1/03/2023 and 5/05/2023
“Because I, a mestiza,
continually walk out of one culture
and into another,
because I am in all cultures at the same time,
alma entre dos mundos, tres, quatro,
me zumba la cabeza con lo contradictorio.
Estoy norteada por todas las voces que me bablan
simultáneamente.”
Ch. 7, The consciousness of the mestiza.
We are pleased to invite you to a meeting about the work of queer chicana.x feminist writer and theorist, poet, artist, activist Gloria Anzaldúa, on the occasion of the publication in its french translation of Borderlands/La Frontera. The New Mestiza (1987) (Terres Frontalières – La Frontera. La nouvelle mestiza) by Cambourakis editions, with translators Nino S. Dufour and Alejandra Soto Chacón, and the prefacer Paola Bacchetta.
The first session, on March 1, will propose an introduction to the work of Gloria Anzaldùa, and to the adventure of this translation.
The second session, on May 5, will be dedicated to the reading of the work and its resonances in lived experiences, narratives and expressions in art, genders, languages, revolts and inventions of forms of life.
Gloria Anzaldùa’s work, recognized and studied all over the world, was introduced in France at the margins of the feminist and queer movements during the 90s, and recently gave rise to an international colloquium at the University of Paris 8. The translation of Borderlands/La Frontera. The New Mestiza reaffirms the opening to an initial fertile and precursory inspiration.
The process of translation has engaged a collective experience. It engaged the translators themselves in a situated perspective of translation but also numerous woven relationships around the work and life of Anzaldùa.
Anzaldúa at the same time was a researcher, activist, a writer and poet, an avant-garde artist from the Mexican-American scene rediscovered now through the lens of decolonial studies. Her work wished to transmit the power of language to invent, decompose and recompose itself across borders and ways of writing, thinking and feeling, and theorizing the experiences in the languages and from the standpoints in which they are lived, both multiple and conflicting. Her great strength lies in the way to enunciate concepts as they emerge in lived experiences. Anzaldùa’s epistemology thus presupposes a praxis, where theories have often already undergone a distancing from life, to pick up the thread within the relationships of belonging that run through us and their contradictions, and a living, multiple positionality that academic disciplinarization cannot fully grasp and transmit, because it is a sentipensar in its integrity.
What she transmits thus is an invitation to experience this integrity in lived experience, reflection and expression.
Readings of Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera. The New Mestiza
With:
Paola Bacchetta (University of California at Berkeley)
Nino S. Dufour and Alejandra Soto Chacón (Translators)
Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at 7 pm
The process of translation of Gloria Anzaldùa, Borderlands/La Frontera. The New Mestiza
Via the Internet between Berkeley, Marseille and Paris
Address of the videoconference:
https://us06web.zoom.us/s/85625213030?pwd=VnVsb2RpU0tmNS9kTEdaT2FmeDBWUT09
Meeting ID Zoom: 856 2521 3030 | Secret code: 124336
Friday, May 5, 2023 at 2 pm
Crossborder readings
Ephemeral reading circle of Gloria Anzaldùa, Borderlands/La Frontera. The New Mestiza
Research room of the University Library
University of Paris 8
2 rue de la Liberté – 93526 Saint-Denis (M° Saint-Denis Université)
Gloria Anzaldùa, Terres frontalières – La Frontera. La nouvelle mestiza on Cambourakis editions website : https://cambourakis.com/tout/sorcieres/terres-frontalieres-la-frontera
Decolonizing Sexualities Network: Transnational Archiving of Sexualities: Engaging Plural Pasts. A series of events in Paris in May 2023 | https://decolonizingsexualities.org/events
Cambourakis Editions | https://cambourakis.com
Open seminar of the young researchers at LLCP-Paris 8 | https://llcp.univ-paris8.fr
Political studies group in networks | https://political-studies.net
Open to all and in free entrance.
Paris 8 University access and campus map: https://www.univ-paris8.fr/IMG/pdf/plan-3d-paris-8.pdf
Contact: infopolitical-studies.net