The Journal of Speculative Philosophy

The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 15.2 (2001) 152-161

Dewey and Latina Lesbians on the Quest for Purity

Gregory Fernando Pappas
Texas A&M University

Better it is for philosophy to err in active participation in the living struggles and issues of its own age and times, than to maintain an immune monastic impeccability.

--John Dewey, "Does Reality Possess Practical Character?"

If Dewey were alive today he would be interested in, and on the side of, one of the most radical and insightful group of feminist thinkers at the end of the twentieth century: Latina Lesbian Women in the U.S.A. (LLWU). Latina lesbians are only one of many marginalized groups in U.S. society whose existence is problematic from a certain predominant metaphysical perspective. According to this perspective, to have a multiple identity or to be in between cultures, genders, or races is to be ambiguous, impure, and therefore inauthentic or anomalous. This perspective is more than an academic abstraction. It is deeply embedded in the ways we are taught to experience or conceive the world. This is evident from the fact that it continues to be responsible for the identity crisis experienced by Latina lesbians and, in general, many hyphenated Hispanics in the United States, for example, Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, Newyo-Ricans, and Texa-Ricans like myself. I will provide a Deweyan criticism of this metaphysical perspective and compare it with some recent feminist critiques. But first let me introduce the problem of identity as it has been experienced by Latina lesbians. [End Page 152]

The Identity Crisis of the "Impure"

Since the 1980s we have witnessed the publication of a new genre: the autobiography of Latina lesbians. As Lourdes Torres explains, these are subversive and thought provoking in more ways than one:

They challenge traditional notions about the genre of "autobiography" through their form and their content. They subvert both Anglo and Latino patriarchal definitions of culture. They undermine linguistic norms by using a mixture of English, Spanish, and Spanglish. All address the question of the politics of multiple identities from a position which seeks to integrate ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and language. (1996, 127-128)

Their autobiography reveals the experience of growing up with the constant pressure to define and identify themselves by exclusive categories that do not fit their lived experience. From "others" they feel pressured to choose between genders and cultures, otherwise they are "impure" or simply without an authentic gender or culture.

Latina lesbians learn early in their lives that their existence is problematic. Their autobiographies are saturated with descriptions of their moments of identity crisis in terms of living in ambiguity, feeling contradiction and tensions in themselves. "They describe feeling great self-hatred, feeling marginalized, and without a center to grasp onto because each center asks them to or makes them feel that they must choose" (Torres 1996, 132). Gloria Anzaldua, for example, has written about the problems of self-esteem and identity experienced by Chicanos. In Borderlands she says:

We live a kind of dual identity--we do not identify with the Anglo-American cultural values and we do not totally identify with the Mexican cultural values. We are a synergy of two cultures with various degrees of Mexicanness or Angloness. I have so internalized the borderland conflict that sometimes I feel like one cancels out the other and we are zero, nothing, no one. A veces no soy nada ni nadie. Pero hasta cuando no lo soy, lo soy. (1991, 255)

In diagnosing the crisis of identity experienced by Latina lesbians, one must avoid oversimplifications and reductionisms. First, I recognize that there are very important economic, psychological, political, and sociological dimensions of this general problem of identity that are beyond the scope of my inquiry. Moreover, it is not my intention to suggest that living in between genders is the same problem as living in between cultures. A more comprehensive and detailed analysis would have to consider the differences between gender and culture and how they are each operative in the complex identity crisis...