Shifting Perspectives: Spiritual Activism, Social Transformation, and the Politics of Spirit

Abstract

These epigraphs—drawn from three distinct points in Gloria Anzaldúa’s career—illustrate the crucial role spirituality¹ plays in her visions for social transformation. Throughout her writings Anzaldúa insists on a politics of spirit that can empower social actors to transform themselves and their worlds. In theories like El Mundo Zurdo, the Borderlands, mestiza consciousness, nepantla, and conocimiento, she develops a holistic worldview that synthesizes social activism with spiritual vision, creating a unique form of spiritual activism.² As I define the term, spiritual activism is a visionary, experientially-based epistemology and ethics, a way of life and a call to action. At the epistemological level, spiritual activism posits a metaphysics of interconnectedness and employs relational modes of thinking.³ At the ethical level, spiritual activism includes specific actions designed to challenge individual and systemic racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of social injustice. Spiritual activism is spirituality for social change, spirituality that recognizes the many differences among us yet insists on our commonalities and uses these commonalities as catalysts for transformation.

We the women here, take a trip back into the self, travel to the deep core of our roots to discover and reclaim our colored souls, our rituals, our religion. We reach a spirituality that has been hidden in the hearts of oppressed people under layers of centuries of traditional god-worship.

“El Mundo Zurdo: The Vision” (1981)

We’re not supposed to remember…otherworldly events. We’re supposed to ignore, forget, kill those fleeting images of the soul’s presence and of the spirit’s presence. We’ve been taught that the spirit is outside our bodies or above our heads somewhere up in the sky with God. We’re supposed to forget that every cell in our bodies, every bone and bird and worm has spirit in it.

Borderlands/La Frontera (1987)

With awe and wonder you look around, recognizing the preciousness of the earth, the sanctity of every human being on the planet, the ultimate unity and interdependence of all beings—somos todos un paíz. Love swells in your chest and shoots out of your heart chakra, linking you to everyone/everything.…You share a category of identity wider than any social position or racial label. This conocimiento motivates you to work actively to see that no harm comes to people, animals, ocean—to take up spiritual activism and the work of healing.

“now let us shift” (2002)