©2006 NWSA Journal, Vol. 18 No. 2 (Summer)

Theorizing at the Borders: Considering Social Location in Rethinking Self and Psychological Development

KELLI ZAYTOUN

This essay provides a framework for reconceptualizing and expanding perspectives on adult psychological development through the use of femi-nist standpoint theory. Considering the role of social location and iden-tity in how “self” and development are understood yielded new visions that respond to and address the limitations of traditional and current approaches. Perspectives explored within this framework resulted in implications for developmental theory, including reconsideration of defi-nitions of self-concept and self-in-relationship and new possibilities for understanding the connection between self-concept and social conscious-ness and activism. Since cultural influence determines the potentials and boundaries for how a person perceives themselves in relationship to their surroundings, standpoint theory is a useful tool for exploring how sense of self and psychological growth are constructed within particular and transitioning social locations. Possibilities for exploring how self-concept is intimately linked to the degree of one’s sense of social consciousness also are discussed.

Keywords: feminist developmental psychology / self-in-relationship / standpoint theory / self-concept / social consciousness

For more than two decades, feminist scholars have offered critical per-spectives on developmental psychology by exposing biased assumptions on which traditional theories were based, and, more recently, suggesting that further research consider the role of social context in psychologi-cal growth.1 Patricia H. Miller and Ellin Kofsky Scholnick introduced the most comprehensive review to date of the links between feminist and developmental theories in their edited book, Toward a Feminist Developmental Psychology (2000a). They identified major concepts that underlie feminist perspectives relating to developmental theory, including the interconnectedness (versus separateness) of human experience, the contextual nature of experience and knowledge, and the understanding of gender as a social, political construction (Miller and Scholnick 2000b, 5–6). In addition to the authors showcased in Miller and Scholnick’s col-lection, others have discussed the implications that postmodern feminist analyses pose for developmentalists by criticizing essentialistic, prescrip-tive perspectives that ignore cultural and political contexts in understand-ing psychological processes and research (e.g., Burman 1994; Morawski 1999), the nature of knowledge and epistemology (e.g., Harding 1996), and

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even constructions of “self” (e.g., Qin 2004). Indeed, such serious criti-cisms call into question the very legitimacy of developmental psychology. However, Sheila Greene (2003) suggested that a developmental approach “is necessary for a complete perspective on human psychological change and is useful to the feminist project, which is also fundamentally about change” (2–3). Exploring how sense of self, agency, and connection emerge and change over time is essential to understanding other concepts that are critical to feminist projects, such as social consciousness and move-ments, and answering questions such as, why are some individuals moved to social activism while others are not, and can social responsibility be fostered? For these reasons, although I offer a critical view of developmen-tal approaches, I also see value in maintaining the study of psychological change. I propose, however, that developmental theorizing begin with considerations of race, gender, and other socially constructed categories of identity, to raise new questions and perspectives on what constitutes and influences self-concept and psychological capacities.

Theorizing about development in ways that take into consideration the centrality of social context is seen as eminent by a number of feminist psychologists. Patricia Miller concludes her chapter on the development of interconnected thinking in Toward a Feminist Developmental Psy-chology with a call for research that “gives serious attention to anoma-lies, outliers, and more generally the diversity that comes from varying standpoints” (2000, 59). More recently, Dongxiao Qin identifies a “need to focus on developing specific and local knowledge that informs and leads to understanding women’s different senses of self across diverse social contexts” (2004, 307). In this essay, I respond to the call for more situated reconceptualizations of development by offering a framework of queries designed to explore how development results from experiencing the world from within particular social locations.2 This framework is designed to give voice to perspectives generated from various positions and transitioning positions of identity. More specifically, using feminist stand-point theory,3 I will introduce outsider within (Collins 1990/2000) and borderland (Anzaldua 1987/1999) epistemologies and their relationship to theories of adult psychological development. Links between the develop-ment of self-concept and social consciousness are explored, offering radi-cal reconsiderations of Western notions of self and self-in-relationship, and new possibilities for understanding and encouraging human capaci-ties for interconnectedness. Before discussing the framework and its implications, I provide a brief review of the history, concepts, and feminist criticisms of developmental psychology.

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Developmental Psychology in Review

Foundations

Developmental psychology, or the study of psychological growth across the lifespan, surfaced with the rise of modern science in the late nineteenth century in order to explain the origin of learning, which was described as a natural, biological, linear, and universal process of the mind (Burman 1994, 9–10). Traditional Western theories of cognitive development, rooted in Piaget’s (1932) constructivist approach, assumed that human capaci-ties for categorizing and making sense of information and experiences progress through qualitatively different (from simple to complex) mental structures and are characterized by periods of transitions and stability. Early structures yield to new ones as an individual matures biologically and interacts with their surroundings. According to traditional perspec-tives, one’s self-concept, or knowledge about the self as a distinctive being in the world, becomes more sophisticated as one learns to reflect on (not just perform) their actions and interactions in the world (Welch-Ross 2000, 108). Until the last three decades, most prominent developmental researchers were white, middle-upper class men (e.g., Erikson 1950/1963; Kohlberg 1976; Piaget 1932; Perry 1970), which, many feminist critics have argued, led to standards for evaluating self-concept and developmen-tal abilities that reflected the values and expectations in behavior of that category of individuals in their particular historical moment. Traditional theories, therefore, valued a sense of self that was ultimately independent and self-sufficient. Also, psychological (e.g., cognitive, emotional, inter-personal, and intrapersonal) processes were addressed separately. Judith Jordan explained this history in the following:

Clinical and developmental theories generally have emphasized the growth of an autonomous, individuated self. Increasing self-control, a sense of self as origin of action and intention, an increasing capacity to use abstract logic, and a movement toward self-sufficiency characterize the maturation of the ideal Western self. (1997, 9)

Echoing Jordan’s analysis, Miller and Scholnick first exposed masculine bias, and second, discussed new, more inclusive visions of cognitive growth. Supporting the need for both components to feminist perspectives, they explained:

[O]ur stories of development are permeated with masculine content, methods, metaphors, and mechanisms of change. The striving toward autonomy, mas-tery, analytic thinking, and formal logic and models of change based on dif-ferentiation of self from others, conflict, and competition among skills reflects the values and experiences of one subset of the population. (2000b, 4)

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Early theories, therefore, did not fully consider incorporating relationship/interconnectedness into cognitive achievement’s definition or, on a more foundational level, what constitutes “self.” Some considerations emerged, however, with the rise of feminist and cross-cultural perspectives.

Feminist developmentalists, such as Gilligan (1982), Belenky et al. (1986), and researchers at the Stone Center at Wellesley College (e.g., Jordan et al. 1991) broadened and complicated ways of understanding psychological capacities. Their perspectives expanded the appreciation of relational abilities within development. Judith Jordan is one of the several psychologists at the Stone Center at Wellesley College who developed a “relational self” perspective, based on studies of women’s psychological growth, which emphasizes that humans “thrive in being in connection” (1997, 31). According to Jordan, “We [the Stone Center theorists] acknowl-edge intrapsychic reality, but we see the context, the ongoing relational interplay between self and other, as primary to real growth and vitality” (1997, 31). This perspective, developed in the 1980s, opened many doors for understanding and study of not only psychological development but also psychopathology and clinical practice as well.

Feminist developmentalists provided crucial critiques of traditional theories, pointing out the limitations of their purview and applications. They illuminated and confounded issues of authority, accuracy, voice, methodology and method, and offered new ways of viewing what consti-tutes knowledge and psychological growth. However, the foundations of these first feminist developmental theories were based on the experiences of, and written by, white women. Considerations of race, class, sexual orientation, and other identity issues were mostly described as differences or patterns in an already determined picture of how “knowing” proceeds. More recently, some of these theorists offered critical reflections on how power, culture, and identity have implications for their theories (e.g., Gold-berger et al. 1996; Jordan 1997; Jordan et al. 2004). Other contemporary psychologists, such as Barbara Rogoff (2003), influenced by the “person in context” approach of Lev Vygotsky (e.g., 1978), are centralizing the role of culture and cross-cultural variation in human development. However, more cross-cultural critique and exploration of foundational concepts within development, such as definitions of self-concept, relationship, and knowledge, are still needed. For example, relational theories focus specifically on relationships between people and overlook other human relational capacities, such as connection to a variety of material, for example, animals, and non-material, for example, spiritual, entities. The existence, scope, and cultivation of such capacities vary widely accord-ing to cultural influence and expand possibilities for exploring human psychological abilities.

Theories of identity development (e.g., Cass 1984; Cross 1995; Tatum 1997; Helms 1995; Phinney 1990) are rooted in a fundamental model of

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psychological progression from internalized oppression to a more inte-grated, complex understanding of, and commitment to, a self-concept and the diversity that exists among people. Although identity develop-ment theories are useful in discussing why and how some people iden-tify their race and sexual orientation, few connections have been made between identity and cognitive developmental theories that could answer questions like what cognitive capacities precipitate or develop within the various racial identity stages? Additionally, these theories share the same characteristics (e.g., linear, universal, essentialistic) as traditional developmental theories whose validity and value are called into question when examined under a critical lens. Also, these theories do not consider that what it means to be black and white culturally (not just individu-ally) changes over time, and that the identity categories that people use to describe themselves change as well.

Considering Culture and Identity in Development through Postcolonial Perspective

Postcolonial theory made important contributions to the understanding of self and identities as mutating formations, not absolute states of exis-tence. According to Nadine Dolby, identity is produced and reproduced. She stated, “identity as a concept, and divisions such as race, gender, eth-nicity, and class, have emerged as salient ways to think about and describe difference because of specific historical and contemporary structures of power and corresponding practices” (2000, 900). She continued, “Instead of probing what identities are and how they structure experience (or what identities a person has), the critical questions revolve around how difference is produced in a particular situation, how it is explained, circu-lated, and reproduced, and how ‘difference’ as a construct interfaces with various structures of power” (901). Dolby’s statement, that race and other categories of identity are not fixed entities but are contingent on political and historical context, means for developmental psychology, is that one cannot assume anything about a particular person’s psychology based on their race, ethnicity, etcetera, without understanding the construction of those particular identities. Since all people have multiple, ever-changing identities and perspectives, and experience the world from multiple, ever-changing social locations, how can exploration of psychological experience and change take place?

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Expanding Feminist Approaches to Development

“I am grateful to the many women and men who dare to create theory from the location of pain and struggle, who courageously expose wounds to give us their experience to teach and guide, as a means to chart new theoretical journeys.”

—bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress (1994, 74)

I sought to answer the question with which I closed the last section by creating a framework for discussing how development can be explored by keeping identity issues central in the quest. Influenced by postcolo-nial, feminist approaches, I focused on three major principles: the social construction of identity, its role in the development of self-concept and psychological development, and the links between individual and social consciousness. My goal was to create a model of theorizing that centrally located these three themes. The result was a four-query framework, which I describe here in detail, including examples from feminist theorists out-side the field of psychology that demonstrate each query’s significance and potential contribution to rethinking development. Like bell hooks, I am grateful to the women who chartered the personal journeys and theories that informed my thinking and theorizing.

Using feminist standpoint theory, I share particular descriptions of self and development to articulate examples of the growth of consciousness that is informed by living within and between racial, ethnic, gender, and other positions of identity. I do this not to suggest that all people of color or people from particular backgrounds experience the same worldviews, but to suggest that epistemologies emerge from experiencing the world within particular, although not static, social locations, and that these perspectives have much to tell us about the psychology and development of the mind. Of the many types of identities, race and gender are my focus, not because they are more important than other forms, but because it is impossible to include them all in one article, and for now, race and gender issues are most salient in the writings I attempt to connect to develop-ment. The four queries within the framework I offer are interrelated, and these relationships are examined as well. The four queries include the following: (1) The personal is political: How are concepts of self defined within and how do they emerge from an individual’s social context? (2) The political is personal: How are social categories of identity central to an individual’s process of psychological development? (3) How is personal psychological consciousness linked to an individual’s degree of social consciousness and political activism? (4) How does growth of personal and social consciousness occur from living within the tensions and challenges of particular social locations?

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The Personal Is Political: Concepts of Self Defined within Social Context

Definitions of self and relationship vary within social context in funda-mental ways. More specifically, culture determines the possibilities and boundaries for how an individual perceives themselves in relationship to their surroundings. For example, in some cultures, the self is intimately connected to not only other people, but to things and beings, such as inanimate objects and animals. These relationships certainly impact one’s thought processes, actions, interactions, values, and principles. How is self defined by those who believe that they as individuals are literally connected to all living and non-living beings in their surroundings? Paula Gunn Allen’s description of American Indians’ relationship to the land provides an example of such a connection:

We are the land. To the best of my understanding, that is the fundamental idea that permeates American Indian life. . . . As Luther Standing Bear has said of his Lakota people, ‘We are of the soil and the soil is of us.’. . . The earth is not a mere source of survival, distant from the creatures it nurtures and from the spirit that breathes in us, nor is it to be considered an inert resource on which we draw in order to keep our ideological self functioning, whether we perceive that self in sociological or personal terms . . . for American Indi-ans . . . the earth is being, as all creatures are also being: aware, palpable, intelligent, alive. (1992, 119)

Gloria Anzaldua also provides examples of how, according to cultural influence, the self is intricately connected to all of its surroundings:

The direction of its [a snake’s] movement, its pace, its colors, the ‘mood’ of the trees and the wind and the snake—they all spoke to me, told me things. . . . Stones speak to Luisah Teish, a Santera; trees whisper to Christos, a Native American. I remember listening to the voices of the wind as a child and under-standing its messages . . . we’re suppose to forget that every cell in our bodies, every bone and bird and worm has a spirit in it. (1987/1999, 58)

Anzaldua’s and Allen’s reflections on self and relationship expound on and serve as examples of theories, such as Patricia Miller’s,4 that focus on epistemological interconnectedness. Reconsidering definitions of self and relationship, therefore, can begin by first asking this question: How is the self and psychological self-growth defined within an individual’s social and cultural context? This question offers one possibility for theorizing about development from various standpoints in ways that place diversity among people at its core. Since the concept of self is such a critical part of the discussion on psychological development, critiquing and expanding definitions of self is crucial.

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Patricia Hill Collins claimed that African American women have a distinct conceptualization of self due to their restricted mobility. “Self is not defined as the increased autonomy gained by separating oneself from others . . . the connectedness among individuals provides Black women deeper, more meaningful self-definitions” (1990/2000, 113). Col-lins discussed the power of self-definition as a journey from internalized oppression to a self-defined consciousness. This perspective clarifies how the social position of the individual has profound influence on what is meant by self, when the concept of “self” for many may begin with how others have defined and limited their experiences. This perspective on self/others may seem riddled with contradictions (e.g., how can a distinc-tive self emerge from a process of interconnectedness and not separation?). Yet, it is through such perspectives that the importance of historical and social consciousness can be seen as vital to the establishment of a self-determined sense of consciousness. In discussing how women of color can help to create a “new criticism of inclusion,” Paula Gunn Allen described how sense of self, and what it means to be “in relationship,” is defined and complicated by cultural heritage:

The concept in relation or, more ‘nativistically,’ the understanding that the individualized—as distinct from individualistic—sense of self accrues only within the context of community, which includes the nonvisible world of ancestors, spirits, and gods, provides a secure grounding for a criticism that can reach beyond the politicized, deterministic confines of progressive approaches, as well as beyond the neurotic diminishment of self-reflexiveness. (1995, 44)

To Allen, who is informed by her “nativistic” consciousness, the self grows within a context of relationship with entities that expand beyond other people, a perspective similar to the one described by Anzaldua. And, like Collins, Allen suggests that the growth and meaning of self are bound to community.

When social identity is considered in self-concept construction, broader possibilities emerge for thinking about self and interconnectedness. The self is intricately embedded in relationships not only to other people, but to aspects of the world that include social groups, communities, and inanimate and spiritual entities that are deemed important to the individual according to social influence and identity categories within which they relate. As social location plays a role in construction of self, it can also influence how an individual makes meaning and develops psychologically.

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The Political is Personal: The Centrality of Social Categories of Identity

I am, seeing, hearing, with half my soul at sea and half my soul on land, and with these two halves of soul I see the world.

Estoy, mirando, oyendo, con la mitad del alma en el mar y la mitad del alma en la tierra,

y con las dos mitades del alma miro el mundo.—Pablo Neruda (cited in Arana 2001, “Prologue”)

The above quotation emphasizes how profoundly one’s ways of know-ing are influenced by social location. Neruda described the difference between his ways of seeing and hearing by using the opposing metaphors of land and sea. The impact of such a double consciousness is represented in his description of a division of his soul, a term that people use to refer to the deepest part of themselves.

Patricia Hill Collins (1990/2000; 1998) applied the term “outsider-within” to demonstrate how one’s position within a social location, where knowledge but not full power is gained, creates a distinct collective perspective. She discussed how identity emerges from social locations occupied by groups of unequal power. Exploring examples of “outsider-within” epistemologies offers opportunities to further understand how individual and social identity are linked and how and why social aware-ness and identity within individuals varies. Collins explained that a social consciousness does not develop among all black women. Research into this phenomenon would add to feminist developmentalists’ search for understanding the psychologies of diverse women.

Like Collins, Anzaldua also suggested that life in the margins generates a particular collective multiple vision when she explains:

Living on the borders and in margins, keeping intact one’s shifting and mul-tiple identity and integrity, is like trying to swim in a new element. . . . I have the sense that certain ‘faculties’—not just in me but in every border resident, colored or non-colored—and dormant areas of consciousness are being acti-vated, awakened.

—Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands (1987, Preface)

Both Anzaldua and Collins discuss how social consciousness contrib-utes to the development of self-concept. Conversely, they also speak of the importance of personal empowerment to social activism.

Anzaldua’s discussions of self and development are grounded in descrip-tions of “crossing borders” that include more than the literal geographi-cal concept of borders, such as borders between the personal/inner and social/outer world, and between the physical body and the spiritual world. Her descriptions are an example of psychological development from a

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standpoint of borderlands and crossings. For example, Anzaldua’s concept of conocimiento offers a detailed, complex perspective on the journey toward knowledge, self-awareness, and the relationship between personal and social consciousness. She explained conocimiento as “an epistemol-ogy that tries to encompass all the dimensions of life, both inner—mental, emotional, instinctive, imaginal, spiritual, bodily realms—and outer—social, political, lived experiences. . . . In part, conocimientos is a theory of composition, of how a work of art gets composed. . . . how identity is constructed” (cited in Keating 2000, 177).

To Anzaldua, conocimiento is informed by existing with and negotiat-ing many identities and cultural situations. In describing some issues of conocimiento, Anzaldua explained, “How do we make meaning? Who produces knowledge, and who is kept from producing it? Who distributes and passes it on? Who has access to it and who doesn’t? Is there such a thing as counterknowledge; and, if so who constructs it, and how?” (cited in Keating, 2000, 178). These issues are consistent with the concerns raised by feminist epistemologists, such as those that interrogate source and production of knowledge, that are crucial to expanding developmental psychology’s purview.

Anzaldua’s most direct and detailed description of a developmental theory is found in her essay, “Now Let Us Shift,” in This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, where she described the seven stages of conocimiento. Her stage theory is ground-breaking in that although it sustains elements of traditional theories, such as alternating periods of stability and change, it escapes prescribing a universal, essen-tialistic, linear pathway of mental tasks toward psychological achieve-ment. Instead, she details a cyclical journey (in fact, stage one is called, “an ending, a beginning”) of how experiencing life-altering psychological states, each of equal importance, requires an individual to expand their personal and, in turn, social awareness.5

Throughout Anzaldua’s depictions of the stages of conocimiento, she uses metaphors of physical, bodily experiences and Chicana mytho-logical narratives to represent and explain the emotional components of knowledge acquisition, what some might call “identity crises.” Narra-tive metaphors of development help us to understand how the individual makes sense of their developmental journey and how the stories of their social contexts (e.g., religious and mythic literature) play a role in that process. Using narratives also can be used to help individuals express the emotionality of self-growth and gain a better understanding and possibly sense of comfort about the experience.

In Anzaldua’s description of the seven stages, she demonstrated how the self moves between settling within the body and inner psyche to reach-ing out and reconciling the demands from the outer world. She discussed how one moves from the familiar, safe terrain of knowing and being until

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some experience pulls you into the unfamiliar where you are required to negotiate the self within that context. Anzaldua details the mechanisms by which an inner self, informed by the challenges of marginalized social locations, is constructed. She explains:

Orienting yourself to the environment and your relationship to it enables you to read and garner insight from whatever situation you find yourself in. This conocimiento gives you the flexibility to swing from your intense feelings to those of the other without being hijacked by either. (2002, 569)

Such a process of self-construction is also explored by Aida Hurtado, who discussed how sense of self and cognitive opportunities are gained by living within multiple identities (1996). She commented, “A shifting consciousness is the ability of many women of Color to shift from one group’s perception of social reality to another, and, at times, to be able simultaneously to perceive multiple social realities without losing their sense of self-coherence” (384, emphasis in original). Perhaps “outsider-within” status, or even cross-cultural engagement (e.g., when one is required to see things from another’s perspective or is challenged by a dif-ferent worldview), are mechanisms by which one’s sense of self is shifted, whereby they are challenged to negotiate a more committed sense of who they are and how they think in the face of difference.

Just as marginalized social identities can create particular perspectives and pathways to knowing, privileged social identities can lend themselves to certain viewpoints as well. It is possible to discuss how privilege (e.g., white, male, heterosexual) produces particular psychological perspectives. For example, having privilege based on one’s identity categories gives one power not to hear/know what is in one’s power not to hear/know. Are there particular, unique perspectives that emerge from having privi-lege? What happens then as one attempts to examine one’s privilege, and what motivates one to do this? How does this have an impact on how and what one knows, the development of one’s social consciousness and involvement in activism? What happens when multiple identities put one in positions where one is privileged in some ways and not in others, or, when privilege varies (given that identities are not fixed) depending on geographical location or time?

There are many options for research when exploring how social identity is related to psychological experience. Explorations and reflections like the ones I share here can be generated from various standpoints and analyzed for pathways, transitions, and changes in perspective and development. Exploring three types of standpoint perspectives, outsider-within, border-land/conocimiento, and privilege, I realized how intricately the political is bound to the personal consciousness and began to wonder about how personal consciousness is connected to one’s social and political awareness and involvement. This thinking became the basis for the third query.

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How Is Personal Psychological Consciousness Linked to Social Consciousness?

“I believe that by changing ourselves we change the world, that traveling El Mundo Zordo6 path is the path of a two-way movement—a going deep into the self and an expanding out into the world, a simultaneous recreation of the self and a reconstruction of society.”

—Gloria Anzaldua, “La Prieta” (1983, 208)

Collins’s discussion of “coming to voice, coming to power,” exemplifies how self-concept or, to use her term, “self-definition” is connected to political consciousness and activism (1998, 44). She explains, “A changed consciousness encourages people to change the conditions of their lives” (117). Anzaldua linked personal consciousness to social consciousness by describing how self-awareness generates social action. In the border-lands, the very act of serving as a mestiza requires activism, “The work of conocimiento—consciousness work—connects the inner life of the mind and spirit to the outer worlds of action. In the struggle for social change I call this particular aspect of conocimiento spiritual activism” (cited in Keating 2000, 178).

In these examples, Anzaldua and Collins connect self-development with social consciousness and activism. Few writers seem to explicitly discuss in detail how this relationship happens. Even Anzaldua follows the opening quotation to this section with “And yet, I am confused as to how to accomplish this” (1983, 206). Keating described how she attempts the two-way path of changing the self/changing the world by beginning with the relational identities (e.g., mother, writer, teacher) that give her specific locations (e.g., home, writings, classroom) for working for social change (2002). She further described premises and tactics for how she makes social change. Keating’s philosophy that grounded her principles reflects Anzaldua’s theory of the “spiritual,” which is based on a “meta-physics of interconnectedness that posits a cosmic, constantly changing spirit or force that embodies itself in material and nonmaterial forms” (Keating 2000, 9, italics added). I highlight “embodies” here to point out a distinction between Anzaldua’s and Keating’s use of the term spiritual-ity and how it is traditionally understood (e.g., to represent nonmaterial forces outside of the body).

Anzaldua’s understanding of spirituality, an awareness of the intercon-nections among all things, creates for her a moral obligation and commit-ment to work toward social change to benefit the good of all, what Keating calls an “ethics of reciprocity” (2000, 10). “Whether this spiritual-material essence ‘really’ exists—and how we possibly prove its existence except, perhaps, by referring to David Boehm or a few other twentieth-century physicists—is far less important for us here than the pragmatic, perfor-mative functions it serves . . . belief in a divine, cosmic force infusing all

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that exists enables her [Anzaldua] to create a new identity category and a theoretical moral framework for social change” (2000, 9).

Keating pointed out that Anzaldua’s “spiritual activism” is similar to Collins’s discussion of “passionate rationality,” the deep, emotional feel-ings that motivate and empower people to take action against oppression. According to Collins, “Defined as a collective expression of deep feeling that occurs within an overarching moral framework, spirituality remains deeply intertwined with justice in Black women’s intellectual history” (1998, 244). Collins also described “visionary pragmatism,” or the “link-ing [of] caring, theoretical vision with informed practical struggle,” as characteristic of Black feminist thought (1998, 188). Clearly, Anzaldua and Collins share a similar understanding of the spiritual and its rela-tionship to activism. Collins stated that in addition to an intellectual sense of vision and reason, a sense of “righteous rage” is necessary in the struggle toward social change (251). Some may ask, “how can rage be spiritual?” But this description precisely captures the way in which spiri-tuality is embodied, an example of the intensely powerful body-soul-other connection that moves those who work for social causes.

Developmentalist Robert Kegan appears to share a similar vision of what connects individuals to the world around them (1982; 1994). In his interview with Debold, he stated, “[T]here is this drive within living forms, including humans, to shape reality and relate ever more satisfac-tory connections or relationships to the universe” (2002, 152). When asked to say more about this “drive,” Kegan replied, “Now you really are asking a religious question about what is the nature of life itself, or energy itself, this intelligent energy that forms and re-forms itself” (152). He then placed his understanding of this “energy” within the context of his Jewish upbringing:

There’s a very central prayer in the Jewish liturgy that has to do with declaring that God is One. Echad. One. And what that means to me today is a transcen-dent affirmation that this intelligent energy, this restless, creative flow that we can follow within any one single life, is actually something in which the universe as a whole participates. . . . It’s not something we share, so much as it is something that shares us.” (152, emphasis in original)

Like Anzaldua, Kegan embodies the spiritual in this final distinction. For me, the statement “shares us” conjures an image of actual bodies participating in a larger purpose, where “something we share” conjures an image of something outside of our bodies and physical world. Kegan includes the desire to act or “shape reality” as part of the “drive,” whereas Anzaldua says the drive to act (out of moral obligation) comes from the realization of connection to all things. Regardless, both refer to an energy that exists within the self and moves outward. This sense of relationship to, or oneness with, community and the desire to act for the betterment

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of the community, could be explored with further research. For example, what needs to be in place intrapsychically to perceive this sense of one-ness? What conditions nurture such an understanding? How do one’s social identities play a role in the development of spiritual activism as Anzaldua and Keating describe?

Related to Anzaldua’s spiritual activism and the concept of intrapsy-chic drive is Audre Lorde’s use of the concept “erotic” (1984). Lorde brings together the body with the spiritual, and in turn the spiritual with the political in her eloquent essay, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.” Lorde defines “erotic” as “a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female7 and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling” (53). She calls on us to reclaim8 the erotic as a source of power. According to Lorde, the erotic can be accessed when “sharing deeply any pursuit with another person . . . and lessens the threat of their difference(s)” (56). It also connects the self with self by opening a person to their potential for deep feeling and joy (such as through music, dancing, writing). Lorde explained that this potential, this source of knowledge, exists within the self, “And that deep and irreplaceable knowl-edge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife” (57, emphasis in original). Like Anzaldua and Kegan, Lorde’s description of the spiritual is connected, embodied in the self.

Lorde claimed that Western culture separates the spiritual, which she defined as “the psychic and emotional,” from the political, and the spiritual from the erotic, “thereby reducing the spiritual to a world of flat-tened affect, a world of the ascetic who aspires to feel nothing” (56). She said that such a dichotomy is artificial and caused by ignoring our erotic knowledge, “For the bridge which connects them (the spiritual and politi-cal) is formed by the erotic—the sensual—those physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us, being shared: the passions of love, in its deepest meanings” (56). To Lorde, “the need to share deep feeling is a human need” and when we allow ourselves to open and respect our deepest desires and those of others, we are not satisfied with “suffering and self-negation” and we become motivated to act politically (58). Connecting the personal with political awareness she stated, “Our acts against oppression become integral with self, motivated and empowered from within” (58).

bell hooks also linked body, spirit, and community when she defined the “spiritual” as “that dimension of our core reality where mind, body, and spirit are one. An individual does not need to be a believer in a religion to embrace the idea that there is an animating principle in the self—a life force (some call it soul) that when nurtured enhances our capacity to be more fully-actualized and able to engage in communion with the world

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around us” (2000, 13). Like Kegan, Anzaldua, Lorde, and Collins, hooks maintained a belief that within the self is a need or drive to connect with the world.

The spiritual, therefore, is named in many ways, including “cosmic force” (Keating 2002), “passionate rationality” (Collins 1998), “intelligent energy,” “creative force,” “God” (Kegan, cited in Debold 2002), “erotic” (Lorde 1984), “soul” (hooks 2000), but is defined as a feeling that has the capacity to nurture the self and connect the self to its contexts. How the spiritual is named and experienced is informed by social context. These writers discussed the existence of a life force sensed within the self and linked this embodied feeling with that which defines the spiritual. Like Keating, I believe that although the biological or physical existence of such a life force may be debatable, it is the perception of its existence, the feeling that believing in such a force brings that is important and func-tional. All scholars also discussed to some extent a blurring of the distinc-tions between the self and other. Furthering our understanding of this capacity will help us to better understand not only self and development but its connection to social consciousness as well.

Anzaldua, Collins, Keating, and Lorde specifically asserted that rec-ognizing the power/spirit within the self and sharing this power in rela-tionship to others brings the energy and moral commitment to work for change. Their theorizing, informed by their multiple social locations, about the connection between the personal and political emerged from their experience of it. I would also add that living within social identi-ties that are outsider-within (Collins 1990/2000; 1998), and borderland (Anzaldua 1987/1990; Keating 2000) places them in positions where they gain particular and unique perspectives and knowledges about how per-sonal and political consciousness are inspired and linked. Other identities lend unique perspectives as well. More research that examines how indi-viduals describe, with attention to how their social identities may shape their perspectives, what motivates them to take social and political action could further ground the theories explored here and expose new ones.

Collins’s phrase, “coming to voice, coming to power” articulated the direct link between personal and social consciousness (1998, 44). Anzaldua discussed the responsibility of the individual to work for social change and calls on us to recognize differences and injustices but to put aside what divides us to work toward a better world for all. Keeping with the focus on multiplicity and fluidity of identity, the final query allows for exploration of the complexities in perspective and development that occur from living within and between social locations.

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How Growth of Personal and Social Consciousness Occurs

“Living between cultures results in “seeing double” . . . (which) renders those cultures transparent. . . . Removed from the culture’s center you glimpse the sea in which you’ve been immersed but to which you were oblivious. . . . You begin to see race as an experience of reality from a particular perspective and a specific time and place (history), not as a fixed feature of personality or identity.”

—Gloria Anzaldua, “Now Let Us Shift” (2002, 549)

There is much research that suggests that people of color have multiple consciousnesses and knowledge systems due to experiencing the world as a minority (e.g., Anzaldua 1987/1999; Collins 1990/2000, 1998; DuBois 1953; King 1988; Wynter 1992). Collins discussed how experiencing mul-tiple outsider-within locations leads to an understanding of the contextual nature of “truth” (1998). She highlights the life of Sojourner Truth, “a traveler, a migrant who transgressed borders of race, class, gender, lit-eracy, geography, and religion,” as a metaphor for the type of pathway that exposes the traveler to the complexities of truth and knowledge gained as an outsider within numerous communities (231–2). Truth’s self-selected name underscores her own awareness of the notion that “truth” comes through journey and context. Collins explained:

For her (Truth), resolving the tensions raised by her migratory status did not lie in staying in any one center of power and thereby accepting its rules and assumptions. Rather, Truth explicitly breached group boundaries. By selecting the name Sojourner, Truth proclaimed that specialization and movement were both required in legitimating truth claims. No truth was possible without a variety of perspectives on any given particularity. (1998, 231)

For those who understand cognitive growth as, at least in part, reaching an aptitude for contextualized understanding (e.g., Baxter Magolda 1992, 2001; Perry 1970), Collins offers examples for theorizing about how such understanding is facilitated by social location. Her work also inspires possibilities for further research.

How development occurs from living within multiple “borderland” locations is pervasive throughout Anzaldua’s writings, as evidenced in her description of the stages of conocimiento, especially detailed in “Now Let Us Shift” (2000). She spoke, informed by her Spanish and English heritage, of perceiving from dual perspectives in the following: “You will yourself to ground this doble saber (double knowing) in your body’s ear and soul’s eye, always alerta y vigilante of how you are aware” (549). She discussed how living between identities keeps one keenly aware and constantly in mental motion, transitioning back and forth between old and new ways of thinking, “Fear keeps you exiled between repulsion and propulsion, mourning the loss, obsessed with retrieving a lost homeland that may

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never have existed” (549). Anzaldua described how living in between cultures can position you in a way that forces you to realize that you cannot be isolated within a particular description of identity (e.g., race or class), nor can you completely assimilate into a particular identity. Caught between “isolation and assimilation” can help you to understand that “your identity has roots you share with all people and other beings—spirit, feeling, and body make up a greater identity category” (560).

New Feminist Visions for Development

In this essay I offer a framework for theorizing about how identity, con-sciousness, and development are socially constructed, interwoven, and complex. Many traditional stage-based theories of development not only left out people of color and others characterized by underrepresented iden-tities, but also resulted in the relegation of those who deviate from the model to positions of “other” status. I propose, however, that perhaps it is those of non-majority identities who have the vision to move develop-mental psychology into the most useful, relevant phase in its history. This new phase of developmental psychology is not just relevant to discussions about the individual, family, and education but is also linked in a central way to issues of culture, politics, and social consciousness. Broadening the definitions of developmental psychology’s fundamental concepts, such as self/subject, relationship, and other/object, by focusing on how such notions are informed by cultural influence is critical, as is expand-ing perspectives on how developmental trajectories emerge from various standpoints. The framework I provide presents a vehicle for extending and rethinking current perspectives, and creating new ones. It presents possibilities for exploring how identity, a concrete yet fluid aspect of our experience and psychology, and its relationship to one’s self-concept and social awareness, changes and solidifies over time. It opens doors for dis-covering how social consciousness and awareness provokes individuals into activism and, ultimately, into participation in feminist visions of positive, peaceful social change.

Kelli Zaytoun is Assistant Professor of English and Director of Women’s Studies at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. She is past chair of NWSA’s Women’s Centers Caucus. Her current research interests include identity and cultural issues in psychological development theory, and feminist theory and memoir. Send correspondence to kelli.zaytoun@wright.edu.

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Notes

1. I use the terms “psychological growth” and “psychological development” interchangeably and broadly (in order to allow for multiplicity and creativity in how it is understood) to refer to the evolution of processes of the mind, which include but are not limited to intellectual functioning, relational capacities, and how a person constructs a concept of “self,” or inner sense that is differentiated from the rest of the world.

2. For discussion of how social location influences thought, see Rachel Joffe Falmagne’s explanation (2000, 191–213). Social location refers to a person’s position (and the intersection of positions) where race, class, gender, and other constantly shifting social group formations that exist within a network of political and economic power relations, define position.

3. For a recent review of the history and explanations of standpoint theory see Brooke Lenz (2004). Standpoint theory argues that “group location in hierar-chical power relations produces shared experiences for individuals in those groups, and that these common experiences can foster similar angles of vision leading to a group knowledge or standpoint deemed essential for informed political action” (Collins 1998, 281). Standpoint does not refer to the external context within which a person is situated nor to a person’s general perspec-tives; it refers to the person’s understanding of the political implications of the social positions they occupy.

4. Patricia Miller suggests that the most fundamental implication of femi-nist epistemologies for cognition is that knowledge is interconnected. She describes six characteristics of cognition including (1) contextual-relational, situated reasoning; (2) complex networks of multiple, multi-directional, causal connections; (3) reciprocity, connection, and dialogue between the knower and the known; (4) an emphasis on the social; (5) understanding as a social, negoti-ated, shared event involving the construction of knowledge in a community of knowers; and (6) attention to, and valuing of, diversity (48).

5. For detailed analysis of Anzaldua’s stages of conocimiento as a developmental theory, see Zaytoun (2005).

6. Anzaldua introduced the concept of El Mundo Zordo, the “Left-Handed World” in This Bridge Called My Back in 1981. It refers to “a visionary place where people from diverse backgrounds with diverse needs and concerns co-exist and work together to bring about revolutionary change. . . . Joined by their rejection of the status quo and their so-called deviation from the domi-nant culture, inhabitants of El Mundo Zordo use their sense of difference to forge new alliances” (Keating 2002, 520).

7. Lorde also states that men experience the erotic as well but focuses on female sense and use of the erotic in this essay (1984).

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8. Lorde claims that men have misused the erotic against women, describing that it “has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plas-ticized sensation. For this reason, we have often turned away from the explo-ration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling” (1984, 54).

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