Critical reflexión and plática∼testimonio/haki∼shahadat: Enacting decolonial praxis of solidarity from the Mexico-US borders to Palestine

Abstract

In this plática, we share how we have deployed the methodologies of critical reflexión and plática ∼ testimonio/haki ∼ shahadat, which helped us enact a decolonial praxis of solidarity with intentional acts that grounded us in border thinking and opened the possibilities of creating an otherwise of love and harmony. We illustrate a praxis of solidarity stemming from our negotiation of differences, experiences of each other/beside each other in different moments and different sites of resistance inside and outside academia. Part of this praxis is exemplified in our co-femtoring other colleagues, faculty, and graduate students of Color and co-teaching/co-creating digital testimonios in the classroom. We also illustrate an interdependent solidarity collaborating in a US Hispanic Serving Institution on Mexico-US borders and in Cairo, Egypt and co-teaching/co-learning Palestine historically and at another moment of genocide. Inside and outside academia, we do our solidarity expansively, in purposeful, reciprocal, interdependent ways.

Keywords:

• Testimonio/shahadat
• haki/plática
• critical reflexión
• decolonial praxis
• solidarity

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 “Epistemic disobedience takes us to a different place, to a different ‘beginning’ … to spatial sites of struggles and building rather than to a new temporality within the same space” (Mignolo, 2011, p. 45).

2 Cecilia Zeledón a displaced Nicaraguan and a Zapatista scholar from Universidad Iberoamericana de Puebla, Mexico.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Manal Hamzeh

Manal Hamzeh is a Full Professor of the Borderlands and Ethnic Studies and Gender and Sexualities programs at the New Mexico State University. Her teaching and research draw on anti-racist educational theories and decolonial feminist research methodologies. Her research has made a significant contribution to the contemporary fields of Arabyya decolonizing feminist methodologies. She has also made an impact in the fields of Arab Feminisms, Women’s Studies and Sport Sociology. Dr. Hamzeh is a second-generation Palestinian born in Jordan.

Judith Flores Carmona

Judith Flores Carmona is an Associate Professor and Faculty Fellow for the Honors College at New Mexico State University. Her scholarship includes critical pedagogy, Chicana/Latina feminist theory, critical race feminism, social justice education, and testimonio methodology and pedagogy. Her work has appeared in Equity and Excellence in Education, Race Ethnicity and Education, the Journal of Latino/Latin American Studies, the Journal of Latinos and Education, and in Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social.