Notes on: Calderon-Berumen, F.,
Espinosa-Dulanto, M. & O'Donald, K. (2022)
Testimonio at work: the power of Malintzin
researchers. International Journal of Research
& Method in Education, 45(4):
370-380, DOI: 10.1080/1743727X.2022.2076829
They describe themselves as Latin American women,
once travellers now US dwellers,mestizas,
Malintzin*. They have been on a journey and faced
invisibility. They tried to debunk USA colonising
constructs. They've chosen to work with their
heritage feminist epistemologies and to argue for
platicas and testimonios as methods to highlight
how USA higher education 'reinforces an apartheid
of knowledge' (370), through its 'decision-making
process of gatekeeping practices'. They want to
show how experiential knowledge makes a
contribution although this is not taken into
account and their 'ancestral knowledges may have
been constantly devalued and dismissed as
racialised and indigenized and not following
Westernised standards'.
Their multiple identities intersect their
scholarly work and their own lives, but they live
in 'tight, highly controlled white
Eurocentric/westernised spaces'. This means they
often have to wear masks to protect themselves [ Anzaldua is cited],
meaning that their identities are fluid and yet
'simultaneously interconnected with their
surroundings', so they can go back-and-forth
acting and re-enacting masks and identities,
learning the rules of the academic field but also
how to bend and break them. They know how and when
to become visible, how to unshackle their
identities and relearn their heritages, when,
where and how to wear masks and when to take them
off. They see themselves as having no home,
undocumented, foreign, wanting to 'build sacred
spaces, to heal, focus on ourselves, call out
marginalisation, alienation and critically
processing our decoloniality' [endless pseudery]
(371). They cite Delgado and others to condemn HE
in the USA as Eurocentric, dominated by white
privilege, meritocracy, objectivity, and
individuality, and thus devaluing alternatives,
separating out knowledge, needing to be challenged
with platicas and testimonios, and unconventional
ways of writing to disrupt 'establish methods of
educational research'.
They are aware of the implications and
consequences. They are 'Malintzin' researchers,
with multiple roles, engaged in platicas, learners
and working mothers but also academics,
researchers and insiders, usually they write in
English, but they often think in different
languages, sometimes a mixture, including
indigenous languages like Quecha. They note that
epistemologies are woven into language and
languages are embedded in bodies and memories.
Given that English is the dominant language in the
USA they need to keep translating and offering
counter stories, shaping new spaces deciding what
is shareable and what should become sacred. This
is not easy and they are constantly questioning
themselves about who this research is for and who
the audience might be. They decide they are to
protect the women who have shared their
experiences and stories, even though the
occasional '"reward" of a publication' might be
nice (372). Voicing injustice is more important,
personal experience from 'the colonial wound', the
intention to decolonise, to open the door to
experiential knowledge, make space for 'otherwise
not heard voices', including BIPOC ones, work
against colonial methods, potentially 'racialised
and indigenize educational research'.
Lots of people have said that platicas and
testimonios provide suitable methodologies to
enable researchers 'to theorise lived experiences
with a political intent'. They want to render
meaningful experiences. They have emerged to
share, which produces testimonios, shared through
narratives and 'poetic performance renderings'[oh
no], in order to decolonise academia challenge
Eurocentric research, think decolonially and
engage in '"a transdisciplinary analytic in which
the problems precede the method"' [citing a piece
which includes Mignolo as an author] (372).
P and T enable an array of 'experiences issues and
discourses'to be included and 'as epistemologies'
[decided already] they melt away traditional
Western categories — 'individual ownership,
reality, fiction and truth'. Engaging in P
involves the traditional way of sharing knowledge
in many Latino families and communities, using
conversations, family and oral history traditions,
communal trust, and developing a Chicana feminist
methodology 'braided with other critical theories'
that centre experiences of marginal individuals
and the way they are oppressed by multiple
systems. They want these P to develop not as
traditional research methods, but rather as
conversations 'founded in solidarity, dwelling in
radical love' [citing Freire and hooks]. T can
help express and document intense experiences,
where the personal and private become political .
They surpass traditional approaches because they
do not support the status quo but count, describe,
unveil, act as the voice of the forgotten and
raise consciousness. They lead to self reflection,
they help dig into open wounds and enable
participants to see the necessity of composing a
T. Together, they stand out among methods for
qualitative research [no criticism of these other
methods?].
They are both a survival tactic and a 'liberating
venue', offering sense of the self, and
resistance, 'in our own language'. We create text
— in its broadest sense… that reify [sic] who we
are' (373). This is the opposite to gatekeeping,
it is sharing. It is crucial to do this when doing
critical educational research with and for
communities of colour. 'We don't need anybody
else's permission, we can just be our true self'
[naïve, but more than a hint of the micro-politics
involved here], although we are aware of the
risks. Nevertheless it is work that matters and
worth the pain.
We are constantly crossing borders and we have to
learn how to navigate and overcome the coloniality
of power. 'They make us think we don't belong'. We
are 'circumscribed' by skin colour, cultural
background, gender and sexual orientation. We are
forced to master another language and given no
chance to show who we are. We have to use masks.
However once inside, we are particularly alert to
representations 'careful about epistemicide,
welcoming pluralism' and constantly interested in
building bridges 'as a way of reifying [sic] our
commitment, solidarity with the epistemologies of
the South [a reference to our old mate De Sousa
Santos here]. Our projects and journeys are as
complicated as their identities. Constant
mutations are celebrations of struggle differences
and multiplicity, we are bridges to and for
ourselves and yet are also walked over. We are
witnesses, but we have experienced survival and
negotiation.
[Then we get Karla's testimonio — oh good]
Living in the USA
meant she lost her 'full potential towards
playfulness'. Her father was away on business,
and she was trusted in an unusual way. She was a
good teen but did not understand what was going
on. She did difficult exams after hours of
studying and passed with flying colours, and
then tried to enjoy the summer in the USA.
However she did not return to Mexico and this
left her confused and in 'an abyss of paralysing
silence that lasted for years'. (374) Her
parents [NB] decided to stay in Texas despite
promises to let her choose where to go. She
became 'a voiceless creature' without her own
opinions or feelings. She disappeared, she did
not exist — 'why did my own parents had to [sic]
dismember me?' (374). Sadness and distrust
polluted her life, and she turned into a shadow
of a self. Her family life was destroyed so was
her ability to enjoy surprise and welcome
uncertainty — this is her open wound. She now
realises that worlds are constructed by stories,
and that these can be connected together in
solidarity, radical love, which is why she wants
to share this testimonio here. She sees this as
'intrinsically decolonial' displacing Western
rationality and enacting 'our theorising of
lived experiences' [what a sorry self-indulgent
story, and what's it got to do with US
colonialism? Her strict Mexican family seem to
have crushed after she experienced US liberalism
and teen culture]
Miryam's testimonio [in the form of free poems and
commentary — even better!]
It all seems to be
about her thoughts on life, how it's full of
stormy times sweet moments, emotions, all melded
together building a text and a collection of
memories.
Then it's followed by a piece of text saying
that she can now recognise the wound on others
after reading the writings of women of colour,
especially somebody called Lugones on
streetwalkers and how they 'hang out' in order
to network and collaborate. This is like
platicas and testimonios she says.
Then she quotes another poem, this time in
Spanish.
Then another commentary, about the need to
scream your thoughts but also be 'respectfully
disrespectful' (375). Hanging out helps them
share subjectivities and create
intersubjectivities, do healing work that 'also
adds to our intellectual and academic work', and
'grow hope, curiosity, creativity, love,
possibility and potentiality'. Then it's back to
Lugones on the need to enter other people's
worlds and see how each person is constructed
within a world, exposing subjectivity, excepting
vulnerability, exposing a bit of ourselves in
order to get to know another person, and
interaction. We might feel we do not agree with
the way we are perceived. We might feel
dehumanised, in colonialism and 'structures of
power and hegemony' we are always under constant
surveillance (376).
Which leads to another short poem, and then
another part of the testimonial in the form of a
lengthier free poem
This one is about a rape, and
how it was a shock because she was living in an
otherwise nice world, and felt protected.
However this protection seems to been offered by
a patriarch who was 'also my father', and as a
result she never felt feeble as a female, and
was not aware that she was so vulnerable, until
one night she walked away and was raped, a raped
virgin. That man later became her protector, a
fiancé [spelt with a double e], also her college
professor. No one wanted to hear what had
happened. And then two years later, 'two years
of constant abuse, constant rape' she was tossed
aside. It's not pretty but she finally found
some equilibrium and learned her place..
The piece ends with a two line poem from Moraga
and Anzaldua about having a foot in both worlds
but refusing to feel split by it.
[Back to collective commentary I think]. There
were foreign US dwellers and WOC [only in Spanish
-- mujeres de color] entering the US
academic world, realising that if they are to gain
upward mobility they must have their scholarly
contributions measured evaluated and accounted
for, even if this 'minimises the primordial
essence to the original intention of the work...
systematic reductive strategies'(378). Should they
surrender or resist? They chose to resist, to do
work that 'avoids erasure and gives opportunity
and voice to the plight of people of colour' they
want to challenge traditional procedures and allow
P&T to ensue, to offer options to speak up or
to play with words 'in a liberatory scream or a
poetic whisper', to write about it, make it public
or not, to use the traditional academic guidelines
or create 'their own process of presenting
decolonising research'[what on earth did they have
in mind I wonder, and where would they place this
particular piece?]
Their individual journeys are both similar and
distinct, but different circumstances brought them
together in a collective journey, so they can now
be open to one another, help heal each other's
wounds, grow personally and professionally,
increase the courage to resist and learn the
skills they need to do what matters. They
experience 'the bliss of collaboration', and
increasingly deal with oppositional concepts
'since our work meets the academic standards, yet
it disrupts colonial traditions' [really? Only in
very tolerant special editions I would have
thought]. Sometimes ['many times'] the work has
been rejected, both 'teaching practices and
scholarship' because they want to do work that
resists oppressive tactics of assimilation, and
some colleagues insist they do work that they see
as relevant, rigorous, objective and scholarly.
However they are encouraged by critical scholars
like Anzaldua and hooks, Lorde and Bernal to claim
their cultural and experiential knowledge so they
do: 'we tell stories to signify subjectivities.
Our stories transform us', become 'performance
narratives and poetic testimonios', shared with
all those in search of a home who came to this
foreign land seeking the American dream.
Yes they are at war with systematic structures and
institutionalised racism and they do have to wear
masks, but they go back to heal wounds and gain
courage to show up again they resurface as
Nepantleras** [Anzaldua]. When challenged to
specify their procedures they 'assert' that
testimonio is based on personal experience and
'how the person decides to share his or her story.
After that the researcher's creativity, skills,
experience and solidarity need to come to action'
this is why it is collective. [ie academics tart
it up? Another kind of colonialism really?]. We
hope P&T will find their place in educational
research 'without our need to justify its
legitimacy', without scholars having to struggle
to produce this type of work.
*Malintzin aka La Malinche was, according to her wikipedia
entry 'an
interpreter, advisor, and intermediary for the
Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés ... In Mexico today, La Malinche
remains a powerful icon - understood in various
and often conflicting aspects as the embodiment of
treachery, the quintessential victim, or the
symbolic mother of the new Mexican
people ...Mexican
feminists defended Malinche as a woman caught
between cultures, forced to make complex
decisions, who ultimately served as a mother of a
new race.'
**I don't remember this term in Anzaldua but
I googled it and got this
(https://www.raicescultura.org/nepantleras):
The Nepantleras is
a group of young women formed in 2013 around the
idea of empowerment and a safe space for women
to discuss issues pertaining to women and
women’s rights. Original members were high
school age girls from the Eastern Coachella
Valley, including Coachella, Indio, Mecca,
Thermal, and North Shore, working with young
adult Latinx women mentors. The work involved
the examination of colonialism & patriarchy,
promotion of self-love & self-care,
exploring sexuality & individuality, and
mining personal narrative & promoting
storytelling.
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