Division Quotes

All things, man included, are parts of one great whole. The object of this chapter is to point out the most obvious and most natural divisions of this whole, which we call the universe. These divisions can never be absolute; the whole is too truly one whole for that, but they are sufficiently real for our present purpose.

Richard Maurice Bucke

Living in a multicultural society, we cross into each others worlds all the time. We live in each others pockets, occupy each others territories, live in close proximity and in intimacy with each other at home, in school, at work. We are mutually complicitous - us and them, white and colored, straight and queer, Christian and Jew, self and Other, oppressor and oppressed. We all of us find ourselves in the position of being simultaneously insider/outsider. The Spanish word nosotras means us. In theorizing insider/outsider I write the word with a slash between nos (us) and otras (others). Today the division between the majority of us and them is still intact. This country does not want to acknowledge its walls or limits, the places some people are stopped or stop themselves, the lines they arent allowed to cross. . . . [But] the future belongs to those who cultivate cultural sensitivities to differences and who use these abilities to forge a hybrid consciousness that transcends the us vs. them mentality and will carry us into a nosotras position bridging the extremes of our cultural realities.

Gloria Evangelina Anzalda