Fluidity

LACS*6010 Dr. Susan Douglas

Patrick Horrigan
7 November 2014

The New Fluidity of Identity A Poststructuralist Approach to Imagining Identity

Identity in the 21st-century has become increasingly difficult to define as societies continue to
integrate on a global scale. Our modern identities are the result of our cultural differences and diversity,
and they represent both our individuality and our commonality. As Zygmunt Bauman writes in regards
to our changing social frameworks:
We are now passing from the solid to the fluid phase of modernity; and
fluids are so called because they cannot keep their shape for long, and unless
they are poured into a tight container they keep changing shape under the
influence of even the slightest of forces (2004, 51).
This fluid phase of modernity requires an acceptance of the fluidity of identity. Identity is not
something that is just inherited; it is not innate nor is it subconscious. Identity is no longer imposed
upon us by society, but rather it is constructed through our interactions within society and our personal
ambition. With regards to Latin America, this fluidity of identity has been repeatedly expressed through
art, as artists have taken on the role of cultural critic. i In the following analysis, I will focus on Ana
Mendieta, Frida Kahlo, and Guillermo Gomz-Pea in order to discuss how dual identities have been
expressed in art, how artists have fought conformity and homogenization, and how they have promoted
cultural plurality.
As a Cuban growing up in Iowa, USA, Ana Mendieta experienced a deep-seated conflict of
conformity; Mendietas Cuban heritage challenged the social norm and as a result she suffered social
alienation. Despite this oppression, she actively embraced her Cubanidad, and was able to create a
vertical link between her past and present. Mendieta changed what it meant to be both an American and
a Cuban, as she worked to effectively hybridize her two cultural identities. In her performance art,
Mendieta involved rituals and symbols that affirm[ed] social bonds, connect[ed] the practitioner to the
past, and overc[a]me limits of time, place, and mortality, and it was these symbols and principles that
Mendieta used to build her fluid identity (Fusco 1995, 122).
When we discuss Ana Mendieta it is appropriate to address the norm of acculturation in the US.
Newly introduced cultures in the US have been repeatedly subjugated to exclusion and coercion,
however, in the case of Ana Mendieta, she was able to overcome those obstacles and embrace her
plurinationality. Mendieta became a symbol for the experience of many in the Americas whose
histories have been shaped by forced migration, enslavement, expropriation, and loss, and more
specifically of the Cubans who would have to undergo a long and painful process of rethinking
[themselves] and dismantling imposed histories in order to rediscover [their] America, its voice, and its
art (Fusco 1995, 124). By developing her fluid identity Mendieta revealed the possibilities for cultural
co-existence in the US.
Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, is another individual who has cultivated a fluid identity in her art.
Throughout her life, Kahlo endured significant physical traumas and as she struggled to recover, her
feelings of fragmentation became the subject of much of her work. In her self-portraits, Kahlo
displayed the divisions of herself as a variety of characters that represented both the fantasy and reality
of her life. Her fluid identity addressed her struggles to cope with her reality, however, her ability to
create and re-create her self-image, in a way, reconciled these warring dualisms. Kahlo did not allow
society to construct her identity, but rather she explored her ability to challenge traditional ideas of
gender, sexuality, race, class, and the divide between past and present. As Joanna Latimer suggest, at
the same time as Kahlo portraits her self, her portraits also perform dividuality as an alternative vision
of personhood to that which dominates Western thought and the biopolitics of social organization

Fluidity
Patrick Horrigan
LACS*6010 Dr. Susan Douglas
7 November 2014
(Latimer 2009, 56). Fridas fluid identity was a result of deconstructing her past and present,
connecting the fragmented parts of her reality, yet still allowing them to exist as divisions that in and of
themselves were enough to be considered whole.
The idea of a fluid identity is not entirely about the creation of a new, hybridized identity that
fuses together our past and present. Instead, fluidity of identity is about challenging social conventions
of identity construction; addressing our cultural differences and accepting them as equal; breaking
down the societal borderlines that define and divide us. As a Mexicano who aligns himself with the
political struggle initiated by the 1960s Chicano student movement, Guillermo Gmez-Pea
personifies this borderline identity as he interacts with both his Mexican and Mexican-American
counterparts (Quintana 2002, 217). In his art, Gmez-Pea personified this double identity as symbolic
of both hybridity and fragmentation. In his work Border Brujo (1988), this duality was manifested in
language, as Gmez-Peas fifteen different personae, each [spoke] a different border language,
representative of their regional and cultural diversity (2002, 220). Gmez-Pea tested and obscured the
traditional borders of East and West, North and South, and addressed some alternatives to cultural and
nationalistic constructs (2002, 218). In his work, fluidity of identity represents his conscious efforts to
interact with different sectors of society and to emphasize difference as a positive characteristic rather
than negative.
These three artists who have explored their fluid identities have done so because society failed
to acknowledge their diversity. Ana Mendieta, Frida Kahlo, and Guillermo Gmez-Pea did not allow
social conventions and ideologies to diminish their sense of self, rather they developed a fluidity of
identity to connect their concrete histories; histories they have used to create their modern identities.
They have challenged traditional ideas of multiculturalism, which up to this point has been used by
society as a colorcoding system, with little regard for culture, promoting the deceptive idea that
culture can be transmitted through genes (Quintana 2002, 224). In conclusion, Ana Mendieta, Frida
Kahlo, and Guillermo Gmez-Pea have been protagonists of cultural diversity and the fluidity of
identity as they have explored their assorted histories and used them to construct their present.

Notes
i
Alvina E. Quintana uses the term cultural critic in her article Performing Tricksters: Karen Tei Yamashita and
Guillermo Gmez-Pea, to discuss Gmez-Pea and Yamashita as artists who used their art to criticize the overbearing
role that society has played in defining an individuals identity.

Works Cited
Bauman, Zigmunt. Identity: Conversations with Benedetto Vecchi. Cambridge: Polity
Press, 2004.
Fusco, Coco. Traces of Ana Mendieta: 1988-1993. In English is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural
Fusion in the Americas. New York City: The New Press, 1995, 121-126.
Latimer, Joanna. Unsettling bodies: Frida Kahlo's Portraits and In/dividuality. The Sociological
Review 56.2 (2009): 46-62.
Quintana, Alvina E. Performing tricksters: Karen Tei Yamashita and Guillermo Gomez-Pena.
Amerasia Journal 28.2 (2002): 217-225.