Obsidian
A naturally occurring
volcanic glass, obsidian is formed from fast cooling flows of lava. Rich in
silica, these flows have a high viscosity, which inhibits the development of
mineral crystals and results in the formation of a dense black glass. Obsidian
is extremely hard, brittle and amorphous, and fractures with sharp edges. In
the past it was used to manufacture cutting and piercing tools- arrowheads,
knives, axes and experimental surgical scalpel blades. It has also been used,
throughout history and within a range of cultures, to make mirrors.
Gloria Anzaldua, writing in her book ‘Borderlands’,
describes the obsidian mirrors used by her ancestors, the ancient Mexican
Americans, to generate trance states in order to divine the future, to
establish “the will of the Gods”[1].
She describes her mother covering the mirrors in their house with blankets
after her father died; “a mirror is a door through which the soul may ‘pass’
to the other side… she didn't want us to ‘accidentally’ follow our father into
the place where the souls of the dead live.” For Anzaldua, the space of the mirror
holds together divergent states of being and experience; life and death, self
and other, human and non-human identity, as well as the embodied experience of
selfhood and that of objectification. This externalised regard invoked for her
the shame of otherness, something she felt intensely growing up in 1950’s Texas
as a queer Chicano
woman.
Borderlands explores the racial, cultural, linguistic, socio-economic and
psychic frictions, slippages and violence held by the Texas U.S
Southwest-Mexican border. It is also a series of reflections on liminal states
of consciousness, identity and relation; sexual, spiritual, psychological
borderlands that exist wherever cultures, races and classes touch, “wherever
the space between two people shrinks with intimacy”[2].
The obsidian mirror opens a psychic borderland that holds together
intersections of cultural, religious and mythic symbolism and identity.
“something in the mirror catches my
gaze... Inside my skull something shifts. I "see" my face. Gloria,
the everyday face; Prieta and Prietita, my childhood faces; ... And there in
the black, obsidian mirror of the Nahuas is yet another face, a stranger's
face. Simultáneamente me miraba la cara desde distintos
ángulos. Y mi cara, como la realidad, tenia un caracter multiplice.”[4]
Here, the mirror- which may offer a constricting
view of the objectified (and inadequate/ othered) body- opens an encounter with the
edges of consciousness, a dissolution of identity that allows for the
emergence of a more complex sense of self. In one chapter, Anzaldua invokes the
Aztec goddess Coatlicue, describing experiences of withdrawal and revelation
invoked by her encounters with the monstrous, hybrid serpent-human figure;
goddess of fertility, life and death. Within these encounters, accessed through
the dark mirror, Anzaldua undergoes possession by Coatlicue that echoes her
earlier experience of being bitten by a rattlesnake[5];
experiences of physical and psychological porosity in which she is overtaken by
the serpent nature.
“I tremble before the animal, the alien, the sub- or suprahuman,
the me that has something in common with the wind and the trees and the rocks,
that possesses a demon determination and ruthlessness beyond the human… The
gaping mouth slit heart from mind. Between
the two eyes in her head, the tongueless magical eye and the loquacious rational
eye, was la rajadura, the abyss that no bridge could span.”[6]
To ‘see’ through the obsidian mirror is
to see through an image of identity inherited from a culture shaped by racism,
patriarchy and homophobia, which first leads to frozenness and shame, but gives
way to a kind of descent into the “underworld”[7] of the psyche, and of culture (the repressed and stigmatised indigenous, female-gendered
‘monstrous’ figure, signified by Coatlicue), and opens an image of self that is
bound up with the animal, shaped by
and contiguous with the geological and meteorological.
Within a particular episode of
possession, Anzaldua reaches into her abdomen and pulls out her own heart,
entrusting it temporarily to the goddess. In return, Coatlicue leaves her with
a permanent gift; a luminous thread, held within the body, that “grows thicker
everyday”[8].
This visionary experience “blows
open”[9] the boundaries of the self, unfolding, for Anzaludua, qualities - ‘demon’
determination, ruthlessness - that give her strength to counter the dominant
culture. The obsidian mirror, product of the churning of earth’s core, the
‘magical’ eye of the serpent; opens psychic encounters with the powerful forces
animating the landscape.
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[1] Anzaldua, G. (2012) Borderlands/La Frontera: The
New Mestiza, Fourth Edition. 4th ed. edition. San Francisco: Aunt Lute
Books. Pg 42.
[2] Anzaldua, G. (2012) Borderlands/La Frontera: The
New Mestiza, Fourth Edition. 4th ed. edition. San Francisco: Aunt Lute
Books. Pg i.
[4]Anzaldua writes between English and Chicano Spanish.
The rough translation for this section is ‘Simultaneously I was looking at
my face from different angles and my face, like reality, was multiple.’ Anzaldua, G. (2012) Borderlands/La Frontera: The New
Mestiza, Fourth Edition. 4th ed. edition. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Pg 44.
[5] As described in Chap. 3: Entering into the Serpent,
Pg 23- 24: Anzaldua, G. (2012) Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza,
Fourth Edition. 4th ed. edition. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.
[6] Anzaldua, G. (2012) Borderlands/La Frontera: The New
Mestiza, Fourth Edition. 4th ed. edition. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Pg
50.
[7] Anzaldua, G. (2012) Borderlands/La Frontera: The New
Mestiza, Fourth Edition. 4th ed. edition. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.
Pg 46
[8] Anzaldua, G. (2012) Borderlands/La Frontera: The New
Mestiza, Fourth Edition. 4th ed. edition. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Pg
51.
[9] Anzaldua, G. (2012) Borderlands/La Frontera: The New
Mestiza, Fourth Edition. 4th ed. edition. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Pg
51.
Images (Top to Bottom):
1. Chunk of Rainbow Obsidian, Los Angeles 1957
2. Aztec depictions of obsidian mirrors, c 1520, Codex Tepetlaoztoc (Codex Kingsborough) © The Trustees of the British Museum
3. Mirror Case, 15th Century European, held at the British Museum
