Mestizix Art Practices : Decolonizing Race, Gender and Class

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Mariel Rodriguez  

This paper interrogates the concept of mestizaje --as a racial theory linked to national identity-- as well as the tensions that the use of the term generates in contemporary decolonial and intersectional feminist discourse and practices. The discussion is guided by the analysis of visual cultures and their interplay with an affirmation of social identities for the mobilization of subaltern subjects/societies in the American context. I frame this question in regard to the various appropriations of the concept of mestizaje —the term commonly used to refer to the cultural, 'racial' or ethnic miscegenation product of Spanish and Portuguese colonialism in America— both in visual productions, artistic practices and in theory. The idea of mestizaje has shaped notions of gender, race, and class in Latin America and has been celebrated as a strategy for “fostering inclusivity” or interculturalism, while at the same time it is strongly inscribed in racial and racist discourses which foster discrimination towards 'the non mixed' such as indigenous and foreigners. As an ideology, it can be traced in a gender biased unequal distribution of rights and resources; the administration of desire through the regulation of progeny and compulsory heterosexuality. In contrast, I propose that the concept of Mestizaje in chicana feminism is used as a semantic tool to highlight cultural 'hybridity' and as a condition for breaking Eurocentric binarism and oppressive alterity. In this paper I discuss these tensions through the study of various artistic practices from Latin America.