Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Copia Di Lezione 14 18-04-2023
Copia Di Lezione 14 18-04-2023
insegna letteratura comparata e studi sulla razza ed etnicità, lì dove è stato anche
direttore. È stato presidente degli studi etnici in California e tra i tanti titoli anche
direttore del programma di studi latini.
Ha ricevuto premi e onorificenze: nel 2003 dalla western literature association.
Nel 2005 è stato nominato Chikano scholar of the year.
Ha avuto anche medaglie su riconoscimenti per studi sulla letteratura americana
dalla american letterature society nel 2017.
Scrive molti libri e saggi pubblicati e curati da lui medesimo sulla letteratura
chikana.
Tra questi abbiamo: “Junot Diaz: On the Half-Life of Love” e “Trans-
americaneidad”, traduzione di un volume uscito precedentemente in inglese con
il titolo di “Trans-Americanity: Subaltern Modernities, Global Coloniality, and the
Cultures of Greater Mexico” e “Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural
Studies” in cui affronta i temi basilari fondanti della letteratura chikana.
Ci parlerà della teoria dell’auto-historia in Gloria Andalzua.
He shows us his presentation after the greetings.
Gloria Andalzua’s book is divided in two parts: “ Borderland, La Frontera” and
“Light in the dark: luz en lo oscuro”.
Them both deal with the spirit of consciousness of the borders between Texas
and Mexico.
She first started to write poetry in “Borderland, La Frontera”, and only next she
started with essays, and this is properly an essay.
The introduction says: “ En mi corazon, algo secreto amado se esconde en mi
vientre, mi corazon es en Cuba, un amor que no disfuma”
This specific passage deals with the consciousness and the love that she holds for
herself and shares with her culture, her community that deal with the topico of
the borderland.
Initially he shows us the map of the US-MEXICO borders: 10 regions, in which he
presents the most known authors that have talked about the same subject in
their literature.
Her literature can be called “historia-teoria” since the topic she prefers in her
essays is the historical, teorical, an alternative to biography, fictions, memoire.
She ended up creating a new alternative genre.
But who was Gloria Andalzua?
She was born as Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa in Texas in 1942.
She became influencial not only in America but also in Italy, Spain, France, Brazil,
Mexico…
Why are we intrested in italy?
Because of the item of feminism.
La Frontera is mostly a spiritual work: it deals with the coexistence of two
different groups and coultures in the same country. A specific item of aceptation,
controverted by the item of American colonialism whose base was expropriation.
IN ITALY THE SPIRIT OF REVENDICATION AND RESPECT IS LESS SUBTLE THAN
AMERICA.
An artist in Italy called Rita, from Naples, made this item the predominant subject
in her paintings presenting the visualization of this subject by its formal way.
In the last 35 years the most predominant feminist figures in America- Mexico is
Gloria Andalzua whose titles are, between the other, feminist, theoricist. She had
a very artistic power.
I distinctly recall Anzaldúa describing her book as “a new genre” she claimed, that
she called “auto historia teoria” a genre, she said, that best described her
interventions and transformations of the western biographical form. And, since
we were in Santa Cruz, and we were both in conversation with the great historian
[Hayden White] with the notion of meta history, who talked about a practical
pragmatic past that we all are a part of, is the past that we all share in our
dreams, in our nightmares, in poetry, in what makes us humans. So Anzaldúa’s
book was performing a new critic pensamiento fronterizo, border thinking, as we
all know it, in other words it includes the writer’s life story, the writer’s history,
history of place and situated knowledge on the US-Mexico border. By doing so
Anzaldúa blended her cultural and personal biography with memoir often alluding
to the great works by Virginia Woolf, A room of one’s own, and by great cuban
poet and part of the cuban revolutionary party José Marti, and of course the
african-american feminist Audre Lorde who wrote the essay entitled “the
master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. Myth, history, queer
theory. And this term queer theory by coincidence was developed in Santa Cruz
by the italian feminist Teresa de Lauretis.
But what exactly did Anzaldúa mean by describing herself as a theorist? In
Ansaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera she says that we are all linguistic beings, and
that’s the chapter entitled “How to tame a wild tongue”, in other words we are all
human because we have language practices, and our experience is structured like
a language. We do not only think in language but we also conceptualize in
language, Anzaldúa wrote. Concepts like “nepantla”, the idea of being between
worlds, the franciscan priest who wrote of the fall of Tenochtitlan asked the
Mexicas “What does it feel to be conquered by Spain?” to which the Mexicas
responded with “Estamos nepantla”, we’re in between worlds, such an important
concept in Anzaldúa. Another concept is la facultad, the ability to think. In other
words Anzaldúa used in her text this concepts like Nepantla and la facultad, which
were figures of speech, which then doubled back to do theoretical work. But
Anzaldúa also insisted by turning to the pre-colombian past and boning from the
Mexicas poetry, and by turning to the past and looking to the present and the
future she could become trans modern. So theory for Anzaldúa, and for many of
us, is a historicizing process, we historicize as we theorize. And this are all
aspirational themes in borderlands/la frontera that helped construct this new
genre called auto historia teoria. If borderlands/la frontera is also crisscrossed by
issues of effect, of pain, of wounds, of violence, where the very ecology of the US-
Mexico border is an open wound, is also inabithed by Azaldua’s vision for
transformation, a call for a new kind of insurrection. Anzaldúa writes: “The US-
Mexico border is a herida abierta, an open wound” the bleeding wound of history,
the bleeding wound of violence, the bleeding wound of coloniality. Gringos in the
southwest consider the inabitants of the borderlands transgressors, aliens,
whether they possess citizen documents or not. Over the last few decades that
i’ve been teaching Anzaldúa in my courses, my students and i have been
fascinated by the metaphor of the open wound and a reference to her own pain
living on the US-Mexico border. In one of the key chapters of Borderlands/La
Frontera called La Herencia de Coatlicue/ the Coatlicue State Anzaldúa
encounters a statue that has been found when the subway in Mexico City was
being built in 1968, this new statue appears on the scene, of the life in death and
death in life headless monster. She uses this object to theorize her own state of
condition. In one of the key chapters she sees her dark body reflected in a mirror
that reflects back the many names that she was called by her family: la Pieta,
pietita, the darker one.
Anzaldúa images of the mirrors introduces herself both as an object and a subject
of vision of seeing and being seen on the border. “It’s a gaze that judges”she says
and paralyzes her and we can see her work as a descent into the underworld, the
inframundo of the Mexicas. So this journey of coming to consciousness has to
descent into the underworld. At the end of this descent, that she calls the mouth
of the abyss, Anzaldúa finds a mirror used by the Mexicas to predict the future
she confronts not only her face but also the face of the other.
At the end of the book, the word that really struck me is the notion of the
assemblage this is the notion of bringing together fragments.
of seen and being seen on the border it’s a gaze… judges she says BOH and we
can see how worry from the first chapter to the BOH as a dissent into the
underworld the “intramundo” of the BOH …… erupture in our everyday world.
So this journey of coming to consciousness first has to go to the underworld
before it can come out into the whole world BOH consciousness.
At the end of BOH used by the “Machicas?” to predict the future. BOH confront
not only her own face but also the face of the other.
BOH she went, “when i reached bottom, something pourses me up, to push up
BOH toward the mirror, but i did my BOH and behind them afterwise i see my
own eyes, so do i have to gain consciousness by moving into an underworld” or
she can come into a BOH, she says “you are no longer the person you were when
you entered the state and there is no turning back”.
And suddenly she says “I feel everything rushing into a centre, all of the lost
pieces of myself come flying for the deserts and mountains and the valleys
magnetized towards BOH.
Il prof dice “ i just have to show a map, that Anzaldua is creating a third culture
that we can see figured on this map, that is BOH, this is literally a BOH a mapping
of our personal essential experience
she writes “looking at the book that i almost complete writing i see a BOH a living
pattern BOH there is almost a finish product, that seems an assemblage, a
montage”
minuto 50 - parla la de chiara dicendo che lui passando da college a college ha
avuto l’opportunità di vedere anche dei puma, dei serpenti, lumache di ampia
lunghezza e addirittura delle balene
*la de chiara introduce la professoressa Paola Zaccaria che ha insegnato culture
letterarie e visuali angloamericane presso l’università degli studi di bari, è una
teorica e una critica e si occupa di “dicolonial, families, gender and BOH studies”,
sempre in un’ottica di genere, direzione antirazzista e antisegregazionista. Ha
pubblicato in italiano, spagnolo, francese e inglese studi sulle connessioni
letterarie artistiche transeuropee circumatlantiche delle avanguardie americane e
sulle produzioni estetiche visuali e letterarie afroamericane e messicoamericane.
Tra i suoi libri abbiamo “forme della ripetizione”, “le ipertrofie di BOH”, “ A lettere
scarlatte”, “poesia come stregoneria”, “Mappe senza frontiere”, “la lingua che
ospita: poetiche politiche e traduzioni”, “transcodificazioni”.
Ha tradotto e curato più di vent’anni fa “Borderlands/La Frontera: The New
Mestiza” e l’anno scorso è stata ripubblicata la nuova traduzione della
professoressa Zaccaria che sta avendo molto successo soprattutto per il pensiero
femminsta Gloria Anzaldua è davvero una figura iconica. Paola Zaccaria inoltre ha
scritto e prodotto il documentario “Altar: crossing borders,building bridges”, che è
un documentario su Gloria Anzaldua (venne a presentare il documentario anche
all’orientale).
Questo è un libro che vi tocca nelle viscere quanto più potentemente possibile
quindi non sottovalutatelo. [parte in inglese]
The other book I suggested is … ???
Si tratta un libro fantastico di una bravissima scrittrice che non ha le logiche
razziste, che ancora erano forti ,ma invece si interessa delle questioni di classe..
[qui segue tutta la parte in inglese che purtroppo non sono riuscita a capire,
cerco di risentire la registrazione e vedere cosa riesco a capire per aggiungerla,
scusate se non riesco]