Introduction shifting worlds, una entrada

Abstract

In Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa’s writings, “nepantla”—a Nahuatl term meaning “in-between space”—indicates temporal, spatial, psychic, and/or intellectual point(s) of liminality and potential transformation. During nepantla, individual and collective self-conceptions and worldviews are shattered. Apparently fixed categories—whether based on gender, ethnicity/‘race,’ sexuality, economic status, health, religion, or some combination of these elements and often others as well—begin eroding. Boundaries become more permeable, and begin to break down. This loosening of previously restrictive labels and beliefs, while intensely painful, can create shifts in consciousness and opportunities for change.¹

Those of us who live skirting otros mundos, other groups, in this in-between state I call nepantla have a unique perspective. We notice the breaches in feminism, the rifts in Raza studies, the breaks in our disciplines, the splits in this country. These cracks show the flaws in our cultures, the faults in our pictures of reality. The perspective from the cracks gives us different ways of defining the self, of defining group identity.

—Gloria E. Anzaldúa