| Gloria Anzaldua situates Michel Foucault's concept of subjugated knowledges along the U.S.-Mexico borderlands through a theory of mestizaje, which maps archaeologies of Tejana/o identity based on her experiences as a Chicana lesbian from South Texas. Divided into three parts of two chapters each, this dissertation extends Anzaldua's conceptual framework by exploring various discursive spaces articulating Tejana epistemological production and expression. Part One, "Strategic Negotiations in the Literary Construction of Symbolic Space," deals with the strategic cultural production of vernacular and canonical literary forms. Chapter 1, "Tales from the Third Space: Differential Consciousness in the Production of Two Proto-Chicana Novels," draws upon Chela Sandoval's differential consciousness model, Emma Perez's concept of the decolonial imaginary, and Sonia Saldivar-Hull's discussion of non-traditional literary theory production to explore how the works of writers Jovita Gonzalez and Leonor Villegas de Magnon strategically negotiate hegemonic ideologies of race, gender, and place. Chapter 2, "San Anto Pocha Poetics: Hociconas y Callejeras Traversing Literal and Literary Cultural Geographies," utilizes Anzaldua's lyricized theoretical method to examine how San Antonio poets Evangelina Vigil, Angela de Hoyos and Amalia Ortiz construct a highly performative gendered and racialized feminist poetics of public space in resistance to the commodification of the city's public space by white cultural tourism. Part Two, "The Embodied Performativity of Tejana Identity," focuses on embodied performances and consumptions of Tejana identity through music and film. Chapter 3, "Cantando La Frontera: Transgressions of Traditional Tejana Gender Roles through Musical Performance," draws upon the works of Rosa Linda Fregoso, Gloria Anzaldua, and Linda McDowell who each view the female body is meaning-making space to explore how musicians Lydia Mendoza, Selena Quintanilla-Perez and Lady Binx provide offer unique embodied performances of Tejana identity that challenge, validate and transgress traditional gender roles through music, lyric and dance. Chapter 4, "Tejanas on Film: Recovering Tejana Agency through Re-Framing the Border Film Narrative," examines how the films Lone Star, Border Bandits, Pretty Vacant and Speeder Kills frame Tejana characters in their similar yet unique counter narratives to the traditional colonial border film narrative. Drawing upon Jane Gaines' racialized and gendered approach to feminist film theory, bell hooks' gendered work on racial representations, and Rosa Linda Fregoso's concept of the "Mexicanist presence" of Tejana characters in traditional border films, I examine where each film succeeds and fails in challenging the patriarchal colonial hegemony of the South Texas borderlands. Part Three, "Public Places as Contested Spaces," deals specifically with place and the political contestation of public space. Chapter 5, "The Art of Resistance: Mural Art, Cultural Geography and Political Inscription in the Public Sphere," draws upon Richard Flores's discussion of the Alamo as a master colonial symbol, Mary Pat Brady's examination of the temporal and cultural production of Chicana space, and Raul Villa's discussion of Chicano resistance to geographic displacement. Here, I explore how the artwork of San Antonio muralists Terry Ybanez and Mary Agnes Rodriguez perform as counter narratives to the Alamo's public rhetoric of colonialism. And finally, Chapter 6, "Voces de Esperanza : 'Coming to Voice' and the Praxis of U.S. Third World Feminism at the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center," draws upon bell hooks', Cherrie Moraga's and Patricia Hill Collins' conceptualization of women of color and U.S. third world feminist praxis to examine how the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center implements local-to-global political activism through Chicana feminist arts programming. |
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