Knowledge from the borderlands: Revisiting the paradigmatic mestiza of Gloria Anzaldúa

The publication in 1987 of Borderlands/La Frontera strengthened the theoretical
work of a group of women, feminists and Latin Americans who had been born or
were living in the United States and who expressed in their work – This Bridge Called
My Back (Anzaldu´a and Moraga, 1981), Cuentos: Stories by Latinas (Go´mez et al.,
1983) and Loving the War Years (Moraga, 1983), among others – the experience of
inhabiting a territory between two worlds. The paradigmatic work of Gloria
Anzaldu´a marked a point of inflection for their discussions, consolidating perhaps
the field of what has been referred to as a women-of-color feminism, a feminism in the
diaspora, clearly postcolonial and on the border. This article considers two issues in
relation to the work of Anzaldu´a. The first refers to the peculiarities and differences
that distinguish her work in relation to certain proposals of white feminism (in
particular, I will draw upon the work of Donna Haraway). The second is related
to the epistemological consequences of this differentiation.