ABSTRACT
Hybridity in Borderlands represents a threat to the artificial sameness and the formidable fictional power of nationalism. The middle space of the borderlands recalls the unchartered territory of Conrad’s pilgrims in Heart of Darkness. In so doing, as Alfred Arteaga has noted, she reconceptualizes Chicano space as she erases the limits of the nation. In terms of space, the Plan drew the boundaries of a mestizo nation within the boundaries of the United States. Aztlan debordered and rebordered the territory and became, explicitly, a spatialized tool of resistance. Like the borderlands, the Black Atlantic can be aptly described as spaces that, in Anzaldua’s words, “connote[s] transitioning, crossing borders and changing perspectives”. The process of transforming social and economic impositions into theoretical formulations may allow us to establish a similarity between W. E. B. Du Bois’s “double consciousness” and Anzaldua’s borderlands.
