The HEART of my thesis: Mariana Ortega's Philosophy of the Self in "In-Between" (self-selected text)
Foreword
I've encountered Mariana Ortega's ideas and philosophy before, when I started studying and researching Anzaldua's idea of Mestizaje and Latinx identities for my Advanced Experimental Drawing with Derek Liddington over the summer. It really interested me to look more into her framework and theories on Latinx identities and more feminist philosophy she proposes, especially for third spaces that many migrant, women of colour with more diverse identities, containing multiples, inhabit in the West.
What mostly drew me to her was her direct challenge to Anzaldua's concept of borderlands and "embracing ambiguity" which bothered her, somehow. Crossing from one space to another, from one identity to another, as if they were separated by borderlands. She, instead, proposed that we didn't have to exist differently and separately from our multiple identities; that we have a multiplicitous self, that is different depending on the different contexts it inhabits. Her emphasis on fluidity and profound connection and embodiment with the multiplicity inside us, especially in the context of Latinx identities and diaspora, as well as third spaces, is very empowering and way more contemporary to our experiences as Latinx people in the Diaspora, where creating third spaces like community and collective groups and places is one significant way of doing place-making.
I owe my whole framework and the development of conceptual ideation to my reading of Ortega's philosophy of the self and theory on how Latinx identities resist, especially those of us who exist differently in gendered, heteronormative, White and Western spaces, that surround us in the Diaspora. I will strive to make her visible as much as she has made all of us visible.
Text Description
Mariana Ortega’s In-Between offers a groundbreaking framework for understanding identity through the lens of Latinx feminism, existential phenomenology, and race theory. Ortega articulates a philosophy of the multiplicitous self, which exists simultaneously within multiple social locations and states of in-betweenness. This self is not fragmented but continuous, embodying contradictions and resisting the reductive need to prioritize a "truer" identity. Her conception of selfhood is shaped by non-linear temporality, intertwining past, present, and future, which challenges Western notions of fixed and intersectional identities.
Central to her work is the concept of hometactics, a form of resistance and spatial politics employed by colonized and marginalized communities. Unlike strategic approaches used by colonizers to impose dominance, hometactics are fluid, intersubjective, and spontaneous practices that navigate and dissolve dichotomies and binary hierarchies. These tactics highlight how diasporic and borderland subjects create belonging in spaces where traditional notions of home are inaccessible.
Ortega’s focus on the fluidity and multiplicity of identity, as well as her exploration of spatial resistance, is directly relevant to my thesis. Her emphasis on in-betweenness aligns with my project’s interrogation of the liminal spaces occupied by the Latinx Diaspora, while her exploration of hometactics informs my understanding of place-making as a political act of resistance against homogenization and erasure.
Main Concepts Index:
CHAPTER 1: The New Mestiza and La Nepantlera
- Challenge to Anzaldua's Borderlands - Latinx feminist phenomenology
CHAPTER 2: Being-between-Worlds, Being-in-Worlds
- The multiplicitous self
- World-traveling
- World-Traveling
- Resisting colonization, cultural appropriation, imposition
- Challenge to Identity politics -> proposal of coalition politics "becoming with you"
- Migration
- Diaspora
- (Dis)placement
- Place-making (?)
- Hometactis
- VS Strategy
- on the multiplicitous self: "existential continuity of experience despite multiplicity"
- projection on her futuristic self
- notion of temporality is not linear (western POV of the self) -> not like intersectionality (clear categories)
- self is intertwined with past, future and present -> identities are always in progress, they're shining and changing
- this is for people who dont have the means to organize (opposite to strategy) - resistance -> home tactics are more spontaneous -> spatial politics!
- they are intersubjective and fluid politics to dissolve established dichotomies/binary relationships
- opposed to homogenization of oppression and identities
- Difference between home tactics (for colonized communities) VS strategy (for colonizers) Colonizers CANT use hometactics -> they use strategies with the intention of making "foreign" places (othered places) more comfortable for them. they impose their home into places they see as inferior and worse than theirs. (p. 209)
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