anxious reflections
May 13th, 2011 by holliemckeil
Gloria E. Anzaldúa defines, ‘Este quehacer’ as “internal work coupled with commitment to struggle for social transformation – changes your relationship to your body, and, in turn, to others bodies and to the world. And when that happens you change the world.” (574). This quote articulates my own struggles within as well as beyond Geography 495 to bridge the gap between my everyday experiences and larger collective efforts and relationships. Investigation of our simultaneous positions of marginalization and privilege denaturalizes dualistic essentializations and reveals constructed identities as multiple and often paradoxical.
Through her acceptance of hybrid identities, Anzaldua disrupts the normalization of the privileged ‘centre,’ as well as the conventional ‘downward gaze’ of academic research and social justice activism largely. Geography 495 is framed by a radical pedagogy that questions as well as makes visible the epistemological hierarchies that are active in Western academic institutions. These distributions of power become transparent as “the lechuza eyes of your neguala open, rousing you from the trance of hyper-rationality induced by higher education” (Anzaldua, 548). Moreover, the perpetuation of democracy, liberalism, Euro-centrism and masculine rationality is taken for granted and made invisible within my experiences of the classroom. Discussion of how knowledge is produced and whose is valued has hopefully allowed us to move outside and disinvest in the hierarchical commodifications of knowledge, people and place. The relationships built in solidarity with Marla, Celia and Jennifer; K’inal Antzetik, Jolom Mayatiek and la mano respectively, have enabled an interconnectedness and a space for new forms of agency.
Although the experience of this class has been overwhelmingly positive, fully stuffed with cheesingly delicious clichés, as many of us continue to state, “solidarity ain’t easy”. I feel unable to submit a gushing and fully satisfied admission. Thankfully, I continue to feel inundated by the fear of a personal deference into an apathetic comfort through the failure to preserve what we have learned. I included a bell hooks’ quote in my first journal entry, “Our struggle is also a struggle of memory against forgetting…; a politicization of memory that distinguishes nostalgia, that longing for something to be as once it was, a kind of useless act, from that remembering that serves to illuminate and transform the present” (147). Its relevance has blossomed and helped resolve my lasting anxiety post-graduation. This relevance became most apparent during our class de-briefing when Marla powerfully articulated that she sees Canadian youth as remaining less political because we do not have to be. Political activism and the questioning of our privileges are not necessary within our everyday lives. Anzaldúa likewise writes, “We are collectively conditioned not to know that every comfort of our lives is acquired with the blood of conquered, subjugated, enslaved, or exterminated people, an exploitation that continues today” (541). When we look to ourselves, our roles, our privilege we see these naturalized ideas and habits practiced in everyday life as no longer tolerable. Thank you, to all my classmates, but especially to Marla, Celia, Jennifer and Juanita for not only providing a space for internal and collective transformation, but perhaps more importantly encouraging the motivation for change in the future.