The Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy

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Edwina Barvosa

Scholarly feminist meditations on the inner diversity of the self are many and long-standing. While the inner diversity of the self takes many forms, significant numbers of feminists across disciplines have focused frequently on the empirical phenomenon of the self that is shaped through social life to have an inner configuration of multiple identities that are in tension—a contradictory array of identities that is discussed below has been sometimes referred to as borderlands identities. While feminist considerations have varied widely, they generally share common themes and significant analytic complexity. This complexity arises in part because the very idea of the inner diversity of the self that is socially derived inevitably invokes a wide array of related factors. These factors include issues of agency and autonomy, the imprint on humanity of social constructions of subordination, privilege, and social conflict, including gender hierarchies, the phenomenon of intersectionality, and concepts of the self and subjectivity. In this chapter, I offer a brief review of feminist engagement with the concept of borderlands identities as one form of inner diversity. This account attends to the origins of feminist concern with inner diversity, the social sources of borderland identity formations, and the lasting implications for feminist theory and feminist approaches to envisioning and realizing greater social justice for all.

Feminist Thought on the Inner Diversity of the Self

Feminist engagement with the inner diversity of the self has itself been diverse. It has been informed by various disciplines and undertaken by feminists with an array of subject locations, experiences, and concerns. Some feminist engagement with inner diversity—of which borderlands identities are one kind defined below—critique the long-prevailing Western concept of the unitary self. In that concept, the self is conceived as fully rational, self-transparent, internally consistent, and linguistically immune to the thought distortions of social influence; its subjectivity is defined by its capacity to reason. Ironically feminists have often found socially derived ideological distortions in the depiction of the unitary self, which was debunked as implicitly European, white, masculine, heterosexual, male of means in contrast to the stereotypes of women as reasoning-impaired and prone to flights of emotion and social influence (for feminist arguments against the unified self, see Meyers 1997; Brison 2003).

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In her productively critical response, feminist linguist and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva (1991) argued in the early 1990s that the concept of unitary self was not merely an ideology-biased inheritance—rooted in and perpetuating gender stereotypes— it was also in practice false. Far from self-transparent, internally consistent, and rationally above social influence, all human beings are socially shaped in their embodied thoughts and emotions. Human social formation in the disparate discourses and practices of modern life thus heavily influence the shape in a human subjectivity—defined here as embodied consciousness. Consciousness is thus often comprised of a hodge-podge of internalized, socially inherited dimensions, many if not all of which are unbidden, and some would be unwanted. In turn, as Kristeva illustrated, unwanted aspects of the self often become the “stranger within”— elements of ourselves that we would cast out were it possible.

Failing that possibility, humans instead often self-deny the presence of unwelcome aspects within ourselves, and then project that element outward as fear and rejection (i.e., “abjection”) of others who in our struggling minds represent the attributes of ourselves that we find an anathema. All humans alike are subject to these forms of self-imposed internal blindness, aspects that not only muddle conscious reasoning but also foster conflict (for further detail see Barvosa 2008: 109–139). For Kristeva the feminist project of collective peace required each of us to face and come to peaceful terms with the unwanted diversity within ourselves as a first and necessary step toward peaceful contributions to collective human life. The self that is oriented toward peace and justice must thus see and engage itself as a self “in process.”

Other feminist thinkers have also explored diverse aspects of the link between unacknowledged and unaccepted inner diversity of the self and social conflict. Jane Flax (1990), for example, has elaborated the significance of self-fragmentation in social life, including self-fragmentation manifest as contradictions and paradoxes within feminist scholarship itself. Judith Butler (1990, 1993) has elaborated the social construction of gender norms and embodied consciousness and gender identities. Butler’s early work focused in part on the formation and stabilization of gender identity through abjection—that is, the casting out or demonizing of unwanted femininity or masculinity as a means to stabilize gender identities based on an alleged gender binary. Such identity-by-abjection aims to deny and—at times violently—tame the otherwise lived diversity and contextual fluidity of human gender expression. In her early analysis Butler at times suggested that identity itself would be best abandoned in order to further the feminist project of peace.

In contrast to the view that identity should be dispensed with in the name of feminist justice, feminist philosopher Linda Martín Alcoff has argued in her book, Visible Identities, that although identity politics movements have been problematic in many ways, identity itself cannot plausibly be abandoned, especially in social justice efforts. Alcoff convincingly contends that identities are “in our embodied selves at their deepest level of emotions, perception, imagination, and practical movement” and thus form our “embodied horizons” (Alcoff 2006: 289). Resonant with Alcoff’s analysis, many feminists— including feminists of color and feminists working in postcolonial theory—have focused not on the banishing of identity, but on how the inner diversity of the self can take the form of multiple identities that straddle specific social divides. Such borderland identities, many have argued, can have both advantages and hardships in relation to feminist aspirations for peace and justice.

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Social Conflict, Borderlands Identities, and Feminism

As just noted, numerous feminist thinkers have explored the formation and implications of borderlands identities. Borderlands identities can be defined as configurations of diversity in the self that include two or more identities that are socially constructed as either uneasily/uncommonly combined, or constructed as entirely mutually exclusive such as the social divided often drawn between Black/white, Jewish/Gentile (for example, see work by feminist writer Rebecca Walker 2001). Borderlands identities are formed through socialization in social contexts domains in which one or more ways of life are in conflict or are at least uneasily co-present in the same location. These uneasy cultural overlapping include areas of settler or neocolonialism, cultural diasporas (Bammer 1994), and sites group displacement and resettlement arising from famines, droughts, wars, migration and other social conflicts (Arana 2001). Tense co-presence of ways of life commonly occur along political borders such as the US–Mexican border. But incidents of group conflict may also occur far away from political borders.

Among many contributions, Chicana poet, activist, and independent feminist scholar Gloria Anzaldúa (1942–2004) has offered one of the most influential accounts of such borderland identities. Raised in and reflecting upon the racial conflict and tension of the South Texas borderlands Anzaldúa used the terms mestiza consciousness and nepantlera (among others) to refer to those with an embodied consciousness shaped by immersion in multiple cultures that are mutually intolerant of each other: Mexicans against Anglos (white Americans), Anglos against Chicanos (US born/raised of Mexican heritage) and the tortured and adversarial relationships to the indigenous, and the queer in both groups ignored and denied. Chicanas (Mexican Americans) identify across these divides with borderland identities/mestiza consciousness provided immersion in—and identification with—multiple ways of life at war with each other. Anzaldúa holds that such borderland identities offered both personal pain and positive possibility. On the side of hardship, having multiple identities with groups on both sides of a hostile social divide results in inner division—in a consciousness that has absorbed the group conflict into itself where it may either rage on and spill outward, or, with effort, somehow peacefully resolve.

Like Kristeva, Anzaldúa thus meditates on the personal and political effects of the inner war that attend borderlands identities. She writes,

I have internalized rage and contempt, one part of the self (the accusatory, persecutory, judgmental) using defense strategies against another part of the self (the object of contempt) . . . one does not “see” and awareness does not happen. One remains ignorant of the fact that one is afraid, and that it is fear that holds one petrified.

(Anzaldúa 1987: 45)

In terms of gendered violence, Anzaldúa finds that it is this kind of inner turmoil that produce ongoing forms of gender conflict (1987: 83). At the same time, for Anzaldúa, the person with borderland identities—the nepantlera who inhabits the terrain in and between divided groups also has the opportunity to bridge these divided spheres. In so doing, they have the chance to develop within themselves—and then perform for others—the possibility of healing these inner divisions. Anzaldúa writes that the work of the person with borderland identities is to

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break down the subject-object duality that keeps her a prisoner and to show in the flesh and through the images in her work how duality is transcended. The answer to the problem between the white race and the colored, between males and females, lies in healing the split that originates in . . . our languages and our thoughts.

(1987: 80)

In various ways Anzaldúa’s entire corpus is dedicated to elaborating the pain and possibilities arising from living borderland identities (see Anzaldúa and Keating 2000, 2009). The reception of Anzaldúa’s work among feminists around the globe indicates that the experience of borderlands identities takes many forms, arises from many global conflicts, and the idea of the life of the nepantlera who straddles social divides continues to inspire many who are engaged in feminist practice (Keating and González-López 2011). The qualities of borderlands identities and implications for feminist action have also been taken up by numerous Chicana and Latina thinkers including María Lugones (1990), Mariana Ortega (2016), Deena Gonzales (1997), Norma Alarcon (1994), Cristina Beltrán (2004), Barvosa (2008, 2011) and many others.

Intersectionality within and Borderlands Identities

The concept of intersectionality is an important one in feminist thought. The concept originates in Black feminist thought and can be traced from Sojourner Truth’s address “Ain’t I a Woman?” in which Truth questions and probes the tendency to see her as either a woman or as Black rather than to address the specificity of her life being and identifying as Black on one hand, a woman on the other and also her living in the necessity of negotiating both identities in tandem with all the hardships this duality may involve. Black feminist thinkers Patricia Hill Collins (1998) and Kimberlé Crenshaw (1995) among others have developed and deployed intersectionality as a conceptual framework for understanding the multiple subject locations and identities of Black women in the study of conflicts and patterns of social subordination including in Collins’s words: “systems of race, economic class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nations and age [that] form mutually constructing features of social organization” (1998: 278).

Building on their work, I have suggested elsewhere (Barvosa 2008: 76–82), that borderlands identities also raise the possibility of seeing intersectionality as not only a factor to be witnessed in the social world, but also as an imprint in embodied consciousness itself. Seen from the perspective of borderlands identities, intersectionality takes the form of internalized or internal intersectionality in which the imprint of intersecting complexities in the social world directly shape embodied consciousness. In the case of borderlands identities, for example, this includes both (a) the internalized associations and presumed divisions among identities (group, personal, and intrapersonal) that we inherit from the social world; and (b) any associations among disparate identities that individuals may have created or transformed for themselves. Seeing these intrapsychic interconnections as a form of inner intersectionality is potentially important for feminist practice, because as both Anzaldúa and Kristeva have pointed out, it is the rejecting of associations among diverse aspects of the self that are at the heart of the internal tensions, fears, and turmoil, that—when projected outward—produce and sustain social conflict including conflicts involving race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, language community, nativity, and so on. In order to fully understand inner intersectionality in relation to borderlands identities, however, it is helpful to recognize in more detail how various identities are produced socially and in the self, and the social and physical formations of borderlands identities.

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Types of Identities and Identity Formations

To appreciate the full process of identity formation it is worthwhile to first recall that there are at least three general types of types of identities and that all are in different ways socially constructed either by social groups, the person holding the identity, or both.

In terms of types of identities, sociology and areas of social psychology conventionally recognize at least three types of identity formations: group identities (aka social identities), unique personal identities, and self-identity. Group or collective identities are those associated with a social group or category such as ethnic groups, nations, or genders. For our purposes this includes social roles such as mother, teacher, or attorney. A woman’s ethnic and gender identities are thus examples of group identities. In this category borderlands identities are those that include a straddling of social groups or domains that are constructed at a given time as socially divided such as hearing/deaf, Black/white, man/woman, and so on.

In addition to group identities, personal identities are the unique relationships between pairs of individuals, such as mother of Jamie, brother to Albert, or supervisor to Alex. Collective and personal identities are rarely, if ever, held singularly. Instead human beings—as stressed by Hume and William James—in operating in different social circles and domains, have often gained many different group and individual affiliations and group belongings such that they identify and function differently in different contexts. These multiple identities further combine in the mind with many other internalized elements, e.g., partial identities, isolated encoded beliefs, concepts, experiences, and social scripts. Combined this multiplicity of identities makes up what is referred to philosophically as human subjectivity, which can be defined as the totality of a person’s embodied consciousness.

The totality of a person’s subjectivity leads to the third type of identity, namely self-identity. As a term, self-identity is used in many ways, including some usages that refer to an essential pre-linguistic core-self. Here, however, self-identity refers to the unique identification and relationship that a person has with themselves—more specifically with the totality of the many and diverse aspects of themselves as an entire self. As such, self-identity encompasses one’s personal self-understanding and relationship with the full collection of identities, partial-identities, fragments and isolated beliefs and concepts that they have gained over the course of their lifetime. It also includes their relationship to the current configuration of their identities, each of which may stand in different—and potentially shifting—relationships to each other. In sum it is a person’s overall sense of self, and their view of themselves as a unique configuration of elements. This includes, how, if at all, they relate to inherited aspects of themselves internalized from social life. It is not always the case that people identify with inherited identities; for example, someone raised Catholic in childhood may disidentify with Catholicism in adulthood and this disidentification becomes part of their self-identity. Thus self-identities are not static but rather always subject to revision. Self-identity is an evolving sense of self, self-understanding, and self-relatedness, the kind of self “in process” described by Kristeva.

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Identity Schemes: The Social Sources and Formation of Borderlands Identities

In their three forms, identities are not static, pre-linguistic forms. They are internalized sets of social meanings, values, and practices that are associated with a given identity as it is socially constructed in a given place and time. As such, identities are in practice formed by the construction of a scheme of interrelated sets of meanings, values, and practices that are constructed to define a given identity. These constructed schemes are produced and circulated socially in and through the media, and major institutions including churches, schools, commercial enterprises, and the state. Informally the constructions of identities—literally what it means socially to have and practice a certain identity—also circulate through social groupings ranging from pairs of friends and nuclear families to large extended families, tribes, and ethnic groups.

These processes of identity formation are not only social and interactive, but they have a material physiological dimension as well. This factor is sometimes overlooked in feminist discussion, but it is significant for understanding both inner intersectionality and the political potential of revising one’s borderlands identities as discussed by Anzaldúa (for elaboration of Anzaldúa’s “mestiza way” of self craft, see Barvosa 2008: 175–206). Social psychology and neuroscience reveal that the meanings, values, practices, discourses, and other socially constructed aspects of identities are internalized by being physically encoded in the human mind as neural pathways. In turn, interconnects and associations among these neural pathways are formed in the physical brain. Ideas, events, and concepts are linked in social life and become associated and linked in the mind as elated neural pathways that often come to form a kind of web of intersecting ideas, beliefs, and other imprints in the brain. Generally, social psychologists and neuroscientists describe this ongoing process of the linking of encoded meaning in the brain with the catch phrase “what fires together, wires together.” The resulting embodiment is a network of associated meanings that exist in the mind as webs intersecting materials socially constructed as related in a given way (Kahneman 2011) such as the dangerous group stereotype “young-black-male-criminal.” When this web of interrelated materials is interpreted as relevant to a given context it is “activated” (subconsciously) as the material basis for thought, feeling, and action in a given moment and for as long as that scheme is relevant (Benaji and Greenwald 2013).

Identities can thus be seen within embodied consciousness as a socially encoded web of associations in the mind—as a neural web of interconnected meanings, values, and practices associated with what it means to identify in a given way in a given time and place. As such, identities can be conceptualized both theoretically and empirically as identity schemes (Barvosa 2008). Identity schemes, however, are not limited to cognitive expression in the mind, but also contain associated ideas, concepts, and practices, that express as feelings, thoughts, and also as material practices and even postures and bodily expressions and experiences. The latter include, for example, identity specific postures and socially constructed physical expressions, such as the postures and practices of a marching soldier or dancing ballerina. The encoding that contains the postures are activated as the frames of reference for thought, feeling, and action in moments when the identities as soldier and ballerina are relevant to the passing moment or “salient.”

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As social formations, identity schemes in general are not innate or static aspects of the self. Rather identity—when considered as a noun—refers to the specific, socially constructed, time, place, and culturally specific content of a given identity scheme, as it is prevails in a given time and place. The specific social constructions of the meanings, values, and practices femininity and feminine identity, for example, have changed over time containing both significant commonalities and extensive variations. Some variations are cross-cultural and admit of variations in expression from one woman or transwoman to the next. As such, identities are complex and socially encoded formations of the mind and body that are formed and may be transformed in and over time. These shifts may include alterations in norms, values, and linguistic and cultural practices. These changes may be brought about by external influence such as war, conflict, or technological change or through collective reimagining that occurs through social movements or other societal transformation or simple changes in fashion.

Moreover in terms of inner intersectionality, different identity schemes may intersect in three different types of associations that may be seen as three different moments of inner intersectionality: additive, overlapping, and crosscutting. First, identity schemes may be associated additively in that they come to share identity-related meanings, values, and practices. For example, white male identities and identity as financially affluent may contain separate meanings and practices that combine in the consciousness of wealthy white men to a degree that these elements of their multiple identities reinforce each other, perhaps even to the point that their two identities seem to be nested or converged rather than distinct.

Second, identity schemes may overlap and share common meanings, values or practices even though they are regarded as distinct and generally not overlapping. For example, linguistic diversity among immigrant groups in America is such that some immigrants share an accent with the mainstream Americans and others do not. The overlap in speech patterns may make it easier for some to include linguistically acculturated immigrants over those who have a residual accent on the basis of the overlap in the identity schemes of the person and the mainstream American identity scheme.

Third, socially constructed identity schemes may be crosscutting in meaning and influence. For example, Black men have racial and gender identity schemes involving meanings and practices of gender privilege as men, but meanings and practices of subordination as Black. However, at the time of this writing, youth identity in the US intersects in a crosscutting manner with male privilege and racial subordination, resulting in a disproportionate risk of harm to young Black men at the hands of law enforcement. This is likely attributed to the socially constructed frames of reference that often become constructed as part of law enforcement identities for some officers. When activated by events in context the neural script of “young-black-male-criminal” activates neurologically as part of that lived identity, also trigging neurally linked fear responses whether or not such fear is warranted by facts of the context. Likewise, to the extent that young Black men internalize the gendered social relations of hierarchy and risk, they too may have woven into their identities extreme fears related to social contexts involving law enforcement.

In the US, these dynamics have spawned a social movement and debate. Theoretically at least, problematic identity formations admit of being amended and transformed over time. Identity schemes are more fluid than is often thought. Socially, construction of identities and their relationships leaves people with borderlands identities facing unique identity-related challenges and also opportunities. However, to recognize the special opportunities and challenges of borderlands identities, in particular, it is important to first understand how all human identities are fluid and changeable in that they are not ultimately defined by the content of identity schemes, but rather by the daily practices of claiming and negotiating identities in social contexts.

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Borderlands Identities and Social Change: Negotiating Identity Claims in Changing Times

Although the socially constructed content of identity schemes is important, it does not ultimately define identities. Instead, as shown in classic anthropology, identities are ultimately defined in and through the ever-ongoing daily processes of casting the boundaries of an identity and having identity claim acknowledged and accepted by others (Barth 1969). As such variation in content—and even role reversals—over time does not dilute or destroy the identity as long as both partners in the connection continue to cast/name and claim the boundary and declare themselves as partaking of that identity in and over time. Ethnic identities, for instance, frequently change over time in the meanings, values, and practices that comprise the specificity of the ethnicity. For example, in the late 1980s and 1990s for instance, in US Chicana/o culture, rap music from hip-hop culture was hybridized by Chicano youth to create Chicano rap. Many Chicana/o youth then claimed their ethnic identities through the new musical form. To the extent that those identity claims were accepted, Chicana/o ethnic identities were maintained but not through continuity of ethnic content. Instead Chicana/o ethnic identities endured via the everyday practice of casting identity boundaries and negotiating identity claims even in the face of cultural change. In the case of borderlands identities it is this kind of negotiation of supposedly mutually exclusive identities that is one of the most difficult challenges.

There are many other social cleavages among group identities that also produce contexts in which borderlands identities exist and must be navigated by border crossers (in Anzaldúan terms, nepantleras). In some cases, however, social changes over time might alter these cleavages and reduce the need to respond to them as persistent and troublesome divides. For example, María Lugones, a US Latina feminist philosopher who immigrated to the US from Latin America, has written about life as an activist in New Mexico in the 1990s as she negotiated her border identities as a lesbian and a Latina/Hispana. Working with and among poor Hispanos as an activist for social change (idiosyncratically, “Hispanos” was the preferred term among Spanish/Mexican heritage in New Mexico at the time of her writing). Lugones’s experience taught her that to identify openly as a lesbian among Hispanos would mean her rejection even as an activist working for social change. Likewise, effective engagement in social activism among the local lesbian community at that time also required Lugones to deemphasize her ethnicity in order to have a voice and accepted presence in the queer community. As I have discussed elsewhere, Lugones negotiated these sets of social foreclosures as part of the border identity as a Latina, lesbian activist working for social change in social contexts that refuse the combination of the identities most meaningful to her (Barvosa 2008). In that refusal of others to acknowledge and accept her identities claims, Lugones is faced with the need to find ways to negotiate the implicit or explicit forms of threatened identity-related rejection, and find a way to integrate her own sense of self as including border identities. Today, however, in a time when strong majorities across the US accept and endorse LGBT equality, it is likely that Lugones might not face the same degree of intolerance as she did in previous decades as a Latina lesbian activist-scholar.

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The Special Challenges and Potential of Borderlands Identities

As stressed above, borderlands identities are configurations of multiple identities that include elements socially constructed as mutually exclusive at a given time. Such divided identities are usually cast as an impassable social division such as woman/man, Jewish/Gentile, hearing/deaf. In some cases, however, these constructed divisions are encompassed in the life of a single person. For example, in his book My Sense of Silence, Lennard Davis (2000) describes his life as the hearing child of deaf parents. Davis was born and raised in deaf culture, immersed in and identified with that world, practicing its ways. Yet as a hearing person, his identity claims to be a member of the deaf community were at times rejected as a hearing person. His border identities as a hearing person who is also deaf identified require that he endure and negotiate the identity ascriptions that cast him in ways that do not acknowledge his own sense of self. In living across the border between the hearing and deaf worlds, Davis’s identity claims and place in each of these social domains is ambiguous, and ever subject to rejection.

Many other social conflicts and cleavages also yield borderland identities of the kind described in this overview. Moreover, borderland identities may appear in any or all of the three major types of identities: group identities, unique personal identities, and self-identity. For example, gay, lesbian or bi-sexual children who are under threat of being disowned by a parent on the basis of their sexual orientation, have a borderland identities regard to their sexual identities (group identities) and their unique personal identities with their parents. This conundrum will certainly also take shape in their unique relationship to themselves or their self-identity. Hence social divides and conflicts that produce borderland identities may take many diverse forms.

In the face of societal, intrafamilial, or interpersonal rejection however, those with borderlands identities as described by Anzaldúa—and actually everyone as stressed by Kristeva—may seek to face and reconcile whatever internalized societal anger, hate, or fear that may exist in themselves. Those social inheritances may appear as patterns of self-disregard, personal blind spots and/or projected anger at others supposedly different from oneself. To consciously encounter and reconcile ourselves to our own diversity in this way can create within ourselves greater comfort, self-acceptance, and inner peace. In turn, becoming a peaceful presence in social life may in time feed back synergistically into social life contributing to greater societal peace with diversity of all kinds. As Anzaldúa stated: “I change myself, I change the world” (1987: 70). This is not an overly idealistic claim. At the time of this writing the increasing visibility of peaceful and self-confident transgender people in the US is fostering increasing recognition and protections for transgender persons in American society. As transgender-related societal meanings, values and practices shift, transgender—once regarded as a borderlands identity that united mutually exclusive aspects of gender—is becoming less contested over time. Transgender-related social change remains incomplete and trans persons may still face refusal of their gender identity claims from one context to the next. Nevertheless the projects of self-remaking that social conflicts, inner diversity, and borderlands identities present to all of us are in keeping with longstanding feminist projects of peace and social justice—projects within which everyone may find a role to play.

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