Chicana Performative Action
How is the body situated in action?
In Helena Maria Viramontes' Under the Feet of Jesus, it is why no one moves to stop Estrella from using the crowbar to break the glass in the framed photograph of the children on the desk of the clinic’s receptionist, as a demand for the return of the family’s money. The family recognizes the performative act of breaking the glass as a challenge to the rules of the moment. Estella succeeds as the white nurse hands back the nine dollars and change—all the money her family has in the world.Chicana performative action occurs mostly as interruption to the dominant (read brown male supreme) narrative of ideology during the early part of the Chicano movement. In the women’s movement, it is through resolutions, drafted before conferences, presented as a collective body with a single message that interrupts the dominant (read white woman supreme) narrative of second wave feminist ideology. It doesn’t change the narrative, but the interruption draws, then demands attention to issues important to Chicanas and Latinas—migrant labor, bilingual education, access to education, financial freedom and the dismantling of the oppressive agencies that have historically held people of color at an unfair distance from economic opportunity.
Successful perception of a performative action requires a collective acknowledgment and acceptance of such an action without revealing to the dominant (read white male supreme) body that such an action has occurred. Eyes on a face must recognize the language of a performative action in order to respond to its occurrence.
