Instance data

title: "Mestizajes: alterity, exoticism and internal colonialism in Mexican visual cultures "

candidate: "Maria Elena Rodriguez Rodriguez BA M.A."

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study_program: "Dr.-Studium der Philosophie; Kunst u. kulturwiss. Studien (Stzw)"

abstract: "The creation of identities through visual cultures in Latin America has been deeply influenced by the idea of "mestizaje" as the cultural, 'racial' or ethnic miscegenation product of Spanish and Portuguese colonialism. Specially in Mexico, national identity has been shaped by highlighting mestizaje due to Spanish colonialism during the late XV Century as it's salient feature while at the same time shaping notions of gender, race and class. My thesis explores the visual cultures that appear in regard to "mestizaje" both in its oppressive and liberating facets. I focus on the creation of national identity in Mexico and its very specific relationship to race as expressed in the foundational ideology of mestizaje. This foundational ideology was forged during the post-revolutionary context in Mexico (1920-1940) and it entailed the idea of a supposed “racial betterment” through the mixture of races. This idea was mostly popularized by philosopher, politician, lawyer and prolific writer José Vasconselos in his very influential work La raza cósmica (1925) and became central to the project of reconstruction of the nation after the Mexican Revolution and, as I will expose in this research, continues to be relevant until today. Even if the ideology of "mestizaje" was seen as fostering inclusivity, it is based on a polarization of a we against a them that emphasizes segregation and classification. More than a celebration of interculturalism, as it might have been intended or at least as it is commonly depicted, mestizaje as the foundational ideology of 'Mexican' identity, is strongly inscribed in racial and racist discourses and traditions which foster discrimination towards 'the non mixed' such as indigenous and foreigners, and can be understood as a strategy of 'whitening'.By contrast, some of the current struggles towards the recognition of minorities expressed in feminist intersectional writings and artistic productions rewrite the concept of mestizaje under an emancipatoy light. Understanding it as a semantic tool that challenges the aforementioned negative connotations and highlight cultural 'hibridity' as a condition for breaking eurocentric binarism and oppressive alterity. My thesis explores the possibilities that the new understanding of mestizaje following the work of the feminist Chicana philosopher Gloria Anzanldúa opens up to decolonize the production of subjectivity through visual cultures, in the context of Mexico."

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