Soy un amasamiento. Political Collectivity and the Problem of Identity

Abstract

"Identity" is an important political category to highlight and confront experiences of discrimination, exclusion, or oppression that remain invisible within anabstract reference to equality. However, as a point of reference, "identity" produces ambiguities and exclusions that seem to challenge the possibility of building political collectivities and establishing practices of speaking for each other. In the first two parts of this article, I will develop the problem of identity for the formation of collectives. On this ground, I will argue that instead of leading to further fragmentation and individualization, this insight could be a starting point to think about the relationship between identity and political subjectivity in different ways. This will be discussed in the third step, drawing primarily on Chicana Feminism (especially Gloria Anzaldúa and Chela Sandoval) where the aim of building political collectivities that surpass the notion of identity assumptions is derived from an ethical-aesthetic idea of transformation and alienation that I will suggest to understand with Anzaldúa's term "amasamiento."

Keywords

• identity politics
• intersectionality
• representation
• color blindness
• chicana feminism
• political subjectivity