Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera:

The Deconstruction of Phallogocentric Narratives

Abstract

Poststructuralist theorist Derrida urges a need to break the binary positions in phallogocentric narratives. Following his idea, poststructuralist feminists like Julia Kristeva and Hélène Cixous also say that women need to be themselves while writing so that they are free from the phallogocentric influence. They also say that female authors write in a way to deconstruct the male narratives of history, religion, language, and even identity. Another poststructuralist theorist Judith Butler clarifies that to deconstruct does not mean to dismiss the previous meaning but to question that meaning. Gloria Anzaldua’s text Borderlands/La Frontera (1987) is used in this paper to explore how her book is a reflection of the multifaceted identity of a colonized people like Chicana natives. In this book, Anzaldua mingles genres and languages to delineate how the colonized and colonizing cultures blur at a point and become a means to celebrate. This paper attempts to show how Anzaldua is not only deconstructing the binary opposition found in phallogocentric narratives but also recreating new narratives which are both feminine and masculine.