Emancipatory Rereadings

• In Event: 34.082 - Decolonizing Interpretive Research: A Subaltern Methodology for Social Change

Abstract

Western Christianity tends to separate God from humanity. This is an epistemological problem. The nature of this work necessitates a process by which critical theory, critical pedagogy, and liberation theology serve to reconstruct traditional Westernized notions of the interrelatedness of theology and education through an emancipatory re-reading of New Testament Scriptures. This study seeks to determine what can be learned from a critical pedagogy of Jesus Christ by examining His integration of theology and pedagogy as presented in His praxis detailed in the New Testament. Jesus is positioned as the literal embodiment of both theology and pedagogy, where both are procured through praxis for liberation, resulting in an emancipatory pedagogy that reconciles humanity back to God and God to humanity. This decolonizing interpretive analysis serves to provide bicultural researchers the opportunity to engage and challenge the dominant literature on pedagogy, curriculum, methodology, and schooling. Bicultural researchers have been forced to navigate the dialectical social terrain of dominant/subordinate tensions and contradictions, as part of their process of survival, as subaltern or subordinate cultural citizens and critical scholars. This study seeks to deconstruct Eurocentric epistemicides that compartmentalize knowledge, particularly within the fields of theology and education. Within this work I seek to exemplify the principle of the methodology by fully embracing emancipatory pedagogical practices to re-discover its purpose and praxis within a world marred with oppression towards members of marginalized communities. The work positions itself to provide subaltern researchers with essential elements necessary to critically engage within all areas of social justice—politics, education, religion, social work, sciences, and the arts. Accordingly, this decolonizing interpretive analysis serves to provide bicultural researchers the opportunity to engage the dominant literature on pedagogy, curriculum, methodology, and schooling (Darder, 2015b). The essential nature of this analysis positions itself to proffer counterhegemonic theories, ideologies, and methodologies to interpret social phenomena that would be otherwise overlooked and devalued (Darder, 2015b).

Author

• Terrelle B Sales, Vanguard University of Southern California