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Description
The thesis represents spiritual activist and public intellectual work. The text is an scholarly exercise to comprehend how the process of writing about pain and loss permitted the recuperation of all aspects of self. It seeks to encode a dynamic of love and loss by participating in the cultural production and inscription of a spiritual sign-system or semiotics for the discourse of same-sex desire and Chicano identity. Inspired by the work of Anzaldúa and Aztec iconography and philosophy, the thesis explores ways of writing about the queer Chicano subject in the face of despair and heartbreak. Fortunately, Anzaldúa’s work on the narrativization of self and culture, its theoretical implications (autohistorias and autohistorias-teorias), and recourse to indigenous Náhua concepts offer direction. These help to name and distinguish differential consciousness as altered states and make possible the crafting of a poetic language with which to write about descent into the abyss. As such the thesis reconfigures and narrativizes the spiritual quest as decline into despair resulting from loss of the object of desire. What is more, a methodology or system of practices for spiritual reflection and healing through change and transformation is identified and presented as a sacred and ritual process. The above is framed by the native belief that the heart is an integral part of one's being as well as the seat of wisdom, memory, knowledge, and perception and was instrumental in the construction of the thinking heart imperative. The latter serves as a theoretical tool for the recollection of the self in the past in order to obtain wisdom and knowledge of the self in the present. It also assists in the deployment of a renewed sensibility of queer Chicano and cultural identity. The mapping of this process through the act of writing is vital to self-awareness and the acquisition of a renewed consciousness or conciencia. Lastly, the construction and practice of a new ethical activity or consciousness is presented as resulting from queer Chicano desire, failed love, despair, and recovery. This process is metaphorically comparable to descending into and re-emerging from the abyss of Anzaldúa’s Coatlicue state or the journeys of ancient shaman ancestors who searched the underworld for lost souls. Using a combination of the indigenous notion of the blooming heart and Anzaldúa’s technique for "putting Coyolxauhqui together" recovery and return from the darkness of despair is made possible. This process gives voice to a differential consciousness of queer Chicano identity marked by catastrophic experiences.
