Biopolitical Marginalities: A Study of Politicized Disability in Chicana Poetry

The birth of the Chicana feminist movement in the 1970s was the result of Mexican American women’s position at the crossroads of a misogynist indigenous culture and an exclusionary Americentrism. Chicana poetry is an eclectic embodiment of Kimberlé Crenshaw's theory of ''intersectionality” which posits that that the composite nature of identity entails the convergence of various types of persecution, such as ethnicism, chauvinism, classism, and ableism; it is an overarching approach which can encompass Chicanas' multidimensional inferiority. Disability poetry by Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, Ana Castillo, Laurie Ann Guerrero, and Leslie Contreras Schwartz explicates the medical regulation of illness and the governance of indigent Chicanas, illustrating that disability offers its veterans tools for withstanding ableist and sociopolitical discrimination. Disability-related Foucauldian notions, such as “biopolitics,” suggest the convergence of disability-centred and political subalternity, emphasizing the concomitance of diverse hegemonic paradigms that is espoused by “intersectionality.” Chicana poets subvert ableist preconceptions of the compound limitations afflicting disabled women of colour. The poems propose alternatives to physical and political stagnation, thereby enhancing disability justice and sociopolitical equities. By redefining the otherness of illness and superseding the fixities of medical knowledge, Chicanas strive to alter the perceptions of the biopolitical gaze and carve out disability-accommodating positions for themselves. Supplementing the deficiency of Foucauldian studies of Chicana disability poetry, this study examines the poetic substantiation of Chicanas’ biopolitical marginality; explicating the selected poems offers insight into various manifestations of their politicized disabilities and their means of recalcitrance.