El Zorro and Matthew Barney: metaphors of the border as a space of transit, hybridization, and new epistemologies

Abstract

It proposes a reading of the figures of Zorro and Matthew Barney as metaphors of the border, understood as a space of transit and hybridization that challenges dichotomies and proposes new epistemologies. Drawing on Gloria Anzaldúa's (2012) concept of "mestiza consciousness" and Boaventura de Sousa Santos' idea of an "ecology of knowledges," we analyze how Zorro, in the comics series The Adventures of Zorro by Alex Toth (McCulley; Toth, 2022), and Barney, in his Drawing Restraint series, occupy liminal spaces. Zorro, as a hero who navigates between the Spanish aristocracy and countercolonial resistance in what is now known as California, represents the border as a site of conflict and reinvention. Barney, on the other hand, explores the hybridization of art and sport, destabilizing dichotomies such as body/mind and human/animal. The methodology includes content analysis of Barney's works and Toth's comic, articulating them with the ideas of authors such as Gloria Anzaldúa (2012), María Lugones (2008), Gilles Deleuze (1992), Jacques Derrida (1995), and Rafael Haddock-Lobo (2021). We conclude that Zorro and Barney, each in their own way, offer pathways for rethinking borders as spaces of creation and transformation, proposing new epistemologies through the metaphor of the border.