Poststructural Epistemology-March 3

The poem "Prisons of Silence" thematically uses notions of boundaries, or rather the negative connotation, prisons, to underscore the narrator's experience of a Japanese American woman.  The boundary created by the gender relationship between her and her husband is represented by the "cold wall of flesh," or as I interpreted, her body.  The emphasis on her body is an important one, as it is the manifestation of her limitations as a woman and a Japanese person.  Walls of barbed wire separate her from the United States as well as her husband who is leaving to serve in the military.  Unlike the narrator, her husband is not bound by his gender in leaving the imprisonment of the barbed wires.  Then she remarks that the walls encompass her body like the tomb in which her husband lie.  When she can finally break her wall of silence, she also breaks the "cell of history" that has drawn the boundaries of her identity and restricted her from living freely.  This poem relates to both theory texts of Moya and Mani.  Moya uses the lens of Chicana feminism in order to criticize the relevance and truthfulness of postmodern epistemology.  In relation to "Prisons of Silence," Moya's greatest point resides in her assertion that identity creates boundaries.  She claims that women of color have the ability of traversing these boundaries.  Her claim is set up in opposition to the postmodern theorist, Sandoval, who wrote that identities are unstable, and the woman must shift identities according to her situation.  Moya argues that identities are not encompassed by strict boundaries, and become "more or less visible," instead of shifting in various circumstances. The experiences of women of color, as argued by Moya, ought to preside over new political thought as these experiences allow for the indispensable ability to negotiate boundaries.  In comparison to Moya, Mani analyzes the Indian tradition of sati, and comes upon interesting insight into how knowledge is formulated based on location.  The varied understanding of knowledge is due to the "boundaries of gender, race, class, sexuality and historical experience," according to Mani.  Layers of history in respect to location create the barriers between western and eastern ideologies.  Mani examines sati to show that the Indians believe this practice to be integral to their culture, however, the legacy of colonialism and racism in US and British affairs has branded this tradition as appalling, putting the "woman's question" into India's political landscape.