_Many scholars argue that the spiritual dimensions of aesthetic practices and resistance have been undertheorized or omitted. This paper examines aesthetic processes taken up by Amelia Mesa-Bains (1994, 1999) and Gloria Anzaldúa (1987, 2015) to theorize how some Chicanx artists employ an aesthetic based on spirituality as relational, memorial, and material practice to critique colonial ideologies embedded in dichotomies such as man/woman, subject/object, fine/folk art, and individual/community. By focusing on Mesa-Bains’ altar installations and Anzaldúa’s writing process, I draw out (...) how social relations and memory work operate to interpret the relationship between aesthetics and spirituality. I argue that the relational dynamic of their aesthetic sensibilities and techniques show ways some Chicanx scholars and artists subscribe to a sense of spirituality that maintains interconnected relations with others who have been disempowered and marginalized._ _ __To support this position, in the first half of the paper, I analyze the relational sensibilities central to_ _Chicanx aesthetic sensibility of _rasquache domesticana,_ which highlights the concrete spaces in which Chicanx, their aesthetic perception, and techniques generate a communal resistance that is sustained through spirituality. The second half turns to Mesa-Bains’ altar installation for Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1994) and Anzaldúa’s writing process described in Borderlands (1987) to clarify ways in which aesthetics and spiritual relations engender practices of resistance to social dichotomies. _. (shrink)

In the conclusion to “A World of Pure Experience”, William James writes, “experience grows by its edges.” I explore what this may mean vis-à-vis Chicanx culture and Spanglish to argue that Chicanxs are neither a bastardization of Anglo or Mexican people and culture, nor is Spanglish a bastardization of English or Español, and that in some ways Chicanxs feel their Mexicanidad more palpably than Mexicans who live in the interior of Mexico, where one’s Mexicanidad is not a predominant identifier. (...) I first explain the process metaphysics that James espouses as well as his view of the lived experience. I build on these two Jamesian concepts and work with the chapter “The Pachuco and Other Extremes” from Octavio Paz’s The Labyrinth of Solitude, as well as Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera to explore the experience of being a Chicana and speaking Spanglish on the U.S-Mexico border. (shrink)

In the second half of the nineteenth century, many Latin American intellectuals adapted the philosophy of positivism to address the pressing problems of nation-building and respond to the demands of their own social and political contexts, making positivism the second most influential tradition in the history of Latin American philosophy, after scholasticism. Since a comprehensive survey of positivism’s role across Latin American and Latinx philosophy would require multiple books, this chapter presents the history of positivism and its transformations in Mexican (...) and Chicanx philosophies, proceeding chronologically and focusing on these representative thinkers: Auguste Comte (1798-1857), Gabino Barreda (1818-1881), Justo Sierra (1848-1912), José Vasconcelos (1882-1959), Antonio Caso (1883-1946), and Gloria Anzaldúa (1942-2004). We pay special attention to how positivism was used to build the Mexican nation and reconstruct Mexican identity through education, creating philosophical debates about the relationships among science, religion, morality, education, race, economic progress, and national development. These debates continue to resonate as we think critically about the respective roles of scientific education—then called “positive” education, now “STEM” education—and moral education in the curricula used to educate a country’s youth while reconstructing their ethnoracial and national identities. (shrink)

Using testimonio method and methodology, this paper provides the stories and narratives of three Chicanx teachers who developed and taught an Ethnic Studies course to Latinx students in a large urban high school. Long celebrated as a way to fill in missing history, art, literature, resistance, and knowledge of communities of color, this paper argues that Ethnic Studies is also a vehicle to grow and embolden student sense of critical civic literacy. Through the narratives that emerge from these three (...) teachers, the curriculum and pedagogy offered by these teachers positively impacts and propels students to advocate for themselves and their communities through civic and political action. The purpose of this article is to highlight the curricular and pedagogical choices of three teachers teaching Ethnic Studies and how Ethnic Studies can be used as a tool to increase Critical Civic Literacy. (shrink)

Con el apoyo de su querida familia Chicanx, una niña llamada Chabelita descubre que está bien que le gusten las niñas.

This essay examines Gloria Anzaldúa’s critical appropriation of two Mexican philosophers in the writing of Borderlands/La Frontera: Samuel Ramos and Octavio Paz. We argue that although neither of these authors is cited in her seminal work, Anzaldúa had them both in mind through the writing process and that their ideas are present in the text itself. Through a genealogical reading of Borderlands/La Frontera, and aided by archival research, we demonstrate how Anzaldúa’s philosophical vision of the “new mestiza” is a critical (...) continuation of the broader tradition known as la filosofía de lo mexicano, which flourished during a golden age of Mexican philosophy (1910–1960). Our aim is to open new directions in Latinx and Latin American philosophy by presenting Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera as a profound scholarly encounter with two classic works of Mexican philosophy, Ramos’ Profile of Man and Culture in Mexico and Paz’s The Labyrinth of Solitude. (shrink)