Transforming Borders: Chicana/o Popular Culture and Pedagogy

by Alejandra C. Elenes

Overview

Transforming Borders: Chicana/o Popular Culture and Pedagogy contributes to transformative pedagogies scholarship by adding the voices of Chicana feminist pedagogies, epistemologies, and ontologies. C. Alejandra Elenes develops her conceptualizations of border/transformative pedagogies by linking the relationship between cultural practices, knowledge, and teaching in everyday life. She analyzes Chicana feminist cultural workers/educational actors re-imagining three Mexican figures: La Llorona (the weeping woman), the Virgen of Guadalupe, and Malintzin/Malinche as epistemological and pedagogical meanings. The three figures represent multiple meanings: traditional views on femininity, religion, and nationalist views on women, yet at the same time, feminists have re-imagined these three figures and developed counter-narratives that can offer alternatives to the traditional meanings.

In developing border/transformative pedagogies, Elenes looks at the significance of historical events, such as the creation of the Mexico-U.S. border, to understand the experiences of people of Mexican descent in the United States. She also examines oral histories of the legend of La Llorona in the Southwest, historical documents on the Spanish conquest of Mexico, and Chicana artists such as Ester Hernandez, Yolanda Lopez, Consuelo Jimenez Underwood, and Alma Lopez re-imagining of the Virgen of Guadalupe. The conflicts over the meanings of the three figures can help us understand how Chicanas have used their voices to counter economic and gender inequalities and how pedagogical practices show that cultural productions are sites where forms of domination can be contested and recreated in ways that allow for the creation of alternative identities and subjectivities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739147795
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	11/15/2010
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

C. Alejandra Elenes is associate professor of women’s studies at Arizona State University.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: Reconstructing the Self: Constructing New Pedagogies 1

Chapter 1 From the Historical Borderlands to Borderlands/La Frontera: Border Studies and Borderland Theorization 21

Chapter 2 Borderland Epistemologies, Subjectivities, and Feminism: Toward Border/Transformative Pedagogies 47

Chapter 3 La Llorona: Decolonial and Anti-Patriarchal Cultural Politics 69

Chapter 4 The Virgin of Guadalupe: Spirituality, Desire, Consumption, and Transformation 103

Chapter 5 Malintzin/Marina/Malinche: Embodying History/Reclaiming Our Voice 139

Chapter 6 Re-Mapping Transformative Pedagogies: New Tribalism and Social Justice 167

Bibliography 179

Index 209

About the Author 219

What People are Saying About This

Dolores Delgado Bernal

Elenes constructs a marvelous tapestry that weaves together pedagogy and women's everyday experiences with the deconstruction and decolonial reimagining of La Llorona, La Virgen de Guadalupe, and Malinztin/Malinche. Her insightful analysis pushes us to examine the representations of these three figures in relationship to the production of knowledge and the formation of Chicana feminist subjectivities. Transforming Borders represents provocative scholarship that makes an outstanding contribution to cultural studies, gender studies, Chicana/o studies, and educational studies-a truly remarkable book.

Karen Mary Davalos

C. Alejandra Elenes makes an important contribution to Chicano/a studies, feminist theory, borderlands studies, and critical pedagogy in one of the first single-authored books about La Llorona, La Malinche/Malintzin, and the Virgin of Guadalupe. Rather than view these three female figures as static, authentic, or reified archetypes, Elenes uses historical and contemporary sources to document their multiple articulations and meanings within popular culture. The interdisciplinary methods and cross-disciplinary intellectual discourse-which weaves feminist theory and critical pedadogy with US third world scholarship-successfully bridges the academic apartheid that plagues education theory and practice, and in doing so Elenes illuminates why these connections are vital to educational strategies, changing communities, and contestations of domination. Drawing on the work of Chicana visual artists and theorists who re-imagine La Llorona, La Malinche/Malintzin, and the Virgin of Guadalupe as borderlands sites of gender, sexuality, race, class, and spirituality, Elenes brilliantly demonstrates how the three figures offer critical pedagogical insight for American experiences inside and outside of the classroom. She names this re-configurative and contested process, "border/transformative pedagogies," because it is within the cultural spaces of subject-formation that personal, material, emotional, and spiritual power is created and has consequences for human action and agency. It is a book that all organizers, educators, and communities against silencing must read.

Editorial Reviews

C. Alejandra Elenes makes an important contribution to Chicano/a studies, feminist theory, borderlands studies, and critical pedagogy in one of the first single-authored books about La Llorona, La Malinche/Malintzin, and the Virgin of Guadalupe. Rather than view these three female figures as static, authentic, or reified archetypes, Elenes uses historical and contemporary sources to document their multiple articulations and meanings within popular culture. The interdisciplinary methods and cross-disciplinary intellectual discourse-which weaves feminist theory and critical pedadogy with US third world scholarship-successfully bridges the academic apartheid that plagues education theory and practice, and in doing so Elenes illuminates why these connectionsare vital to educational strategies, changing communities, and contestations of domination. Drawing on the work of Chicana visual artists and theorists who re-imagine La Llorona, La Malinche/Malintzin, and the Virgin of Guadalupe as borderlands sites of gender, sexuality, race, class, and spirituality, Elenes brilliantly demonstrates how the three figures offer critical pedagogical insight for American experiences inside and outside of the classroom. She names this re-configurative and contested process,

Karen Mary Davalos

Dr. Elenes constructs a marvelous tapestry that weaves together pedagogy and women's everyday experiences with the deconstruction and decolonial reimagining of La Llorona, La Virgen de Guadalupe, and Malinztin/Malinche. Her insightful analysis pushes us to examine the representations of these three figures in relationship to the production of knowledge and the formation of Chicana feminist subjectivities. Transforming Borders represents provocative scholarship that makes an outstanding contribution to cultural studies, gender studies, Chicana/o studies, and educational studies-a truly remarkable book.

Dolores Delgado Bernal