Nos/Otras

Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Multiplicitous Agency, and Resistance

By Andrea J. Pitts

Subjects: Feminist Philosophy, Latin American Studies, Philosophy, Disabilities, Indigenous Studies
Series: SUNY series, Philosophy and Race
Hardcover : 9781438484839, 216 pages, August 2021
Paperback : 9781438484822, 216 pages, January 2022

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Anzaldúan Multiplicitous Agency

1. Interpretive Threads of Anzaldúa's Work
Existential Phenomenology
Relational Ontology
Coalitional Politics
Structure of the Book

2. Geographies of Multiplicitous Selves
Examining Insularity and Isolationism
Examining Individualism and Imperialism
Learning from Nepantleras

3. Turning Ambivalence into Something Else
Insurrectionist Ethics and Agency
Resistant Reconstructions and Ambivalence
Agential Framings of Ambivalence

4. Putting Coyolxauhqui Together
Crip Atravesadascon Nos/otras
Trans Theorizing and Anzaldúa's Writings
Critique of Anzaldúan Mestizaje
Resisting the Coloniality of Reality Enforcement
Multiplicitous Coalition Building

Conclusion: From Nos/otras to Nos/otrxs

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Offers a timely reconsideration of the writings of Gloria Anzaldúa, treating issues of multiplicitous agency, identarian politics, and the stakes of coalition building as core themes in the author's work.

Description

In a refreshingly novel approach to the writings of Gloria E. Anzaldúa (1942–2004), Andrea J. Pitts addresses issues relevant to contemporary debates within feminist theory and critical race studies. Pitts explores how Anzaldúa addressed, directly and indirectly, a number of complicated problems regarding agency in her writings, including questions of disability justice, trans theorizing, Indigenous sovereignty, and identarian politics. Anzaldúa's conception of what Pitts describes as multiplicitous agency serves as a key conceptual link between these questions in her work, including how discussions of agency surfaced in Anzaldúa's late writings of the 1990s and early 2000s. Not shying away from Anzaldúa's own complex and sometimes problematic framings of disability, mestizaje, and Indigeneity, Pitts draws from several strands of contemporary Chicanx, Latinx, and African American philosophy to examine how Anzaldúa's work builds pathways toward networks of solidarity and communities of resistance.

Andrea J. Pitts is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. They are the coeditor (with Mark William Westmoreland) of Beyond Bergson: Examining Race and Colonialism through the Writings of Henri Bergson, also published by SUNY Press, and the coeditor (with Mariana Ortega, and José M. Medina) of Theories of the Flesh: Latinx and Latin American Feminisms, Transformation, and Resistance.

Reviews

"…an original, multivalent, and deeply important book … Nos/Otras is a meticulously researched, philosophically rich, truly outstanding book that will frame conversations on Latina feminisms, in particular on Anzaldúa and Lugones, and other fields for years to come." — Mariana Ortega, Radical Philosophy Review