De La Rosa, Vileana

Writing Sample
Cyborg Mestizaje: Locating a Chicana Feminist Futurity Through Critical Praxis
Every technology is reproductive technology,- Donna Haraway
There has been recent debate in feminist scholarship on the issues of identity,
epistemology, and ontology and whether theories of intersectionality, post-humanist
cyborg, and assemblage are useful for understanding the condition and experience of
women of color. This essay is an attempt to negotiate between various critical
conversations on race, identity, narrative, and their significance in collective organizing
and knowledge making to engage in a collective thought process. By bringing diverse
theorists together in collective conversation, I seek to bring out various tensions between
postmodern theory and Chicana writings to mediate the discussion and turn towards a
feminist praxis that is informed by a history of struggle and engaged with theory proper.
For instance, Donna Haraways seminal post-humanist text A Cyborg Manifesto, seeks
to define a feminist politics and identity by turning towards non-material matter to
return to the original innocence of the subject, before structural oppression and
corruption. Theorists Norma Alarcon and Chela Sandoval then turn to discourse to define
women of color subjectivity outside the paradigms of an Anglo male centered ontology
and epistemology. But scholars such as Paula Moya argue that such a turn is impossible
because the experience of structurally oppressed subjects is materially defined and
organized. Moya argues for a politics, epistemology, and ontology through a postpositivist realist framework that posits racialized structurally oppressed subjects possess a

unique experience and thereby possess a unique knowledge of structures that is useful for
politics and epistemology. In light of this debate, Jasbir Puars essay Id Rather Be a
Cyborg than a Goddess: Becoming Intersectional in Assemblage Theory reinterprets
Haraways position and argues for a deleuzian reading of feminist subjectivity alongside
intersectionality and emphasizes new potentialities for feminist struggle. By reading
feminist projects through these various lenses, we work towards a feminism that inherits
the issues and questions of the past to develop practices for the future, as evident in the
work of the Santa Cruz Women of Color collective and by reading groups in Los
Angeles. These collective groups shed light on the relevancy of an intersectional analysis,
which Puar interestingly reminds was a project born out of anti-essentialism and political
necessity.
In her essay, Puar urges a coherent reading of intersectionality and assemblage
theory to inform feminist epistemological processes. Drawing from Kimberle Crenshaw
and Donna Haraways seminal work to re-imagine a cyborg-goddess hybridity (51), Puar
seeks to read an intersectional women of color identity through a postmodern lens,
embodying both matriarchal connection to the past and the tools and epistemologies of
the future in response to late capitalist domination. Analyzing the tensions between
intersectional and assemblage analysis is useful for urgent feminist critique of current
power structures and dynamics to analyze feminist politics in the continuous process of
becoming. Locating a process of becoming is important for particular sites of feminist
struggles, resistances, and development of feminist solidarity. Puar borrows from
Deleuzes reading of becoming as generative of a new way of being that is a function of
influences rather than resemblances. The process is one of removing the element from its

original functions and bringing about new ones (58). Tracing a process of becoming is
important for locating simultaneous sites struggles, resistances, and development of
feminist solidarity. This is because in order for social movement politics to work people
assembling through a shared commitment have to be sensitive and aware of the various
positions of privileges people hold and how to navigate through them. Interpreting singleissue politics based out of fixed identities is not possible. If socially constructed identities
are relevant for anti-racist and anti-patriarchy politics, then it is crucial to recognize how
certain racialized and gendered bodies have different stakes in the process.
Through assemblage, we also understand that identities are not homogenous and
are structured and disciplined through various interweaving forces; a process involving
an intensification of habituation, thus discipline and control are mutually entwined (62).
Unlike Alarcon and Haraway, Puar takes into account critical violent relations of
structural power, as internalized, imposed, and inscribed on to the body. A rubric of
intersectionality that includes gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and nationality is
practical for Crenshaw because it considers structural relations, political mobilizations,
and the representational struggles against racism and patriarchy (Puar 51). This
formulation of subjectivity and identity is grounded in experience and is not ontologically
reductive. It is worth noting how Puars interpretation gives more possibility to individual
agency, to move performatively in resistance to dominant hegemonic powers, where the
body is not rigidly held or bound but in the continuous process of defining itself and
being interpellated. The body is not structurally determined, but is continuously met by
various simultaneous forces. For example, a Chicana woman going to her court date is
not only structurally oppressed through any type of fixed race, gender, and class status,

but rather her identity is constantly regulated and disciplined by forces, such as
interpellating her body as racialized other and criminalizing her. The body is not
ontologically bound from western origin, not pre-technologically determined and
experiences violence through structural and material levels. This assemblage model is
also more useful for understanding the pre-determined structural conditions, which
necessitate the importance of recognizing intersectional identity and the more porous
nature of identity politics. Similar to Haraways notion of affinity, the assemblage model
takes into account how politics occur, interact, and unravel through various spaces and
historical moments. Therefore, assemblage and intersectional theories are useful for
examining current materialist feminist struggles for institutional equality and organizing
against institutional racism by situating local and generational struggles as politically
insurgent sites of subject formation. The best quality of this reading is how Puars
formulation appreciates the legacies of women of color feminism to advance politically
and recognizing how structures shape and form their identity.
Unraveling the development of post-human, post-modern feminist thought
requires examining Donna Haraways seminal essay A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science,
Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s. Haraway posits a new
epistemological and ontological status for socialist feminism, as embodied by the ironic
figure of the cyborg, which is ontologically problematic for women of color. The irony of
this post-human subjectivity is that it is a break from western ontological grounding of
the subject by creating a subject form by matter not formed by nature. Instead, this
cyborg subject is made out of man- made material, which is ironically still an identity
formed within a hegemonic model. Haraway pushes forth the myth of the cyborg, as an

embodiment outside of the legacy of patriarchal, capitalist western history and dominant
discourse to create alternative discourses and modes of politics. This is an attempt to
remedy Marxist and socialist feminisms inability to separate from typical sexist and
racist binaries and take into account changes in the means of production in a postindustrial society. Haraways essay is also problematic because she is addressing a white
middle class audience of feminist activists and academics about how to absorb women of
color into her framework to ask how can they inscribe themselves into the integrated
circuitry of knowledge, science, and production. This is because for Haraway, the cyborg
correlates with a shift in technological production that requires a new type of subjectivity
that experiences a different relation to objects and gender roles. This intensification of
capitalist technological processes of production intensifies divisions and renders labor
invisible.
Haraways cyborg starts from zero to ironicize and destabilize the arbitrary nature
of racial and gender oppression in order to identify with women laborers in technological
global market. This summons the notion that human subjects are connected by some nondualistic notion of humanness and by their loose interaction with technology. Yet, this
cyborg figure does not seem enough to break apart from sex/gender binaries through the
mere act of incorporation, inclusion, and identification with the machinery. Instead, the
cyborg serves to continue to destabilize such boundaries and contribute to an alternative
politics of consciousness and recognition. But the major limitation in Haraways cybrog
is the over essentialization of all female subjectivities that does not create a space to
recognize the experiences and political goals of feminist women of color that is situated
within socio-historical space.

Yet, Haraways key point that theorists such as Chela Sandoval and Puar expand
upon is how the actual situation of women is their integration/exploitation into a world
system of production/reproduction and communication called the informatics of
domination (Sandoval 205). Under this prescription, Haraway privileges writing as a
significant strategy of resistance against oppression and stratification of women via state,
capitalism, ideology, and coercive violence. She categorizes writing as a means of access
to power, where literacy is highly privileged and denotes social status and capital that
breaks from western myth of writing and oral cultures. Haraway insists that writing is
historical and political on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked
them as other (217). For example, In Speaking Chicana: Voice, Power, and Identity
Aurora E. Orozco utilizes personal narrative, or a testimonio as a mode to create her own
personal history and identity, as defined socially and culturally growing up in the 1920s:
The reason I am writing this testimonio is because I want my children to
know who I am and the way I was raised- the reality of life of a Mexican
and African woman. I want to show them that although there were very
hard times, the unity, respect, and love of familia helped me to grow into a
woman who loves education. (Orozco 106).
This form of writing creates a space to capture an experience growing up as a mixed-race
child during the depression that is not depicted in mainstream history. Orozco is invested
in the project of developing a historical consciousness that details a racialized and
gendered experience of poverty, discrimination, and institutional disciplining. Sharing
testimonies like Orozcos is how women can identify with her experiences and can
compare and contrast experiences of sexism and marginalization. Thus, writing is a

potential means for women of color to inscribe themselves into the threads of
knowledge, restructure discourse, and share alternative decolonizing narratives.
Chela Sandovals text The Methodology of the Oppressed, also lends an
interesting perspective of Haraways cyborg figure as a key component of the
methodology of the oppressed, or an apparatus for countering neocolonizing
postmodern global formations (Sandoval 2). Through this framework, the cyborg is the
both the subject, object, and the social relation (action) responsible for the production of
knowledge and language, and what she interprets as a turning point for U.S. third world
feminism to form solidarity with U.S. Anglo feminism. Sandoval embraces Haraways
cyborg as a figure equipped with the technics useful for oppressed people to develop a
feminist consciousness and build alliances and resistances against capitalist patriarchy.
She idealistically situates this global methodology form varying locations, through a
multiplicity of terminologies and forms, and indomitably from the minds, bodies, and
spirits of U.S. feminists of color who demanded the recognition of la conciencia de la
mestiza, womanism, indigenous resistance, and identification with the colonized (178).
Sandoval ascribes to Haraways deconstructive conception of a cyborg subject, as
not whole and constituted of various parts, like an assemblage, and can return to an
original innocence to cut off from structurally violent Euro-American humanism. She
follows the poststructuralist notion that subjectivity is discursively defined and performed
and deems Anglo-American narratives of dominance and colonization responsible for the
erasure, subjugation, and alienation of non-white gendered subjects. Sandoval points to
Haraways description of a fragmented language to describe a fragmented identity and
politics:

it is self consciously spliced, a chimera of English and Spanish, both

conquerors languages, But it is this chimeric monster, without claim to an
original before violation, that crafts the erotic, competent, potent identities
of women of color. Sister Outsider hints at the possibility of world
survival not because of her innocence, but because of her ability to live on
the boundaries, to write without the founding myth of original wholeness,
with its inescapable apocalypse of final return to a deathly
onenessStripped of identity, the bastard race teaches about the power of
the margins and the importance of a mother like Malinche. Women of
color have transformed her from the evil mother of masculinist fear into
the originally literate mother who teaches survival. (Haraway 175-176).
(Sandoval 170).
Here, Haraway associates a lack of whole language with a lack of identity,
undefined and broken by the legacies of slavery and colonization. It is important to
recognize how Haraway attributes the bastard race of classed and racialized people
with the ability to create an alternative origin narrative through the figure of Malinche.
This passage also demonstrates how Haraway idealizes the narrative of Malinche and
objectifies the narrative to fetishize mestiza subjectivity. By comparing the experiences
of various women of color by referring to sister outsider and the bastard race,
Haraway conflates the experiences of women of color under the assumption that they are
broken and need to recuperate a loss. Even though a figure such as Malinche may be
useful as a coded myth for survival, Haraway makes the assumption that survivalism is
the only goal of decolonial projects and thereby reduces the value of such figures. I also

find it problematic that Sandoval embraces the cyborg as a mestiza figure, because an
indigenous identity is tied to a land, a space, a culture, and history that cyborgs do not
possess and is not a part of a reparative decolonial process. But cutting off a connection
to the land also undoes connections to capitalist production in a gendered space. Rather,
cyborg is a metaphor for alienation and displacement, a separateness from self, labor, and
others that not all communities can achieve. Haraways feminism is limited because her
goal of affinity does not resonate with the marginalized women of color she wants so
hard to be in solidarity with. Even though language is undoubtedly an important part of
colonial projects through schooling, disciplining, and assimilation, writing and narrative
cannot be reduced as the only means to create counter-narratives. Collectives such as the
Santa Cruz Feminist of Color Collective evade the traps of essentialist identity by
developing a multidimensional analysis that utilizes multiple methodologies such as
writing, dance, and theater in an effort to embrace contradictions explore the limits of
an expansive formulation (SC 24). This collective project is centered on decolonial
discourse to challenge and critique universalist knowledge formation and break from
binary logics. In contrast, Haraways socialist rhetoric is a limited, inauthentic attempt to
incorporate women through a language that is reductive and academic, not part of a
testimonio or a manifesto that includes these women in the thought process. Although
writing is an important political feminist project, Paula Moya criticizes Haraway for
appropriating women of color discourse and misreading the myth of Malinche to support
her post-humanist, postmodern formulation.
Paula Moyas text Learning from Experience; Minority Identities, Multicultural
Struggles, is critical of Haraways reading of Malinche into her theory as a superficial

and reductive attempt to absorb a subversive narration into her framework. Moya disrupts
Haraways claims of Malinche by pointing out how her reading reduces the feminist
political goals of women of color to survivalism and does not connect to the experiences
and needs of that community (Moya 70). Moya describes the realist position as a
continuous structuring of reality, that is ontologically perceived, materially
experienced, and shaped by dominant ideologies. This is reminiscent of Puars tracing of
power as traced through various subject positions and discursive positions. This position
is also wary of how identity is also in flux and defined through various discourses of
power, sexuality, nationality, culture, and identity. The way in which Moya brings out the
contradictions in Haraways formation shows how her attempt to abandon harmful
signification is instead reliant upon it and does not connect to the communities she claims
to be speaking to. Reverting to Cherrie Moragas reflective work on the cultural and
collective significance of La Malinche and other racialized and gendered binaries creates
a more meaningful discussion on the conditions of marginalized communities.
Paula Moyas work is refreshing because her projects on literary criticism and
feminist theory revert to the experience those narratives and knowledge emerged from.
She describes her post positivist realist reading of identity as culturally constructed and
real that is grounded in history and locally described (86). This reading is evocative of
Puars reading of intersectionality that traces identity with the development of
multicultural, queer, and nationalistic epistemologies occurring through an ongoing
process. This framework is useful to analyze and critique Chicana subject formation as
precursor for creating alternative feminist epistemologies and practices to posit that
structurally oppressed peoples have an epistemic privilege, or unique knowledge of how

race, gender, class, and sexuality operate to maintain the matrices of power (Moya 38).
Creating knowledge out of personal experiences and encounters is essential practice for
women of color feminists to organize in opposition to hegemonic discourses and systems
of power. This is because power is not amorphous, but rather structural, and using these
various theoretical tools for further feminist theory that can guide future analyses and
political practices. In essence, this emphasizes the necessity for feminist projects such as
reading groups and collectivist writing as means to bring forth subjugated narratives and
epistemologies into broader conversations on education and social justice.
In Norma Alarcons essay The Theoretical Subject(s) of This Bridge Called my
Back and Anglo-American Feminism, she explores the politics of identity and subjectivity,
through the project of giving voice to historically marginalized women of color in the
anthology of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color. This text
is largely cited by Anglo and Third World feminists for bringing a shift in feminist
consciousness (289) and was intended to create an alternative discursive space. Alarcon
argues that the editors of Bridge were forthright in publishing an anthology that is a space
for alternative epistemologies that distinguishes female knowledge. The editors sought to
break from western masculinist epistemology that privileges mans ideas and experience as
a source of knowledge, morals, and history, as a necessary step towards developing and
enriching feminist epistemologies (290). Yet, the theoretical subjective positioning within
Bridge is outside this counter-narrative and instead includes racial and cultural divisions
and conflicts (291) that politically situates the psychic and material violence women of
color experience. It is important to understand how Bridge is distinguished by giving
linguistic status to queer, lesbian, immigrant, and radical women of color, unlike how

Anglo-American feminists claim their linguistic status. Bridge is critical of breaking the
silence about the experiences of historically marginalized and oppressed women to become
new subjects of knowledge. Alarcon argues that even though such voices develop gender
consciousness, she is cautious of how such consciousness stems from an epistemological
differential, where the subject and object relation is defined in relation to white women.
Such an epistemological position empties the meaning of women of color by positioning
women subject only in relation to male weakens the possibility of articulating and
identifying outside the gender binary. Therein lies the paradox inherent in a gendered
subject of knowledge, making it difficult to transgress gender and racial boundaries. Yet the
act of consciousness raising assumes it would define feminism for itself but is reinforced
through a binary of self/other that over conflates its usefulness as a political framework.
This boundary alone does provide a politics for women of color to build their own political
project and articulate an epistemology from which to envision a feminist future.
Bridges triumph is in registering multiple nodes of subjectivity for the purpose of
a multi-cultural feminist solidarity and consciousness, but Alarcon argues that capturing
multi-voiced subjectivities is as not enough. I posit that recognizing such subjectivities is
not an end, but similar to Haraway, these voices need to be become globally connected
within a larger feminist project. This type of consciousness provides focused and specific
objectives and political demands, where a body of a feminist in the U.S. recognizes their
relative privilege and maintains a politics of accountability as benefiting from global
projects of neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism. Bridge still holds its respective place
within the academy with an urgency for women of color to collectively organize through
their multifaceted epistemologies and rich histories.

This inability to formulate women of color as both the object and subject of
feminist theorizing is raised through Haraways superficial reading of linguistic
epistemology. To merely credit women of color for using western means of expression,
such as writing, to share their experiences does not recognize other various means women
of color use to articulate of form their identity or resist patriarchal oppression. The
emphasis is thereby on the collective nature of discourse and dialogue, which demands
that feminist theorizing becomes as much a project of listening as well as sharing. This
act of sharing and dialoguing also assumes a certain politics of unity, not ascribing a clear
political project of how Anglo-American women can be in solidarity with women of
color. Therefore, the question of what does it mean to assume a position of a multi-voice
subject can be examined as a critical point of becoming.
The piece Building on the Edge of Each Others Battles: A Feminist of Color
Multidimensional Lens written by the Santa Cruz Feminist of Color Collective also
articulates a layered subjectivity to locate collective political, artistic, and academic
projects and conference as essential for feminist community building and theorization.
This collective expands intersectionality as previously defined by Kimberle Crenshaw to
move beyond essentialist identity formation towards a conjointly gathered identity with
the goal of building political solidarity (A Feminist of Color Multidimensional Lens 2930). They also embrace their politicized cyborg-goddess hybridity by recognizing and
embracing their critical and privileged position as women of color within U.S. academic
institutions to utilize technologies and spaces to form critical networks for writing and
sharing (36). This multidimensional lens is important because it does not reduce feminist
identity formation in a collective voice that emphasizes how women of color feminist

theory is not only available to women with access to theory, but rather occurs through
various artistic, collective, political, and intellectual practices. process of identity
formation, assertion of intellectual political projects, and creating alternative
methodological practices (23). As the collective describes, the who and why of women
of color feminisms inform the how (32) and this extends into creating a larger vision for
a feminist future, which embraces various forms of communication and production. For
the Santa Cruz collective, identity formation through its various interstices is a crucial
part of epistemological development through alternative modes and spaces. This
distinction is central to their defining their political project, actively defying binary
subjectivity and modes of thinking to create an alternative network of resistance. This
piece highlights the importance of Gloria Anzalduas borderlands theory as part of their
project to create an alternative epistemological space that refuses Eurocentrisms
individualism and dichotomous hierarchies(50). The collective seeks to reclaim the
queer spaces of resistance that have been erased and invisible by European modernity. By
maintaining a collective rather than individual identity, the collective also seeks to draw
from a multiplicity of identities and voices, weaving together the intimate experiences
and social relations that are what Maria Lugones calls the intimate everyday resistant
interactions to the colonial difference (50). This community identity becomes the mode
to politically organize and build alternative accountability processes that strive to create
knowledge and justice. The collective draws from the legacies of women of color
feminisms that resisted patriarchy and capitalism to move their own political project
forward.

The process of deconstructing racial hierarchies is also a central component of

creating an anti-hegemonic discourse. The collective crucially identifies how their work
functions to dismantle racial hierarchies by drawing from histories and legacies of
colonization, slavery, and domination. Reclaiming modes of knowledge production is the
collectives mode of reclaiming subjective power, where knowledge is grounded in
personal experience and functions as a key methodology for feminist solidarity and
practice. This is necessary for completing the project of what Cherrie Moraga categorizes
as knowledge of the flesh where marginalized bodies, as sites of collision from various
discursive forces, reclaim subjective status. For the collective, the multiplicity and
political networking of voices and experiences that create the new forms of embodied
knowledge is essential for organizing research clusters, arts collectives, and
transformative justice collectives. Reclaiming the production of knowledge and feminist
subjectivity is identified as the intellectual labor necessary for radical feminist struggle.
Even though Haraways intention to breakup of versions of Euro-American feminist
humanism in their devastating assumptions of master narratives deeply indebted to
racism and colonialism,(Sandoval 160) is unsuccessful, her work highlights the
importance of creating new and imaginative epistemologies that are both futuristic and
bound by history.
Weaving in my own epistemic knowledge, I recently concluded a Chicana
feminist reading circle with Audre Lordes essay Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women
Redefining Difference, where other Chicana and Latina identified women join to discuss
and reflect on Lordes interventionist rhetoric. We took two hours reading this article
because women in the group continuously wanted to share how the conditions of

oppression Lorde describes, resonates with their own feeling of frustration, hurt, and
rage. The process of coming together to share experiences and knowledge is productive
for us to develop our own identities, create our own space and practice to reflect, heal,
and learn how to access more information on feminist theories and issues. It became our
task to ask what is our feminist struggle today? and question how can we use an
intersectional analysis and framework to be in solidarity with women organizing against
police violence in Ferguson or East Los Angeles. We moved from reading texts from
Chicana Feminist Thought: The Basic Historical Writings to reflect on how the feminist
project within our own communities has shifted and reflect on the work that still needs to
be done. What these writings demonstrate and produce is a community of knowledge
where women can respond and share experiences of sexism and racism in a safe space
they may not find in the classroom. These conversations also reveal the need to create
counterpublics, spaces of knowledge to develop deeper analyses of racial and gender
ideologies that dominate our daily lives. It is also worth noting that the reading group
formed as a strategic intervention into the community space, to further build feminist
knowledge and practice, and invite community organizers to join and develop a
productive feminist analysis. Even through the process of writing this essay, nothing was
as affirming as hearing the voices and experience of other women whom were all going
through their own processes and contributing to build our understanding of feminist
thought. Together, we created our own affective power by sharing experiences to heal
and deepen our own understanding of varied oppressions and even transitioned to expand
ownership and leadership of the group to continue to build solidarity.

Robyn Wiegmans stunning essay Feminisms Apocalyptic Futures takes into

account some problematic temporalities within my own feminist formulations. I agree
that feminism is not linear, and although historical legacies and struggles inform and
guide current feminist organizing and discursive practices, I am however wary of the
need to put the past in the conversation with a future. Or rather a feminist futurity does
not need to be limited or only responsive to a past feminist ideology, identity, or political
subject formation. Wiegman seeks to unravel feminisms contradictory trajectories that
are bound by the memory of identitys ability in the 1960s to rigorously challenge statebased practices of exclusion and the theoretical difficulty of identity categories to sustain
a heterogeneous understanding of social power and subjective identification today (806).
This memory is still relevant and important to identify a history of struggle, but it is also
temporally limited in a narrative of progress. Wiegman also points out how cultural
feminism was challenged by the popularity of poststructuralist thought in the academy
alienates identity based activists and academics. I agree with Wiegman that these
conflicts require thoughtful consideration when considering the future of feminist studies
in the academy, but I am also interested in the projects that detract and find longevity
outside those temporal and epistemological frameworks. For example, Paloma MartinezCruzs text Women and Knowledge in Mesoamerica calls attention to Mexicos
indigenous spiritual and cultural practices in order to break from European epistemology.
The following passage brings forth the problems of temporality Wiegman raises, by
arguing that these practices inform and can not only be spoken about in the past tense
but within the current context of transnational capitalism:
By exploring the implications of globalization in the highlands of

Oaxaca, it becomes clear that Western modernity has little tolerance for
traditional communities that adapt to meet the extingencies of the global
marketplace. For Mesoamerican women, globalization and indigeneity
present specific problems. Feminist scholars have observed that Indian
women who are locally and nationally disenfranchised can gain access to
greater autonomy in transnational settings. Maria Sabina and Agustina
Martinez are two examples of women who share Mazatec shamanism with
the twenty first century. If such women do not adapt their abilities to meet
transnational possibilities, then shamanism will remain frozen behind the
glass pane of a museum diorama, forever administering the same medicine
to the same patient suffering from the same eternal malady. However, the
mushroom ritual does not languish behind a hermetically sealed divide- it
interacts with todays world, with all of its ethical challenges and
complexities. (Martinez- Cruz 119).
This passage also demonstrates a temporal problem within western feminism to
temporally freeze and restrict the subject. The ritual is not made an object of history, but
is instead rightly brought into an interaction with present and future feminisms,
predicting indigenous practices expansive spiritual and medical influence. Here, the past
is also shaped and informed by the constant needs to respond and adapt to the conditions
of late capitalism. In order for such practices to thrive, they must connect and respond to
the larger world they are part, contrary to an isolation that would mark their extinction.

Hence, feminist struggles are defined by the needs and desires of people in the
present, which if we temporally destabilize, are always in flux, in a process of becoming.
The metaphor of the cyborg is useful because it visualizes this process of constant
formation and break, but if a subject cannot have a past, it also cannot have a future.
Instead, I look for futurity in the social and political imagination, gathering from utopic
desires of socialist feminism, but also conscious of structural limitations. The libidinal
economy of feminist politics is structurally antagonistic, and no simple incorporation of
narrative or history will destabilize that structure. Instead, recognizing erasure and
incorporation as part of the process to contain and co-opt these energies is important
alongside identifying intensities of control and formation taking place. Futurity is the
process and a productive feminism is immersed in conflict and antagonisms that seek to
bind and control.
In conclusion, the legacies of interventionist practices into white hegemonic
feminism still guide and inform current feminist epistemological and political practice.
Moyas post-positivist realist framework aspires to give epistemological value to the
experiences of oppressed persons, in which case, women of color have a unique
knowledge of the structural violence of white capitalist patriarchy. Collective feminist
identities and projects are wise to embrace technologies and continue to break down the
colonialist divisions and disciplining of gender and sexuality, to continue to create
alternative and resistant spaces. Locating the body as the source of knowledge, and
following Cherrie Moragas project of theory in the flesh is an important political and
theoretical project that challenges the hegemonic ontology that functions to discipline and
control. Working out of this break is a promising position to break from liberal politics of

post-racial equality, which does not call into question the structurally unequal
experiences of racialized and gendered bodies. The project of consciousness raising is
not enough for women of color feminists to continue to challenge hegemonic spaces and
forming alternative epistemologies is necessary to resist dominant frameworks and build
a feminist future. Adaptation for survival, to maintain rituals and practices, to build
solidarity is important to build and resist the conditions of modernity. This is a matter of
access and limitation that exceeds temporal boundaries to reignite and influence a
collective imagination. Recuperative historical projects continue to revitalize feminist
organizing with new passion, engagement and energy, as feminists see themselves in
appreciative solidarity with previous generations of struggle. By incorporating new
technologies such as group texts, Facebook, and Instagram, we are connecting with
younger generations of future activists, creating communities for support and inspiration.

Works Cited
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Borderlands: Studies in Chicano Literature, Culture, and Ideology. Durham: Duke
University Press, 1991.
"Building on The Edge of Each Other's Battles-: a Feminist of Color Multidimensional
Lens." Hypatia Edwardsville Indiana University Press. 29.1 (2014): 23-40.
Galindo, D L, and Mara D. Gonzales. Speaking Chicana: Voice, Power, and Identity.
Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1999.
Haraway, Donna J. "A Cyborg Manifesto." Cultural Studies Reader. (1999).
Martinez-Cruz, Paloma. Women and Knowledge in Mesoamerica: From East L.a. to
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