Linguistic Rupture, Racialization, and Resistance in Latina/x Feminisms: A Critical Phenomenological Approach
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Grimm, Erika
- Graduate Program:
- Philosophy (PHD)
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- July 12, 2023
- Committee Members:
- Leonard Lawlor, Program Head/Chair
Ted Toadvine, Major Field Member
Eduardo Mendieta, Major Field Member
Mariana Ortega, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Alicia Decker, Outside Unit & Field Member - Keywords:
- linguistic rupture
Latina
Latinx
feminist philosophy
philosophy of race
language
intersectionality
critical phenomenology
Continental philosophy
Anzaldua
Lugones
Ortega
Martinez
Alcoff - Abstract:
- This dissertation offers an account of linguistic practices of Latinx people in the United States through the lens of critical feminist phenomenology. It examines how Latinx people are racialized on the basis of their language use, the normative logics that structure those processes of racialization, and the practices by which Latinx people resist and transform those logics. In this project, I develop a critical feminist phenomenological approach that locates itself within a tradition of Latina feminist phenomenology—a tradition that has prioritized the articulation of situated, embodied experiences of oppressing⇔resisting relations lived by Latinx intersubjectivities in the context of the United States. I propose the concept of “linguistic rupture” in order to name the specific kind of experience at the center of this analysis. The analysis allows for a reconceptualization of language and linguistic practices that constructs Latinx speakers as actively resistant rather than just passively oppressed. While I do argue that linguistic rupture is particularly significant in understanding the racialization of Latinx populations in the United States, the account of linguistic rupture developed in this project has potential for application across a broad range of racializing processes and events not limited to U.S. Latinx experience. It thus invites further examination and critical engagement with the various ways in which ruptures experienced by minoritized and marginalized subjects in general expose hegemonic logics operating in multiple directions, as well as the ways in which linguistic engagements specifically anchor embodied intersubjectivity existentially.