The Politics of Urgency: A Chicana Feminist Perspective on Knowledge Production, Educational Advocacy, and Transformational Change

• In Event: Equity-Oriented Public Knowledge Formation: Lessons From Dewey Toward Social and Institutional Transformation

Abstract

The paper presentation draws on our work experiences at the Texas Center for Education Policy (TCEP), as well as a national-level effort to organize a “Grow-Your-Own Teacher Education Institutes initiative” (GYO-TEI) under the auspices of the National Latino/a Education Research and Policy (NLERAP) project. Our goals are to theorize the politics of building knowledge and capacity for educational change, and provide a narrative that draws upon our positionalities as Latina agents of change. We draw particularly on the work of Chicana feminist scholar, Aida Hurtado (1997, 1998, 2003), to illuminate some of the more important dimensions of power and ways of knowing that are germane to our lives as racialized subjects that work in areas of policy, community organizing, and institution building in predominantly white spaces.

Theoretical Framework

A Chicana feminist epistemology acknowledges Chicanas’ unique positionality in both constructing knowledge and exercising various forms of agency that are predicated on a range of lived experiences, our identities as researchers, pedagogies of the home, and a commitment to social change (Delgado-Bernal, 1998, 2001; Hurtado, 1997, 1998, 2003). How this takes shape and expresses itself is a uniquely individual experience as not all react to oppressive policies, practices, and institutions in a uniform manner. According to Hurtado (1997), feminists of color frequently deal with the motivations to produce knowledge from the position of a politics of urgency that in turn is tied to a commitment to improving social conditions, and being agents of transformational change. This position chooses to “construct theory and political agenda[s] for achieving social justice rather than only engaging in intellectual debates that deconstruct existing paradigms” (p. 215).
Methodological Approach
This paper will utilize the qualitative method of testimonio. At the heart of testimonio is the sense of urgency to communicate subaltern perspectives (Beverly, 2000). Gonzalez (2000) further notes that the narratives that stem from testimonio, “do not portray the self in isolation from the community or from the social structures that reproduce unequal relations of power” (p. 105), but rather, reveal the complexities and multiple forms of oppression that Chicana feminists encounter as political agents.
Contribution
By juxtaposing the factors that inform our epistemology, ethical stances, and agency working in predominantly white institutions, with dominant notions of how political science-centered policy scholars “should be” (Theodoulou, 1995; Weiss, 1977) our testimonio provides a deeper understanding of the complexities involved in researchers’ orientations towards political action. This counternarrative further adds to work that critical policy scholars have contributed to the area of policy studies (see Young, 1999 and 2003). Our approach to theory and practice embraces Dewey’s notion of sincere “truth-telling” as the core of truth, while at the same time our approach fills a gap in Dewey’s theory since he failed to recognize the gendered and racialized character of public discourse and policy action.

Authors

• Angela Valenzuela, The University of Texas - Austin

• Patricia D. Lopez, The University of Texas - Austin