False models of dichotomous identity

Met up with Cemelli de Aztlán today. She introduced me to the man who owns the house. Nice guy.

She and I went to lunch afterwards. Had one of those remarkable, stirring conversations that leave you… well, I’ll get my thoughts on that organized later on. But what started as a conversation about the politics of relationships ended up as a theological- political- cultural- sociological verbal examination of the Juarez girls controversy. Did it originate in the culture? Does the culture justify, maintain and prolong the problem? Or do the rapes have their origins, as the FBI/ Mexican police explain(s), in the initial crime of American citizens and their impunity?

I am more concerned with the prolongation and justification of the crimes than I am with their origin. Quite admittedly, I am starting my research on this issue with the (arguable) insider’s perspective that culture does contribute to the problem and that something should be done about it.

To give an example of culture’s role in prolonging a problem, I am concerned that we need to use the politics of storytelling as a false bridge between identities and actions: we, as a society (Mexican and American!), have continuously felt the need to tell ourselves that the girls raped in Cd. Juarez were “decent” hard-working, maquiladora employees –morally righteous women, good mothers and daughters-- and not licentious party-girls who were “looking for it” or quite simply “had it coming.” [As a footnote, only 128 of the girls are thought or have been proven to be maquiladora workers. But that is not what worries me.] What concerns me is that in order to defend the cause of raped and murdered girls, we incongruously necessitate a redemptive myth! The effect of this situation is more than just a high level of cultural absurdity. It endangers the few, already inefficient actions taken to solve the crime problem.

Redemptive myths such as these, as dangerous as they might be, are mechanisms of healing. Prof. Jackson, I’m sure, would agree. But I believe they are an obvious reaction to a basic problem: the false models of dichotomous identity we have built. The academic world has already reacted to these dichotomies by theorizing alternate models of identity: intersubjectivity, transnationality, diasporic and borderland identities, etc., but how can the academia help translate these theories into action? The act of storytelling, as I’ve already argued, is flawed in that it derives from the very problem and can prolong it. This specific redemptive myth, for example, comes hand in hand with another (also erroneously dichotomous) myth of justification: if the woman is a “whore,” the rapist is justified. Because the woman is a “saint” according to this myth, then the rapist is far from justified. But what of the many victims in Juarez that do not in reality have this socio-political and moral identity?

To expand on the notion of false models of dichotomous identity:

I’ve been struggling intellectually with the black and white mentality of our society for some time now. More specifically, with the mentality that classifies identity within the scheme of dichotomies. The basic idea is that we’ve constructed models of identity that have only one alternate other –an often absolute converse option. I’m talking about bipolar, dichotomous modes of identity. False structural models that dictate that a woman is either a whore or a saint; a person is either one nationality or the other; a citizen belongs to one culture or the other –and these cultures are surely absolute opposites, etc.

The result, I argued, is a mentality that promotes a socio-political problematic that can only be solved if we somehow build bridges of identity. Bridges that might have been built through the already growing academia of trans-identity. How, then, can we build on it towards action? Did the original moral dichotomy arise from the religious notions of good and evil? What can we do to correct our dichotomies without compromising our religious beliefs? And most importantly, what can the academy do that will directly, positively affect the situation of the women of Cd. Juarez?