Love as Methodology: Contextualizing Rigor and Setting Standards

• In Event: Inspired by Love: Revolutionary Love-Based Ontoepistemic and Ethical Possibilities for Transformative Methodology

Abstract

Purpose
In this paper, I use examples of how the Dominican Republic and Haiti are discussed (or erased) in U.S.-centric educational scholarship to argue for the adoption of the ontoepistemological orientation of “love as methodology”. I argue that theorizing and inquiry that function within a “love as methodology” framework produce knowledge through processes that are considerate, creative, and edifying. This is in contrast to colonial processes, which, although widespread, apply methods that exploit, subjugate, and displace existing epistemologies.

The colonization of indigenous lands, enslavement of Africans, and plundering of resources throughout the world are inextricably linked to the development of universities in the modern era and to today’s privileging of epistemologies from five countries in the Global North (Grosfoguel, 2013). Using examples from education journals, curriculum analyses, and blogs written by academics, I present five approaches for evaluating the merits of findings by scholars whose sites of analysis have colonial histories. The purpose of presenting these approaches is to emphasize the need for alignment between de/colonial theoretical premises and love-based methods of conceptualizing and enacting inquiry.

Perspectives
Informed by de/colonial theorists across generations (e.g., Fanon, 1968; Smith, 2012) and feminist scholars who explore love (e.g. Sandoval, 2000; hooks, 2000), I situate my positionality as a U.S.-based researcher whose intersecting identities (Collins, 1990) and re-membered transnational histories (Dillard, 2008) are entangled in her praxis. These entanglements produce a heightened sensitivity to assertions about multiply-marginalized people within the Global North context.

Methods
Although Columbus is often lauded or demonized within U.S. discourse of world history (Kubal, 2008), seldom are the names of the indigenous people (e.g., Taínos) or lands he colonized mentioned. In 1492, Columbus did NOT land on Plymouth Rock, but first settled on an island the indigenous people called Ayiti/Quisqueya (Torres-Saillant, 1998). This settlement marked the global colonial era and the acceleration of the westernization of universities while committing epistemicide of colonized people throughout the world (Grosfoguel, 2013). I conceptualize love as methodology as an entangled praxis between people and their histories of places. To align theory, inquiry, and love as methodology, I offer examples of how Dominicans and Haitians are portrayed in U.S. discourses about the de/colonial project in curricula analyses (e.g., Bickford, 2013), academic blogs (e.g., Patel, 2015), and peer-reviewed education articles (e.g., Wigginton, 2005). I contextualize standards of “rigor” within the Hispaniola’s complex history, acknowledging it is where the first university in the western hemisphere was founded and the location of the first documented slave revolt in the Americas (Stone, 2013).

Significance
I suggest a framework for scholarly activity rooted in love. Researchers and theorists can discern the quality, rigor, and value of scholarly contributions in ways that are congruent with love as methodology. These approaches avoid the (a) essentializing of colonized/once-colonized people’s knowledge and experiences, (b) epistemicide of contemporary scholars and scholars who came before, and (c) further humiliation and dehumanization of colonized/minoritized people and their descendant; they favor the (d) humanization of all (Freire, 1970) and (e) the co-construction of knowledge and methods of knowing.

Author

• Mildred Boveda, Arizona State University - Tempe