Constructing Identity(ies) through lo Cotidiano (‘Everyday Practice’): A Postpositivist Realist Approach to Popular Spatial Traditions in Amalia Mesa-Bains’ Domesticana Aesthetic, Ada María Isasi-Díaz’s Mujerista Theology, and Ana Castillo’s So Far from God

Abstract

In the previous chapter, I examined mestizaje/mulatez as ambivalent and hybrid spatialized embodied configurations. Through radical, embodied reflection, Anzaldúa, Estéves, and Jiménez Román discover that their race-gendered identities have been articulated as socio-symbolic spatial sites, reflective of social anxieties around contact and dispersion that are constitutive of the practices of nation building. In this chapter, I explore social practices of Latina mestizaje that pertain to Latina popular geography, a subfield of Human Geography that attends to the reproduction of social identity through the cultural and social activities that people undertake in everyday life.² I examine manifestations of popularized space in the theories of Amalia Mesa-Bains (1998, 2003) and Ada María Isasi-Díaz (2004a; 2004b), as well in Ana Castillo’s novel So Far from God (1994). I argue that these scholars and writers draw upon popularized conceptions of spatial identity in order to interrogate normative perceptions of Latinas and the social world of which they form a part as well as the effects of such perceptions on their life chances and opportunities.

All translations in this chapter are mine.