A Personal Journey Through Anzaldua’s Seven Stages of Conocimiento
“Your joy can fill you only as deeply as your sorrow has carved you.” — Kahlil Gibran
As Chicana author and cultural theorist Gloria Anzaldúa writes, seeing double is inevitable when you enter into an entirely new macro system that challenges your narratives and way of seeing the world. The following essay is based on a podcast I did with my fellow University of San Diego peers/scholars Maylen R. and Lenin Raj Thankaraj about the lasting impact of our international experiences on our identity development. It uses Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldua’s seven stages of conocimiento (awareness) that lies at the heart of Borderlands, her seminal text.
According to Anzaldua, intense life shattering experiences (i.e., moving to a different country) cause a rupture/fragmentation of the heart, mind, and soul (el arrebato) that result in a state of being torn between multiple ways (nepantla). The consequent state of despair (coatlicue) spurs a process of self reflection and an inward search for new meaning. If we are brave enough to spend time in that space of self loathing and hopelessness, we emerge with a deeper understanding of self and the world around us (El compromise). The pain of fragmentation paves way for new ways of knowing and functioning, in other words, possible alternative reconstructions of the self (Coyolxauhqui) followed by a clash of realities (the blow-up) and a shifting of realities as illustrated below.
The first time I came to the U.S. at the age of 10, I was under the strong influence of my parents who, though modern in many ways, were quite strict in the way that they raised my sister and I. When I look back at this time, I remember being made fun of because of my ethnic name, finding it hard to make friends, and struggling with the English language during my first year. Being an introvert and naturally drawn to solo or small-group activities, I also remember dreading classes like PE and theater where we had to perform/play within large groups. Having gotten used to Turkey’s rigid educational system based on memorization and rote learning (a la Freire’s banking model of education), I had to teach myself to ask “why” and be curious.
The part of my international experience that particularly lends itself to Anzaldúa’s seven spaces of awareness is my arrival to the U.S. the second time around when I was 21. As Oberg accurately describes as the honeymoon stage in his four stage culture shock model, the novelty of experiences one encounters upon moving to a new country renders it exceptionally exciting at first. Initially, it’s these new sights, new home, new school and/or new workplace that bring one to a state of euphoria; but especially for those coming from entirely different cultures and habits, the move soon lends itself to a seismic shift or rupture à la Anzaldúa’s el arrebato stage that causes one to question their current way of being.
Up until my 20s, I was who my parents expected me to be: conformist, conscientious, hardworking, compliant, quiet, heterosexual, loyal, and perhaps, a future diplomat. I had moved to the U.S. with my then boyfriend and the expectation was that we needed to marry within six months; otherwise how would we be accepted into the norms of Turkish society?
By way of context, which I didn’t have a chance to share in the podcast, I remember coming to Bloomington, Indiana with a limited budget that allowed for a small one bedroom in the basement of a single unit family house. The upper floor belonged to another couple. An anecdote now funny but at the time somewhat confounding was taking up a plate of homemade biscuits to the upstairs neighbors only to find them smoking joints and barely conscious to notice me at their door. With hardly any money to buy even used furniture, garage sales, Goodwill Store and Aldi’s remained my most frequented places for a long time. By leaving Turkey, I had voluntarily relinquished privileges that came with living in a diplomatic community and was now fending for myself.
I recall finding a job as a phone interviewer at IU’s Center for Survey Research, where I learned various probing methods aimed at changing a respondent’s mindset, to conduct research interviews during the evening shift. I recall feeling awful at disturbing people with a 35-minute survey questionnaire during their dinner hour and my INFJ personality would rather have me apologize than convert them to a “yes.” My next job would lead me to a researcher role (surely more aligned with my personality) at the Institute of Development Strategies (IDS), where I would meet my future professor and mentor, and our wonderfully caring executive assistant who became my quasi mom. Both were among the most cherished parts of my life during those difficult times. IDS was also where I met my first gay colleague who added animation and humor to our otherwise quiet corner. Another holding environment that I forgot to mention in the podcast was the vivacious Eva — my 90-something-old neighbor in whose company I found old German recipes and a connection reminiscent of the one I only shared with my grandmother. A fan of my homemade cheesecakes, she had started ordering weekly pies from me for her Sunday Mass and without knowing gave me something new to look forward to.
After the first few honeymoon months filled with newness, I had entered into a state of deep despair, what Anzaldúa coins Coatlicue. It felt like I was falling down a deep dark well like Alice in Wonderland with no bottom in sight. I remember getting excruciatingly painful headaches because my soul kept asking questions that my mind was unable to immediately answer. What would mom think if she knew my gay friends had perfectly healthy lives? If being gay is wrong (as mom told us), why are there LGBTQ rights in the U.S.? Why don’t we have sitcoms like Will and Grace in Turkey (they are funny!)? Why do I feel so scared and lonely when I should feel gratitude? Do I have a right to feel this way? Does it make me a bad person to question my values? Are these my values or what I think I should have? Why do I care so much about avoiding looking bad to others? I was rocking back and forth in Anzaldúa’s Nepantla stage and my mind felt like it was going to explode in its quest for a universal truth among multiple realities. In my native culture, there were absolute norms such as men are the breadwinner and women are the homemaker, straight is better, pre-marital sex is a sin, marriage is heterosexual etc. My spirit was rejecting all of them.
I stayed in the Coatlicue stage for over three years. At first, I tried to crush the psychic restlessness by reading about independent and courageous female characters in Barbara Taylor Bradford novels. I got familiar with the works of Wayne Dyer, Louise Hay, Daniel Goleman and re-read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, my childhood favorite, to remember how Francie found her place among others. I related immensely to Goldie Hawn’s words in her memoir, in which she wrote “I am not my success.” Until then, the identity forced upon me by my parents was based on success at school and in work, and sans that, I didn’t know who I was.
Anzaldúa’s El Compromiso stage, in which one builds an imaginary bridge between the old self and new self, transpired very slowly for me and did not fully materialize until several years later when I attended a professional development program called the “Landmark Forum.” Essentially, what allowed me to see the possibility that a bridge might exist was letting go of my fear of change. It was when I allowed myself the possibility to ‘become’ that I started becoming, and started putting my story (Coyolxauhqui) together. My headaches finally stopped.
There are lived experiences, and then there are the narratives that we create of those experiences. The narratives are culturally driven. And in the face of exposure to different cultures, our original narratives get challenged. If we are brave enough to question our assumptions and hold a wider view of self and the world, we can internalize Anzaldúa’s shifting realities (final stage) in which we act out our vision towards a path of positive transformation and growth. The journey is painful but truly empowering. Finding people with courage to walk through the process with us makes it easier as it’s in connections we are reminded that we are not alone.
Sources:
Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands = la frontera : the new mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute.
Anzaldúa across borders: A traveling thought gallery. (2018, August 31). Retrieved March 20, 2021, from https://llilasbensonmagazine.org/2017/08/27/anzaldua-across-borders-a-traveling-thought-gallery/
Buchanan, M. (n.d.). The seven stages of Conocimiento. Retrieved March 17, 2021, from https://borderlandslafrontera.tumblr.com/
Kim, Eunyoung. College Student Journal , v46 n1 p99–113 Mar 2012.
