Soul searching: Chicana feminist imaginaries in "Undone"
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Aarón Aguilar-Ramírez [1] ; Janis Be [1]
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[1] Whitman College
Whitman College
Estados Unidos
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- Localización: CiberLetras: revista de crítica literaria y de cultura, ISSN-e 1523-1720, Nº. 48, 2023 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Perspectives on Spanish, Latin American and Latinx television and cinema)
- Idioma: inglés
- Enlaces
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Resumen
This essay examines the interventions of Chicana feminist theory in the sci-fi television series Undone (2019).
While the mysterious source and nature of the time-bending abilities the protagonist develops remain in doubt, the show makes possible a third interpretation that locates Alma’s talents instead in Chicana feminist praxis as theorized in the contributions of Gloria Anzaldúa. We focus on this third way of understanding Alma’s abilities.
We show how the character resembles the Anzaldúan borderlands subjects of la nueva mestiza and the nepantlera, feminist figures whose inner psychic struggles reveal the historical and structural nature of oppression in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and whose oppositional consciousness visualizes new strategies for challenging it. We locate Alma’s Anzaldúan praxis in three critical borderlands maneuvers: the counterstance, tolerance for ambiguity, and hyper empathy. Finally, by acknowledging the limitations of Undone as a mainstream vehicle for Chicana feminist critique, we offer that an Anzaldúan reading models an interpretive counterstance against the dominant scripts and interpretive frameworks of the show itself and the broader racial imaginaries of mainstream science fictions.
