Unmaking Colonial Fictions: Cherríe Moraga’s Rhetorics of Fragmentation and Semi-ness

Abstract

Throughout Cherríe Moraga’s publications (1979 to present), we see her writings pivot from expressions of cohesive oneness to articulations of generative fragmentation. Moraga’s emerged attention to metaphorical woundedness participates in Chicanx rhetorics of fragmentation, which undermines colonial fictions that the self is whole and unified. Such rhetoric emphasizes potentials of semi-ness and creative energy of shame as strategies to confront Chicanx realities, and to engage contemporary theories of decolonialism, biopower, and embodied language. Moraga’s writings provide a lens through which we investigate how confirmation and ownership of rhetorics of fragmentation might nurture rhetorical homelands, particularly for Chicanx student writers.