Resistance, Reproduction, and Pena

• In Event: Colonialities of Being: Speaking Our Voices

Abstract

In order to look at the development of my hybrid identity I will: (a) contextualize the Azorean-Portuguese-American community within the U.S. context; (b) unveil my own experiences from a gender perspective through exploring the conditions of gender oppression that I had to face as an Azorean- Portuguese-American female in the massively predominate paternalistic micro-society. In that context, I will (c) also examine how school was instrumental in the production and legitimization of all forms of gender oppression that a girl like me had to face daily. I will show how as an Azorean-Portuguese-American I had to systematically deny my identity in order to have an official acceptable identity both in family and institutional settings; (d) I will frame my analysis within a the colonialities oxymoron; that is, while the Portuguese were the framers of the colonizing mindset, the Azorean-Portuguese immigrant later experienced that coloniality of power and being in the Portuguese diasporas (Sousa Santos, 2007; Maldonado-Torres, 2010; Quijano, 2000; Mignolo, 2010). The ironic post-colonial structure where the same Portuguese civilization once emigrated, as was the case of the Azorean diasporic community, became precisely the oppressed side of the colonial matrix.
My theoretical frame will focus on four complex identity terrains, in order examine my own gender-oppressed experience as an Azorean Portuguese American woman. I will also contextualize the (1) Portuguese American community within the New England context, (2) the educational nexuses in the production and reproduction of forms of gender oppression as an Azorean Portuguese “white” female and (3) I will also bring to the table the concept of coloniality or colonialities to better understand the identity dynamics within the Azorean matrix. I will fundamentally rely on critical approaches developed by critical public intellectuals, from different epistemological areas above and beyond the western epistemological platform that will help me understand the object of my study. In this context, not only will I rely on critical sociological, philosophical, cultural studies perspectives and political economy frameworks developed by western intellectuals within the western epistemological sphere. In addition, I will also anchor my theoretical journey by intently looking to post-colonial, de-colonial southern theories which are imperative not to just understand the mechanics of oppression, but fundamental in the framing of oppression as a specific concrete piece of complex processes of nullification. This research sheds light on the understanding of my own social and institutional identity historically - i.e. diachronically, a specific contemporary framework and specific contemporary framework identity that is i.e. the understanding of the Azorean-Portuguese American community that is segregated via a socially constructed framework in which they have been contained.

Author

• Carmelia Silva, University of Massachusetts - Dartmouth