Nepantlera, Amidst the Cracks. Shifting Concepts in Gloria Anzaldúa’s Border/Body Thinking and Their Potential for Comics Studies

Abstract

The article proposes a recontextualization of Anzaldúa’s conceptual framework of border and body discourses. The first part focuses on “La Prieta”, one of Anzaldúa’s early texts, and her seminal work Borderlands (1987), wherein Anzaldúa exposes the racist, sexist, and queerphobic mechanisms of exclusion and repression that single out bodies as foreign and deviant, reinventing them as sources of productive potential. The second section turns to Light in the Dark to explore why Anzaldúa replaced some of her pivotal concepts and figures with others, in particular nepantla and the Mexica moon goddess, Coyolxauhqui. Drawing on illustrations Anzaldúa herself created in lectures and workshops, the third section looks at how her border/body thinking – deeply grounded as it is in mental images and visual poetry – might be applied to comics studies. A concluding analysis puts these reflections into dialogue with Latinx comics artist Breena Nuñez’s work.