Anzaldúa’s vision, therefore, is not just antisystemic, but more so othersystemic and utopistic
(Wallerstein 1998), for it seeks not just to overthrow, but also to build alternative visions and
realities. Moreover, Anzaldúa’s vision is utopistic in a crosscultural way, highly aware of the
different ways the East and the West conceive of the utopian visions of what could or must be.
This comparative/integrative vision is deeply built into Anzaldúa’s simultaneous self/globe
changing strategy, in fact. For her, it is impossible to seek the good (broader) society, without a
simultaneous effort in seeking the good “society” within. One is conditioned and simultaneous
with the other. They are twinborn. There is no separation of means and ends, in either direction.
Movement Borderlands
... Nuestra alma el trabajo, the opus, the great alchemical work; spiritual mestizaje, a
“morphogenesis”
5
…
5. To borrow chemist Ilya Prigogine’s theory of “dissipative structures.” Prigogine
discovered that substances interact not in predictable ways as it was taught in science, but
in different and fluctuating ways to produce new and more complex structures, a kind of
birth he called “morphogenesis,” which created unpredictable innovations.
—Anzaldúa (1987:81 and endnote pp. 9798)
In Anzaldúa, utopianism, mysticism, and science are mixed, and integral to one another. Her
crossmovement vision and strategy allow her to draw upon the rich reservoir of a multitude of
cultural, spiritual, and intellectual traditions to pursue her work on the self and the world. She is
highly conscious of her inheritance from and affinities with diverse social and cultural
movements. She identifies with them for they provide distinctly different elements to her
humanist project. Especially, she makes significant effort to critically break down the dualisms of
mystical and utopian movements, and both in the context of the intellectual movements she seeks
to build within and outside the academy. Hers is a utopystic (cf. Tamdgidi 2007b, Forthcoming)
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Convention