Autoethnographic reflexion: Chicana feminist border/transformative pedagogies and human rights education

ABSTRACT

Through the methodologies of critical reflexión and autoethnography, the author illustrates how border/transformative pedagogies and Anzaldúa’s concepts of nos/otras and new tribalism proved useful in efforts to dismantle color- and colonial-blind ideologies, abstract liberalism, and binary and oppositional thinking among members of a graduate seminar in social justice and human rights. Investments in these discourses and unquestioned philosophical commitments to them limited seminars members’ ability to openly talk about racism, sexism, homophobia, and colonialism. Applying the principles of border/transformative pedagogies, nos/otras, and new tribalism required hard work, in-depth reflexión, and deep listening to each other. As a result of this praxis, some members of the seminar were able to name their philosophical and political positions to work across what seemed to be insurmountable borders. In doing so, seminar members were able to begin to build bridges among multiple intersectional identities and philosophical positions. The author argues that these pedagogical practices are beneficial for human rights education in particular and educational practices in general.

KEYWORDS:

• Anzaldúan feminist theory
• border/transformative pedagogies
• human rights education
• reflexión
• new tribalism
• nos/otras

Acknowledgements

I want to thank the student in the human rights seminar who struggled to develop anti-binary thinking and who by now are now human rights practitioners. I would like to extend special thanks to Dolores Delgado Bernal and Sofia Villenas who provided feedback to earlier drafts of this article. Thanks for Victoria Hay for her editing feedback. Finally, I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for the Journal of Latinos and Education for their insightful suggestions that only made this article stronger.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

¹ For this discussion, the first-person plural (we) will denote faculty and students in a collective setting, and the first-person singular will explicate the author’s experience and reflections.

² Members of the seminar had different philosophical and political positions. Although some members expressed racially insensitive statements and others had problems understanding why some students of color addressed racism and structural inequality, it is important to note that we were not dealing with White supremacists.

³ The exchange was problematic in a number of ways. While both students did not comport themselves in a “proper” way and certainly I do not endorse personal attacks in the classroom, I also know based on experience that it is too much to ask of students of color to silence their anger when confronted with racism. It is an example of white privilege that as a society we accept, or give a pass to White individuals when they say something derogatory, at the same time that we expect students of color not to react or if they do so is by containing their emotions or anger. Because I understood why the student of color reacted in the way they did, other students in class felt I was okay with the tone of their response, without recognizing how the dynamics between oppression and privileged were played out in class.

⁴ According to Calderón (2016), damaged-centered narratives operate from first recognizing that in order to achieve justice, a harm or injury has to be established. In the classroom this resulted in erasing people of color’s agency and positioning them as victims. Of course, when discussing human rights violations and structural inequality, we must recognize how individuals and social groups are harmed. The issue is in how harms are reified and agency is ignored.

⁵ As Keating explains, most university training is grounded on oppositional epistemologies based on binary strategies, where scholars must prove why their position is superior to others. This results in arguments “I am right, you are wrong” and limits understanding and solidarity.

⁶ This essay, published in The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader, edited by AnaLouise Keating in 2009, was based on a talk Anzaldúa gave at St. Olaf College in 1992. (See introduction of essay in the reader, p. 203).

⁷ I have been reflecting on this experience for several years and this article is the result of my own musings. I did not collect data from students and do not have IRB approval to conduct interviews with students. Therefore, I do not have data from students. This is why methodologically I draw from autoethnography and reflexión.

⁸ I use the term reflexión in Spanish because it expresses most intimately the in-depth thinking than the term in English does for me.

⁹ Testimonio is a mode of expression that gives voice to experiences of repression or struggle. This voicing is done by relating personal knowledge in conjunction to collective experiences. A key aspect of testimonio is that it is based on political struggle and action in the service of social justice. Autoethnography is a form of writing in which an author uses self-reflection to explore personal experience and connect this story to wider cultural, political, and/or social meanings.

¹⁰ Embodiment refers to the process of recognizing that how we make sense of the world is influenced by our characteristics such as gender, race, sexuality, that is the interrelationship between mind and body.

¹¹ We all speak from social position, but when speaking from a universal standpoint (whether one embodies the universal or not) it is not considered a standpoint. The discourse is unmarked, considered neutral.

¹² I recognize that using the language of failure and success is binary. However, I concede that even when we want to invoke anti-binary practices sometimes we end up reproducing them. The process of reflexión allows us look deeper into how we assess teaching based on success and failure. At the moment, inasmuch as I was enacting border/transformative pedagogies and anti-binary thinking, in a contradictory way I was engaging in binary thinking myself.

¹³ There are, of course, caveats with seeking consciousness of different philosophical positions. I am not suggesting to unproblematically accept all positions, as a White supremacist can be very conscious of their position. However, that was not the case in this seminar, most of the taken-for-granted positions were color and colonial-blind ideologies.