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Abstract

From a position of academic activism, we critique the longstanding dominance del production of knowledge that solely implicates fidelity to Eurocentric methodological technologies en qualitative research. Influenced by an Andean decolonial perspective, en Spanglish we problematize métodos of analysis as the dominant research practice, whereby las stories o relatos result en su appropriation, captivity and gentrification, first by researchers’ authorship and later by the publishing industry copyrights. We highlight the racializing and capitalist colonial/modern Eurocentric agenda del current market of knowledge production that displaces to la periphery all knowledge o relatos that do not subscribe to Euro-US American methodological parameters of what counts as knowledge. Therefore, we intend to heighten the readers’ audibility of another possibility of knowing that does not come from Eurocentric methodologically produced stories. At the forefront of our critique, and as an introduction to a decolonial option, we include our written, uttered, and painted stories, with the political intent of social transformation of coloniality. These seek to denounce power structures that have had incarnated effects on our lives y comunidades. We intend to invite researchers to serve as witnesses of our experiences rather than as critics of methodological rigor. We include final commentaries on a decolonial project to rethink the unquestionable fidelity and dependency toward the current research order of things of el center and la periphery. This is so as to render European technologies of knowledge as only one alternative among many other possible means of legitimate knowledge making in qualitative research. We discuss our hope for epistemological coexistence by which fair and reciprocal intercultural translations of knowledge making could take place, not in the name of equality, but difference.

Keywords

Eurocentrism, Decoloniality, Decolonization, Coloniality, Modernism, Qualitative Research, Spanglish, Academic Activism, Stories, Research Methods

Author Bio(s)

marcela polanco is an assistant professor in the family therapy master's program at San Diego State University. Tirzah Le Feber is a Counseling Psychologist from Our Lady of the Lake University. Nathan D. Hanson, Camila Hernández, Stephanie Old Bucher, Ione Rodriguez and Brandi Velasco are finishing their MFT master's program at Our Lady of the Lake University. Sonia Medina, Eva I. Rivera and Elizabeth Vela are graduates of the same program. Jackolyn Le Feber is mother to five children, one of which is Tirzah.

Acknowledgements

We want to give especial recognition to our compañeras Brooke Williamson, Tiffany Adeigbe, and Susie Chavarría-Torres, who previously contributed to the delivery of our stories. We also want to thank James Wright, Beatriz (Tixa) Morales, and Jennifer White for their very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. marcela wants to acknowledge the radical activist teachings of the GLEFAS.org team of decolonial feminists.

Publication Date

1-19-2020

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2020.4098

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