Enlazando/rompiendo fronteras in curriculum theory: Testimonio research’s aesthetic dimensions

Guest Editors

Basta de gritar contra el viento

toda palabra es ruido si no está acompañada de acción…

(Anzaldúa & Moraga, 1983, p. iv)

This special issue is a collective effort toward blurring the boundaries of curriculum theory. Here, we are bringing the Global South—una “Mirada al Sur”—to the spotlight. This issue is informed by epistemologies born in social and political struggles (De Sousa Santos & Meneses, 2020). The “Mirada al Sur” highlights the “subaltern” condition, “voiceless” marginalized, minoritized populations, as well as its instrumentality in retrieving, reconstructing, and recovering untold history/ies (Barrios de Chungara & Vizzer, 1978; Menchu, 1984/2010). Humbled by the power of the genre, we hope to continue the decolonizing Chicanx efforts (Anzaldúa & Moraga, 1983) of weaving/breaking normative narratives, embracing/disturbing discursive forms and featuring multiple aesthetic dimensions of testimonio.

In this issue, we understand testimonio as,

an authentic narrative, told by a witness who is moved to narrate by the urgency of a situation… portrays his or her own experience as a representative of a collective memory and identity. Truth is summoned in the cause of denouncing a present situation of exploitation and oppression or exorcising and setting aright official history (Yúdice 1985, as cited in Gugelberger & Kearney, 1991, p. 4)

In addition, the “Mirada al Sur” reflects on the remembering of otherwise not historized events of marginalized, minoritized populations and fosters testimonio as,

the symbol for an act of love: not simply an abstract love of one's country, one's race, or one's revolution… but rather, love for the human being to whom [women/mothers] gave life… the act of writing itself serves as a tribute to the memory of the dead: what has been silenced is spoken and written. (Saporta Sternbach, 1991, p. 98)

The collection of articles includes testimonio representations within/beyond the written narratives. The call for the issue was an open invitation for multiple, creative, non-hegemonic, decolonial aesthetics practices in testimonio. We were open to possibilities for expressing lived-experiences with political urgency and a call for social justice. We are here, with “la Mirada al Sur,” claiming unapologetically and embodying our racialized and gendered identities and positionalities. The result is a sample of the myriad of aesthetic possibilities of testimonio, one at a time and all simultaneously in a harmonious cacophony.

This issue is the culmination and the beginning of a project to unlearn the naturalization of privilege, subtly built on ethnocentric universalities. It is a decolonial, anti-patriarchal, anti-racist feminist project articulated with the epistemologies of the South. It demands a deep criticism of the current, Westernized, dominant way of global politics but also a careful reflection on the coloniality of our racialized bodies (Bidaseca, 2018). We understand writing as a process of discovery: personal, cultural, political, and professional discovery. Putting the self in writing is not easy. It takes courage to expose the “papelitos guardados” (Latina Feminist Group, 2001).

Unapologetically disrespectful, we embraced a switch to de-emphasize the writer/author as the protagonist. Instead, we conceive of the writer/author as an allegory of many as Rigoberta Menchu clearly stated, “This is my testimonio. I didn’t learn it from a book and I didn’t learn it alone… it’s not only my life, it’s also the testimonio of my people.” (Menchu, 1984/2010 p.1). Furthermore, decolonizing invites participation and respect of people’s stories. Domitila Barrios de Chúngara (1978) presented authorship as a communal responsibility,

I don't want anyone at any moment to interpret the story I'm about to tell as something that is only personal…What happened to me could have happened to hundreds of people in my country… because I recognize that there have been people who have done much more than I for the people, but who have died or who haven't had the opportunity to be known (1978, p.15).

We open this collection with our own communal responsibility of sharing the stories and testimonios that were encargados, unveiled, or disclosed to us. In, The Poetics Aesthetics of Testimonios. Subverting “I” for Social “I/We.” Una lengua que desquicia la academia, I/We chose poetic performance narratives to create provocative pieces, to give face to numeric data, increase awareness about power and privilege, and present an opportunity for readers to experience and feel the stories (Richardson, 1997) that may become not only representation of the events but “the event itself.” (Rosaldo, 2014).

Ana Castillo recalls “I grew up considering myself Mexican, despite the fact that I was born in the United States and was never in Mexico until ten years old. We ate, slept, talked and dreamed like Mexicans. From the very beginning, life flowed on the border of two worlds, two cultures, two languages.” For the current special issue, Ana Castillo offers us A Amazonia está queimando, a poetic rendering of recent devastating events inflicted on Turtle Island, mother nature, enhanced by two drawings of survivor animals.

In Haki/pláticas ∼ testimonios/shahadat: Arabyya feminista decolonial praxis, a mixed group of women juxtapose Arabyya, Mexicana, and Chicana epistemologies as they enact them as intentional responses to the struggles from their racialized and colonized border positionalities. Through their Arabyya feminista decolonial praxis, they show us how to find deep meaning un-silencing the self and theorizing from the body. Interweaving pláticas, poetry, and art, these women show their full commitment to decolonizing academia.

Improvising a space for us: a testimonio from a Latina Diaspora group is not only the result of countless conversations among the group members, but a collective effort involving family members. We strongly suggest reading this article along with the music and images created to complement this piece. The narrative becomes alive when experiencing their testimonio throughout our senses. The Latina Diaspora Group describe their process of creating a space to nurture themselves and support each other through the challenges Latinas encounter in a predominantly white institution (PWI).

As we are opening borders, we welcomed an article fully in Spanish, Cartografía de Daños y Resistencias. La Ruta Migratoria de las Jóvenes del África Occidental hacia Europa/Cartography of Damages and Resistances: Migratory Route of Young Women from West Africa to Europe. Two scholars from Spain depict their work breaking silence about the complex realities of African migration. Along the migratory way (which can last for years) young women experience serious episodes of violence, coercion, sale, and disappearance. A fundamental objective of the project shared here is to support the young women’s processes of breaking silences without exposing them to risks or revictimization. Through a choral text, the authors assembled stories representing the young women’s experiences, shed light on the damage of the road, but also on their endurance.

Beautiful resistance: Testimonio art, youth organizing, and collective desahogo tells Andrea Juárez’ powerful experience as community organizer and educator working with a youth group in California. Juárez’ pedagogy rooted in the relational, embodied, experiential, and subjugated knowledges inform her cultural intuition to guide this group in a process of desahogo and collective expression. She used Testimonio Art as a pedagogical practice that develops resistance and healing through collective memory. Placing multiple stories in dialogue with each other can disrupt the isolation of silenced individual experiences, creating moments of shared desahogo working alongside undocumented, first-generation immigrants, and other marginalized youth.

Vejoya Viren offers an honest, caring, and open-hearted poetic narrative of her personal and professional experiences as border crosser in Teaching and Parenting sin fronteras. In this piece, Viren articulates the realities of a transnational woman while making sense of the borderlands.

A fictionalized testimonio of a white teacher is presented in My eyes were closed the entire trip, but now they are open wide: A testimonio of the personal and political. Being aware of his privileged positionality, Brian Gibbs offers a perspective of a teacher who has been humbly humanized by an undocumented high school student and explains how he learned to see her completely as a whole human willing to fight for her dreams. He felt compelled to raise Claudia’s narrative as a pedagogic tool, “for others like me and the possibilities of our continued humanization.”

Poetic testimonio is exhibited through Our ancestor’s gifts: interpreting intergenerational knowledge about developing a teaching identity. Valencia Clement articulates the inspirational influence her tía, a wonderfully skilled educator, has had on her life. Displaying her skills as an artist-researcher, Clement presents a series of poems integrating her experiential knowledge, her admiration for her tía, and her artistic creations of poetry. This piece also includes Clement’s performance of the poetic testimonios through the links in the article.

Sandra Larios demonstrates a personal journey toward healing and empowerment through her Digital Testimonios. In a courageous way, Larios shares a personal experience of a healing process. Showing how in this emotional labor process the vulnerability evolves to become empowerment, she describes how creating this digital testimonio gave her the agency to voice silenced and suppressed emotions and feelings. The article contains links to two videos-digital testimonios exposing her new understandings, claiming her full autonomy in taking her power back.

The poetics of one’s testimony by Clelia Rodriguez reminded us of the powerful poetics in Diamela Eltit's work. Both are recognized as poetics of crisis producing beauty with disregard for language codes or conventional narratives. Furthermore, the inclusion of different languages and the “presence of an orality permeating the written speech while altering its syntax, heteroglossia sought as a destabilizing element of the aesthetic and order… a generic half-breed, of an incestuous coupling of genres, a voice that appeals to all citizens…” (Prado Traverso, 1995, p. 139-140, our translation). Rodriguez’ testimonio denounces how the official ideology enters the body, becomes personal and may disorient as it functions to reproduce dominant ideologies.

Art is at the core and the glue of this special issue, and we count with the participation of Sandra C. Fernández and her work that addresses traumas and hopes of migration, dislocation, loss, and memory. As with most art of substance, Fernandez’s begins with the specific (in her case, the highly personal), which ultimately resonates with universal conditions and experience. In this issue, Fernández's three-and two-dimensional pieces tell stories, are beautiful, the layers are subtle—but not decorative—and their messages are often poignant and painful. Through the very materiality and intimacy of her work, she invites viewers to enter into the art narratives fraught with pain, loss, and sorrow, as well as possibilities for hope, justice, and transformation. Her work, frequently delicate and understated is made from fragile, ephemeral materials and discards. It nevertheless commands attention and packs a punch.

Finally, we are aware that we are taking risks and we embraced them. We are deeply thankful to Erin Miller and Sam Tanner, journal editors, who were willing to take the risk with us.