Remembering cafecito and other practices for resiliency and survival in the academy

Abstract

In this article we explore pláticas as a method of refusal for educational practice that embodies a type of Indigenous cosmopolitics that undergird communities we come from. Such an understanding of pláticas generates working towards praxis informed by a refusal that avoids recognition by the university, much like we learn through pláticas the intimate ways our caretakers resist sovereign state power. Such an understanding of pláticas demands a realist practice where we recognize the limits of the work in the university, our capacity as faculty to affect change in a racial capitalist, settler colonial nation. Consequently, pláticas as a method specifically require refusal of the modes of the academy and the neoliberal model of productivity that captures minoritized experiences for the benefit of white, settler society and the university. We describe how these actions inform our academic practice, demonstrating how our research and teaching are not in isolation from the humble communities that birthed us.

Keywords:

• Pláticas
• Chicana feminisms
• refusal
• narrative
• methodology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ceci Lopez

Ceci Lopez, J.D. is an associate professor and director of the Law, Diversity, and Justice Program at Western Washington University’s Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies.

Dolores Calderón

Dolores Calderón, J.D., Ph.D., is a professor and faculty in the Law, Diversity, and Justice Program at Western Washington University’s Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies.