“New Mestizas,” “‘World’-Travelers,”
and “ Dasein ”: Phenomenology and the
Multi-Voiced, Multi-Cultural Self
MARIANA ORTEGA
The aim of this essay is to carry out an analysis of the multi-voiced, multi-cultural self
discussed by Latina feminists in light of a Heideggerian phenomenological account
of persons or “Existential Analytic.” In so doing, it (a) points out similarities as well
as differences between the Heideggerian description of the self and Latina feminists’
phenomenological accounts of self, and (b) critically assesses María Lugones’s
important notion of “world-traveling.” In the end, the essay defends the view of a
“multiplicitous” self which takes insights from Lugones’s view of the self that “travels
‘worlds’” and from other Latina feminists’ accounts of self as well as from Martin
Heidegger’s account of Dasein.
Introduction
Voy,
vengo,
y luego pienso.
Que lo mismo
aquí que allá
no hay
un lugar
conseguido. Que aquí,
como allá,
soy lo que
Hypatia vol. 16, no. 3 (Summer 2001) © by Mariana Ortega