Sunday, April 22, 2018

CARA’s Politics of Representation- Alicia Gaspar de Alba

Professor Alicia Gaspar de Alba identified both in Chapter 3 and in her class lecture her critique of the representation of women in the CARA exhibit. I find her critique important and essential in understanding feminism and reclaiming the past in order to redefine the future. I believe her work and lecture not only do that but it challenges people to do so as well as she critiques an important historical exhibit. Her critique of CARA served to highlight the need to change the “ranking oppression” in which women who are illustrated in are are focused and identified as having roles of the wife, mother, and but not limited to “la fulana.” I believe her work is important in highlighting the need to have Chicana artist in order to move away from these ongoing prevalent gender issues that we have seen throughout history, but nonetheless continue to see and reproduce. Gaspar de Alba highlights how there are 100 more Chicano artist in this exhibition that Chicana artist. These numbers already prove to be complicated because as she states, “of fifty-four mural images projected, only seven were done exclusively by women or women’s collective.” Here Gaspar de Alba continues to describe the discrepancies with gender issues in the CARA Exhibition.Professor Gaspar de Alba discussion about politics of identity and identity politics really sparked my interest and ideas. When professor Gaspar de Alba asked how many of us were Feminist. I thought this occurrence in class was as her work strong and reflective. When thinking about my own politics of identity, which professor Gaspar de Alba explained is your own personal identities that include identity politics, race and that of myself I thinking of all this in understanding my own politics of identity I placed myself in an awkward situation. I say this because I have always thought of myself as a feminist in one way or another. Yet, I was uncomfortable because as a Mexican woman I reflected how much I have done for my community of women and how much I have shared my education with the machista male figures in my life. Overall, I enjoyed both the reading and her lecture because I was able to reflect on my politics of identity and encouraged me to work on how I want to identify and share the knowledge I gain about gendered issues not always talked about.

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