In-Between: Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity, and the Self

Description

Draws from Latina feminism, existential phenomenology, and race theory to explore the concept of selfhood. This original study intertwining Latina feminism, existential phenomenology, and race theory offers a new philosophical approach to understanding selfhood and identity. Focusing on writings by Gloría Anzaldúa, María Lugones, and Linda Martín Alcoff, Mariana Ortega articulates a phenomenology that introduces a conception of selfhood as both multiple and singular. Her Latina feminist phenomenological approach can account for identities belonging simultaneously to different worlds, including immigrants, exiles, and inhabitants of borderlands. Ortega’s project forges new directions not only in Latina feminist thinking on such issues as borders, mestizaje, marginality, resistance, and identity politics, but also connects this analysis to the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and to such concepts as being-in-the-world, authenticity, and intersubjectivity. The pairing of the personal and the political in Ortega’s work is illustrative of the primacy of lived experience in the development of theoretical understandings of who we are. In addition to bringing to light central metaphysical issues regarding the temporality and continuity of the self, Ortega models a practice of philosophy that draws from work in other disciplines and that recognizes the important contributions of Latina feminists and other theorists of color to philosophical pursuits. “Mariana Ortega has written an important book on a topic that arguably should be considered central to feminist philosophy … let this book be a source of many future questions, conversations, and critical engagements with the ideas of being-in-worlds and in-between worlds that Ortega has brought so vividly to our attention.” — hypatia Mariana Ortega is Professor of Philosophy at John Carroll University and coeditor (with Linda Martín Alcoff) of Constructing the Nation: A Race and Nationalism Reader, also published by SUNY Press. Contents......Page 10 Acknowledgments......Page 12 Introduction......Page 16 On the Concept of Experience......Page 22 Latina Feminist Phenomenology......Page 24 A Note on the “Ontic” and the “Ontological”......Page 25 Overview......Page 26 Chapter 1 The New Mestiza and La Nepantlera......Page 32 She Seeks New Images of Identity......Page 34 The New Mestiza in Nepantla......Page 39 The Perils of Mestizaje......Page 44 La Nepantlera Way: Later Visions of Selfhood and Transformation......Page 50 A Mestizaje of Multiplicity and Oneness......Page 54 Chapter 2 Being-between-Worlds, Being-in-Worlds......Page 64 Crisscrossings......Page 66 A Key Difference: Not Being-at-Ease......Page 73 Multiplicitous Selfhood as Being-between-Worlds and Being-in-Worlds......Page 78 Multiplicity......Page 79 Being-in-Worlds and Heidegger’s Phenomenology......Page 83 Intersectional, Flexible, and Tactical Selfhood......Page 86 Oneness as Existential Continuity......Page 92 Chapter 3 The Phenomenology of World-Traveling......Page 102 World-Traveling and the World-Traveler Self......Page 104 The Curdled Mestizo Self......Page 117 Active Subjectivity......Page 121 Memory and Resistance Revisited......Page 124 Multiplicitous Selves and Decoloniality......Page 129 Chapter 4 World-Traveling, Double Consciousness, and Resistance......Page 134 World-Traveling and Double-Consciousness......Page 135 World-Traveling, Publicness, and Authenticity......Page 140 Authenticity and World-Traveling......Page 144 World-Traveling as a Strategy of Resistance......Page 147 World-Traveling by Members of Dominant Groups......Page 151 Chapter 5 Multiplicitous Becomings: On Identity, Horizons, and Coalitions......Page 160 Fear of the Power of the Other......Page 162 Identity as Horizon......Page 165 Identity Politics......Page 170 The Critique......Page 171 The Reconstruction......Page 174 Coalitional Politics......Page 176 Chapter 6 Social Location, Knowledge, and Multiplicity......Page 188 Identity, Social Location, and Epistemic Claims......Page 190 From “Spanish Girl” to “Chicana”......Page 193 Temporality......Page 195 The Value of Multiplicity......Page 198 Chapter 7 Hometactics......Page 208 Belonging, Location, and Multiplicitous Selfhood......Page 209 Hometactics......Page 216 A Final Note: From Love of Exclusion to Love of Wisdom and an Invitation......Page 230 Notes......Page 236 Bibliography......Page 270 Index......Page 286