Border studies reframes Chicana identity as crossings and memory rather than a fixed blueprint

Evidence

In Chicana and Chicano cultural productions, racial and cultural mixture emerge through the transformation of the US-Mexico border as a geographical and perceptual site, recognized by Jose David Saldivar as “a paradigm of crossings, intercultural exchanges, circulations, resistances, and negotiations as well as of militarized ‘lowintensity’ conflict” (Saldivar, 1997, ix). This line of investigation allows Chicanas and Chicanos to contest the violence of the border alongside the racist and discriminatory practices of US structures and among other things, to confront the implications of living with the legacy of not only being internally colonized, but of being “Americanized” as well. The aim of border crossings is not to provide a complete blueprint of what constitutes Chicananess and Chicanoness. Memory - lacunae, absences, recollections - plays a pivotal role in the re-evaluation and reinscription of Chicana and Chicano pluralities, fragmented histories, geographic terrains, and political borders. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2487

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Gloria Anzaldua’s borderlands theory and internal colonization frameworks in latino studies
• DEFINE: Defines the borderlands paradigm as crossings, exchanges, resistances, and low-intensity conflict