| Chicana theory emerges in the Americas in the 1970s as a challenge to both the ethnocentrism of Western feminism and the sexism of male-dominated Black/Chicano culture. Gloria Anzaldua highlights the importance of the concept of border spaces as sites of contest, change and flux. Borders are places where different cultures, identities, sexualities, classes, geographies, races and genders collide or interchange. Anzaldua represents the consciousness of the 'new mestiza' - or mixed-race woman - as one involving 'crossing over' and 'perpetual transition', thereby avoiding unitary paradigms and dualistic thought. Chicana theory resonates powerfully with feminist materialism, a name for feminisms concerned to relate marxist feminist theories to poststructuralist theories of language and ideology. |