Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T02:00:39.240Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Messy Archives and Materials That Matter: Making Knowledge with the Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa Papers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Abstract

When Gloria Anzaldúa died in 2004, she gave birth to an enormous archive; indeed, she let far more unpublished writings than works published in her lifetime. What's more, Anzaldúa was a compulsive reviser, and her archive includes ten to twenty unique drats of some works, along with doodles, ticket stubs, and other ephemera. his collection of material decenters what we previously thought constituted her literary corpus, knocking the presumed author of Borderlands / La Frontera of her axis. he process of siting through these materials changed my thinking about authority, textuality, identity, and many other things. My obsession with this archive has led me to reexamine the ways in which we produce, reproduce, and coproduce knowledge in archival work. In this essay, I show how recognizing the multiple material actants at work in this archive transforms conventional thought about archives, in general, and Anzaldúan studies, in particular.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Alaimo, Stacy. “Trans-corporeal Feminisms and the Ethical Space of Nature.” Material Feminisms. Ed. Alaimo, and Hekman, Susan. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2007. 237–64. Print.Google Scholar
Alarcón, Norma. “Anzaldúa's Frontera: Inscribing Gynetics.” Chicana Feminisms: A Critical Reader. Ed. Arredondo, Gabriela F. et al. Durham: Duke UP, 2003. 354–69. Print.Google Scholar
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands / La Frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1987. Print.Google Scholar
Anzaldúa, Gloria. The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader. Ed. Keating, AnaLouise. Durham: Duke UP, 2009. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa Papers, 1942-2004. Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, U of Texas, Austin.Google Scholar
Anzaldúa, Gloria. ed. Making Face, Making Soul = Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1990. Print.Google Scholar
Anzaldúa, Gloria. “now let us shift… the path of conocimiento… inner work, public acts.” This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation. Ed. Anzaldúa, and Keating, AnaLouise. New York: Routledge, 2002. 540–78. Print.Google Scholar
Anzaldúa, Gloria. “Puddles.” New Chicana/Chicano Writing 1. Ed. Tatum, Charles M. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 1992. 4345. Print.Google Scholar
Anzaldúa, Gloria. “Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers.” This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Ed. Anzaldúa, and Moraga, Cherríe. New York: Kitchen Table, 1983. 165–73. Print.Google Scholar
Aranda, José.Contradictory Impulses: María Ampario Ruíz de Burton, Resistance Theory, and the Politics of Chicano/a Studies.” American Literature 70.3 (1998): 551–79. Print.Google Scholar
Aranda, José.Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage.” Bost and Aparicio 476–84.Google Scholar
Belausteguigoitia Rius, Marisa, and del Socorro Gutiérrez Magallanes, María. “Chicano/a and Latino/a Literary Studies in Mexico.” Bost and Aparicio 95106.Google Scholar
Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke UP, 2010. Print.Google Scholar
Bost, Suzanne. Encarnación: Illness and Body Politics in Chicana Feminist Literature. New York: Fordham UP, 2009. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bost, Suzanne, and Aparicio, Frances. The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature. London: Routledge, 2013. Print.Google Scholar
Certeau, Michel de. The Writing of History. 1975. New York: Columbia UP, 1988. Print.Google Scholar
Collins, Jim. “Reading, in a Digital Archive of One's Own.” PMLA 128.1 (2013): 207–12. Print.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Trans. Prenowitz, Eric. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. 1966. London: Routledge, 1988. Print.Google Scholar
Drucker, Johanna. “Reading Interface.” PMLA 128.1 (2013): 213–20. Print.Google Scholar
Gomaa, Dalia. “Latina/o Literature in the Arab World.” Bost and Aparicio 124–30.Google Scholar
Keating, AnaLouise. “Archival Alchemy and Allure: The Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa Papers as Case Study.” Aztlán 35.2 (2010): 159–71. Print.Google Scholar
Keating, AnaLouise. “The Archive, Again.” Message to the author. 18 Feb. 2014. E-mail.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. “On Actor-Network Theory: A Few Clarifications.” Soziale Welt 47.4 (1996): 369–81. JSTOR. Web. 3 June 2015.Google Scholar
McGann, Jerome. “Database, Interface, and Archival Fever.” PMLA 122.5 (2007): 1588–92. Print.Google Scholar
Nakaznaya, Elena. “Latino/a Literary Studies in Siberia.” Bost and Aparicio 116–23.Google Scholar
Pérez, Emma. The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
Steedman, Carolyn. Dust: The Archive and Cultural History. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2002. Print.Google Scholar