Reframing Identity and Building a Nomadic Home through Mestiza Consciousness in 'Brincando el charco. Portrait of a Puerto Rican'

Abstract

Reading through one another insights raised by feminist thinkers Gloria Anzaldúa, Chela Sandoval, Rosi Braidotti and Karen Barad, this work analyses the 1994 autofictional film Brincando el charco. Portrait of a Puerto Rican by New York-based filmmaker and scholar Frances Negrón-Muntaner. This film is approached as a prime example of ways in which feminist autofictional practices in cinema have the potential to reframe the notions of identity and home, beyond dominant—sexist, racist, and homophobic—narratives. Barad’s diffractive methodology allows for bringing together Anzaldúa’s mestiza consciousness, Sandoval’s differential consciousness and Braidotti’s nomadic consciousness, as a conceptual apparatus to unpack how Negrón-Muntaner combines fiction, autobiography and documentary footage in order to problematise androcentric narratives, come to terms with her multi-layered identity as a queer member of the Puerto Rican diaspora, and ultimately manage to build an alternative, always-in-the-making, home for herself.

Keywords

• puerto-rican diaspora
• autofictional cinema
• identity
• nomadic
• diffractive