| Melissa Groenewold: | |
| Name: | Melissa Groenewold |
| Academic Institution: | University of Louisville |
| email: | m.groenewold@insightbb.com |
| Country: | Estados Unidos/United States |
| Paper Title | Chicana Feminism: Self-Actualization Through Border Conscience |
| Abstract: | “I am a woman with a foot in both worlds; and I refuse the split. I feel the necessity for dialogue. Sometimes I feel it urgently.”—Cherríe Moraga, “La Guera” With the emergence of “marginal discourses” meant to challenge and destabilize the dominant discourse as representative of human reality, marginalized voices from within these ostracized communities have begun to express their own theoretical frameworks and present an alternative premise for the speculation of otherness. Chicana Feminism is one of these theoretical movements that are expressed from within and without sanctioned alternative discourses. The qualification of Feminism according to cultural, socio-economic and racial characteristics that shape the Chicana woman allies the Chicana with a male-centered social movement and theoretical discourse that seeks to subordinate her based upon her gender. The Chicana is conscientious of the imposed oppression determined by her cultural allegiance, not only from the Anglo-dominant society in which she struggles to survive but also that oppression inflicted upon her from within the culture of origin. The Chicana feminist’s identity is multiple. Therefore, theory must reconcile this multiplicity with a theoretical stand from the dominant discourse that insists that the “self” is an expression of a unified and definable distinctiveness. The subsequent label serves to deny the “self” an individual and self-possessed identity thus placing an act of self-actualization back into a subordinate position. A heightened awareness of the various contributing factors that determine the Chicana’s marginalized status gives rise to a theory based “border” conscience that constructs, deconstructs and reconstructs identity as a means of self-actualization. |