’s intrusion into this one, but a woman who has one foot in one
world while sticking her head and arm into another. It is a shamanic topo.
(Anzaldúa n.d.b; my emphasis)

My dream suggests to me that this “concretizing” textual process is multi-

layered and opens out onto (or is grounded in and emerges from) complex
nonhuman realities with membrane upon membrane upon membrane. In
my sleep, I burst through Anzaldúa’s story, or it burst through me, startling
me out of conventional reality and typical modes of perception, dragging
me into alternative worlds, inviting me (forcing me?) to expand. To again
borrow Anzaldúa’s words, her story became a “shamanic topo,” a map
pointing the way into (or at least instructing readers about) multiple over-
lapping, interwoven, coexisting realities.
By thus materializing her text, Anzaldúa creates a story/vehicle that
can ignite epistemological, ontological, metaphysical, and ethical shifts
in readers.11 As we read and internalize her words, our perceptions and
definitions of reality might change. Certainly, reading “Entremados de
PQ” had this effect on me. That remarkable dream materially transformed
me, forcing me to change; I could no longer perceive or define reality in
exactly the same way that I’d done so in the past. Even today, years later,
when I dwell on that weird experience of dispersal, of hurtling through a
void, of vibrational change, I experience a slight shift in the physical world.
Walls—the borders within and between nonhuman and human life—
shimmer, de-solidify, and blur. I’m reminded, once again, that reality far
exceeds human beings; reality is multitextured, multilayered, filled with
shortcuts, startling pathways, and twisting interconnections. As my stum-
bling, inarticulate words might indicate, these shifts can’t be contained in
conventional language or adequately described from a human standpoint.
This example of reading “Entramados de PQ” illustrates one of the
many ways that poet-shaman aesthetics might enact transformation
and healing. As Anzaldúa explains in “Metaphors in the Tradition of the
Shaman”:
Because we use metaphors as well as hierbitas or curing stones to effect
changes, we follow in the tradition of the shaman. Like the shaman, we
transmit information from our consciousness to the physical body of
another. If we’re lucky we create, like the shaman, images that induce
altered states of consciousness conducive to self-healing. If we’ve done
62  AnaLouise Keating

our job well we may give others access to a language and images with
which they can articulate/express pain, confusion, joy, and other expe-
riences thus far experienced only on an inarticulated emotional level.
From our own and our people’s experiences, we will try to create images
and metaphors that will give us a handle on the numinous, a handle on
the faculty for self-healing, one that may cure the depressed spirit, the
frightened soul. (1990, 122)

While Anzaldúa refers primarily to the ways poet-shaman writers offer

readers transformative images that can assist us as we work to heal from
the devastating effects of internalized systemic oppressions like racism/
sexism/homophobia by shifting our self-definitions (Keating 1996, 118–
44), I want to suggest a more provocative interpretation, or what I describe
as “transformation through transportation.”12 As I read PQ’s paranormal
autohistoria—drinking up the words and images, pulling them into my
bodymindspirit—PQ’s journey triggered something in what Anzaldúa
might call my “dreambody” (Anzaldúa 2002, 545). The story’s images
and words worked on and with me, propelling me into strange alternate
realities and nonhuman worlds. When I awoke, I emerged from that weird
dreamworld changed. Previously, my worldview (my ontology, as it were)
was fractured—divided between body and mind, trapped within a dissat-
isfying Cartesian epistemology. Although it might sound paradoxical, my
strange Anzaldúan-inspired dream gave me a concrete, material “handle
on the numinous,” enabling me to break through or partially merge with a
human/nonhuman division. It cracked me open, threw me into an onto-
logical shift.
While I wouldn’t exactly describe my weird dream as a conversion
experience (although perhaps I should!), it has certainly altered my world-
view, shifted my theoretical perspectives, and in other ways changed my
life. It emboldened me to move beyond my epistemological questions, to
take new theoretical and personal risks, to begin theorizing and enacting
what I described in “Risking the Personal” as a “metaphysics of intercon-
nectedness”:
Anzaldúa’s spiritual theory and praxis is based on a metaphysics of
interconnectedness that posits a cosmic, constantly changing spirit or
force which embodies itself in material and nonmaterial forms. As she
explains in an interview with Kim Irving, “Everything has a meaning.
Everything is interconnected. To me, spirituality and being spiritual
means to be aware of the interconnections between things.” Similarly,
 Speculative Realism, Visionary Pragmatism, & Poet-Shamanic Aesthetics 63

in the interview with Weiland she states that “[s]pirit exists in every-
thing; therefore God, the divine, is in everything—in blacks as well as
whites, rapists as well as victims; it’s in the tree, the swamp, the sea. . . .
Some people call it ‘God;’ some call it the ‘creative force,’ whatever. It’s
in everything.”
Whether this spiritual-material essence “really” exists—and how
could we possibly prove its existence except, perhaps, by referring to
David Bohm [1996] or a few other twentieth-century physicists—is far
less important than the pragmatic, performative functions it serves in
Anzaldúa’s lifework. (Keating 2000, 204)

This relational metaphysics includes an ethics of interconnectedness and

dynamic theories of language, such as those described in the previous sec-
tion. If, as Anzaldúa suggests, we are radically interrelated with all exis-
tence, then anything we write, say, or do—no matter how insignificant it
seems—exceeds us and holds the potential to affect human and nonhu-
man worlds. This metaphysics and ethics of interconnectedness enables
Anzaldúa and other womanist spiritual activists to maintain their vision-
ary perspectives and inclusionary politics in the face of personal and cul-
tural tragedies and systemic issues, ranging from extreme poverty and
chronic illness to racism, sexism, homophobia, genocide, and other forms
of violence (Keating 2008).

From speculation to invitation

My job as an artist is to bear witness to what haunts us, to step back and attempt to
see the pattern in these events (personal and societal), and how we can repair el daño
(the damage) by using the imagination and its visions. I believe in the transformative
power and medicine of art.
—Gloria Anzaldúa, “Let us be the healing of the wound”

I have not organized this exploration of poet-shaman aesthetics in the aca-

demic’s typical point-by-point oppositional approach, where the author
presents her argument (often as a series of challenges to previous scholars)
and then carefully delineates each reason with extensive textual support,
detailed discussion, clever refutations of alternative perspectives, and so
on. Instead, I’ve tried to enact a more speculative, relational movement
between Anzaldúa, other scholars, and myself. I’ve bracketed my disagree-
64  AnaLouise Keating

ments with some of the existing scholarship, noting places of divergence in

nonoppositional terms. How, then, should I conclude?
It would be so much easier to adopt a conventional academic format:
I could lead into my conclusion by supporting my metaphysical and onto-
logical claims with the recent development of Speculative Realism in
continental philosophy (Bryant, Srnieck, and Harman 2011). I’d focus
especially on three aspects of Speculative Realism: (1) its critique of post-
Kantian philosophy’s entrapment in a human-world “correlationism” that
refuses to speculate on the possibilities of a reality that’s entirely beyond
human life, (2) its shift from a human-centered epistemology to an object-
oriented ontology, and (3) its commonsense reminder that reality greatly
exceeds human beings.13 I could then circle back to my opening para-
graphs and use Speculative Realism to insist on the limitations in recent
discussions of poststructuralism’s “linguistic turn”; in fact, I could dismiss
these critiques for their correlationist assumptions. Finally, I could remind
readers that poststructuralism, Speculative Realism, and Object-Oriented
Philosophy are only “recent” developments to those who remain solidly
anchored in an exclusive focus on canonical western philosophy. Even the
most cursory knowledge of Indigenous origin stories indicates that Indig-
enous peoples developed sophisticated, highly complex, object-oriented
ontologies centuries ago. And for decades, Anzaldúa and other women-
of-colors writers have been doing work that could easily be described
as Speculative Realism. Indeed, Indigenous Knowledge and women-of-
colors theories have much to offer poststructuralism, Speculative Realism,
Object-Oriented Philosophy, and other “new” developments in main-
stream western thought.
However, in keeping with my commitment to move beyond conven-
tional academic discourse—which generally relies on bold assertions,
oppositional frameworks, and critical assessments of the limitations in
other scholars’ perspectives—I’m resisting this oppositional habit and
taking a different approach.14 I conclude not with a definitive statement
or with a critique of the critiques, but rather with an open invitation:
Let’s expand our thinking and break out of the status quo. Let’s take new
risks and develop robust conversations among apparently divergent phi-
losophies and groups—like contemporary western theories, Indigenous
philosophies, and women of colors’ writings . . . and let’s do so with the
courage, the imagination, and the intellectual humility Anzaldúa models
in her work.
 Speculative Realism, Visionary Pragmatism, & Poet-Shamanic Aesthetics 65

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of various parts of this essay were presented at the 2010 El
Mundo Zurdo International Conference on the Life and Work of Gloria E.
Anzaldúa and the 2010 keynote for First Rhetoric Symposium, Colorado
State, Pueblo; thanks to Donna Souder and the wonderful students and
audience. Thanks also to Carrie McMaster for encouraging me to turn my
talk into an essay and to Carrie, Ann M. Burlein, Betsy Dahms, George
Hartley, Robin Henderson-Espinoza, Morgan O’Donnell, and Jackie Orr
for feedback on earlier versions of this essay. And, as always, thanks to Glo-
ria Anzaldúa y las espíritus for inspiration and guidance.

AnaLouise Keating, professor of women’s studies and director of the doctoral program
in women’s studies at Texas Woman’s University, specializes in U.S. women of colors,
multicultural theory, transformational pedagogies, queer theory, womanist spiritual
activism, and Gloria Anzaldúa. She is the author or editor of eight books, including,
most recently, Bridging: How and Why Gloria Anzaldúa’s Life and Work has Trans-
formed Our Own, (coedited with Gloria González-López), Teaching Transformation:
Transcultural Classroom Dialogues, and The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader. Her most recent
work focuses on womanist spiritual activism, transformational identity politics, and
invitational pedagogies.

Notes

1. Feminist critiques of “the linguistic turn” have proliferated in recent years.

For a few examples, see the essays collected in Alaimo and Hekman 2008,
Hekman 2010, and Barad 2007.
2. For indigenous theories of participatory language, see especially Cajete
2000, 28–35, 70–72, 180–89 and Womack 2008, 365–70. See also the essays
collected in Nelson 2008 and Mohawk 2010.
3. My use of the word “radical” (with its Latin origin in “roots”) is quite inten-
tional: I’m arguing that Anzaldúa anchors herself and her writing in lan-
guage’s material reality. Thanks to Robyn Henderson-Espinoza for asking
about this clarification.
4. At the time of her death, Anzaldúa was working on a writing manual, as well
as several other projects, which included analyses of aesthetics and the writ-
ing process.
5. Patricia Hill Collins describes “visionary pragmatism” as “a creative tension
symbolized by an ongoing journey. Arriving at some predetermined desti-
nation remains less important than struggling for some ethical end. Thus,
although Black women’s visionary pragmatism points to a vision, it doesn’t
 prescribe a fixed end point of a universal truth. One never arrives but con-
stantly strives” (1998, 189–90).
6. Cajete draws on the work of French anthropologist Lucien Levy-Bruhl to
describe this participatory worldview: “‘the animistic logic of Indigenous,
oral peoples for whom ostensibly ‘inanimate’ objects like stones or moun-
tains are often thought to be alive and from whom certain names, spoken out
loud, may be felt to influence the things or beings that they name, for whom
particular plants, particular animals, particular places, persons and powers
may all be felt to ‘participate’ in one another’s existence, influencing each
other and being influenced in return’ (Levy-Bruhl 1985 in Abram 1996:57)”
(Cajete 2000, 27). For additional theories of participatory language, see
Layli Maparyan’s discussions of “re-languaging” and nommo in The Woman-
ist Idea (2011, 129–30, 279–80).
7. For such accusations, see, for example, Coteras 2008, 183 and Saldaña-
Portillo 2001, 379–87. For a discussion of this critique, see Hartley 2010.
8. Anzaldúa offers her most extensive discussions of desconocimientos in “now
let us shift” (2002, 550–54) and Interviews/Entrevistas (2000, 177–78, 197,
200, 287). In brief, “desconocimientos” could be described as a type of willed
unknowing or an epistemology of ignorance.
9. The word “occult” is Anzaldúa’s preferred term. For discussions of her
“occult” practices, see Anzaldúa’s collected interviews (2000), Conner 2010,
and Levine 2005.
10. “Entremados de PQ” is part of Anzaldúa’s unpublished Prieta series, which
she variously described as a novel, a short story collection, autohistorias, and
a short story cycle: this project—which she began drafting in the late 1970s
and was still revising at the time of her 2004 transition—includes a series
of chapters (or stories) all revolving around different versions of the same
protagonist, Prieta. You can read a later version, titled “Reading LP,” in The
Anzaldúa Reader (2009).
11. For a discussion of epistemological and ethical implications, see Keating
1996 and 2008.
12. As George Hartley pointed out in his comments on an earlier version of this
essay, “transportation” is “the root meaning of metaphor.”
13. The term “correlationism” is Quinten Meillassoux’s (2008, 5–7). As Robin
Mackay explains, correlationism represents post-Kantian philosophy’s
“injunction that, unable to know things ‘in themselves’, philosophy must
limit itself to the adumbration of ‘conditions of [human] experience’”
(Mackay, 2008, 4). For discussions of correlationism, Speculative Realism,
and Object-Oriented Philosophy, see Harman 2010 and Harman 2011.
14. Thanks to George Hartley for the reminder that I could do this!
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