STRATEGIC VISIBILITIES: DIGITIZING THE LATINA INFORMATION WORKER

Recent examples of virtual assistant technologies designed as Latina information service workers are noteworthy objects of study for their potential to bridge analyses of Latinas’ labor history and information technology. Latinas in the United States have traditionally worked in blue-collar information technology sectors characterized by repetitive labor and low-wages, such as electronics manufacturing and customer service. Latinas information service workers, though fundamental to technoscience, have been largely invisible in histories of computing. Latina virtual assistants mark a shift in this labor history by relying on the strategic visibility of Latina identity in/as the technology interface. Our research explores Latina virtual assistants designed by Airus Media, and installed as airport workers in airports along the southwestern border of the United States. We situate the technocultural narratives present in the design and marketing of these technologies within the broader histories of invisible Latina information labor in the United States. We find continuities between the ways Latinas have historically been positioned as “ideal” information workers, and the use of Latina identity in the design of virtual assistants. We argue that the strategic visibility of Latina virtual assistants is linked to the oppressive structures of invisibility that have traditionally organized Latina information service workers.

“These Latin Girls Mean Business”1: Expanding the Boundaries of Latina Youth Identity in Meg Medina’s YA Novel Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass

This chapter examines the ways in which Latina urban identities have been shaped by popular culture as the “chola/homegirl.” However, this chapter argues that Medina’s novel challenges the seemingly natural alignment of urban Latina identity with the chola by calling for a more expansive view of what it means to be a young, urban Latina. This chapter uses Chicana/Latina feminist theorizing that has examined the chola identity, in addition to sociological research that has studied the ways in which urban girls of color are constructed as “bad” or “delinquent.” This chapter examines the protagonist in light of these theories. Further, the chapter argues that Medina’s novel, in expanding what it means to be a young, urban Latina, questions the ways in which those Latinas who do not model themselves as cholas are victims of identity-policing, rendered not “really” Latina, and dismissed as weirdos or outsiders within this narrow gender/racial identity script that defines chola identity as the only “authentic” young, urban, Latina identity.

Stylized Resistance

The chapter explores the perceptual and epistemic structures of boomerang perception, as developed by María Lugones, by focusing on contemporary lived experiences of Latinas of commercialization and homogenization. Boomerang perception is the mechanism through which people of color are constructed through a white imaginary lens and denied subjectivity. The internalization of boomerang perception subsequently yields horizontal hostilities whereby people of color construct each other through white eyes and engender a fake/real dichotomy that polices the boundaries of communities. The commercialization of Latina identity in the 21st century serves as one example that draws out the ways in which boomerang perception is internalized and plays on the production of the real/fake dichotomy. Drawing on Gloria Anzaldúa’s notion of conocimiento, the chapter subsequently considers the possibilities of resistance through the development of style politics that can transform embodied ways of knowing. In this capacity, the chapter takes up the project of chonga stylized politics as exemplifying practices of conocimiento.

At the Crossroads: Latina Identity and Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex

Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex has been heralded as a canonical text of feminist theory. The book focuses on providing an account of the lived experience of woman that generates a condition of otherness. However, I contend that it falls short of being able to account for the multidimensionality of identity insofar as Beauvoir's argument rests upon the comparison between racial and gendered oppression that is understood through the black–white binary. The result of this framework is the imperceptibility of identities at the crossroads between categories of race and gender. Hence, the goal of this article is to explore the margins of Beauvoir's work in order to decenter the “other” of The Second Sex and make known what is made imperceptible by its architecture, using Latina identity as an interventional guide. I conclude that given the prominence of The Second Sex in feminist theory, this shortcoming must be addressed if feminist theorists are to use it responsibly.