Pláticas as a Method of Refusal for Legal Educational Praxis

• In Event: Chicana/Latina Feminista Pláticas in Educational Research: Pedagogy and Praxis

Abstract

Purpose
In this paper we explore pláticas (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016) as a method of refusal for educational praxis (Hamzeh et. al 2020). Pláticas as method reside in the deep Indigenous cosmopolitics (De La Cadena, 2010) that undergird the making of us. Such an understanding of pláticas generates working towards praxis informed by a refusal that avoids recognition by the university (Moten & Harney, 2013). It also demands a realist practice where we recognize the limits of the work in the university, our capacity as faculty to affect change in a racial capitalist, settler colonial nation, and thus our ability to clearly see the landscapes of abolition and decolonization (Marie & Watson, 2020). Consequently, pláticas as a method specifically require refusal of the modes of the academy and the neoliberal model of productivity (Simpson, 2014) that captures minoritized experiences for the benefit of white, settler society and the university (Grande, 2018a, 2018b). Pláticas buttress the concept of refusal setting a separate temporal space away from the violence of academia to build up and heal; we create a little atmosphere for ourselves and our students (Flores Carmona et. al, 2018). These actions inform our academic practice, reminding us that research and teaching are not in isolation of one another, but happen relationally (Hamzeh & Flores Carmona, 2019).

Theoretical Framework & Methodology
The educational praxis is guided by Chicana feminist practice, Indigenous research methodologies, and Critical Indigenous Studies. Our hope and joy has never been in the spaces of state recognition (Coulthard, 2014), but in the spaces of our own making (Pérez, 1999), those spaces where we were made in relation to things much more powerful and long-lasting than capitalism (Deloria & Wildcat, 2001). Relatedly, pláticas, similar to talking story (Sripipatana et. al 2010), invite us to bring humor into our spaces and practices, reminding us that we don’t want to be of these spaces. Our families use humor to center what is important and what isn’t (O’Bonsawin2017). Pláticas as method require us to center a radical politics of listening (Carnes, 2011)—counter to the practice of the university that demands we are citable experts—that is central to the communal models we draw from (Wilson, 2008). Finally, pláticas require us to be humble, recognizing that we are engaging in a type of realist practice, akin to Bell’s racial realism extended to education (Alemán & Alemán, 2010; DeCuir & Dixon, 2004).

Scholarly Significance & Conclusion
Taken together, pláticas as method require a different praxis than what we have been sold in the academy (Hayes, Velez, & Calderon, in press). Below we explore this through a weaving together (Espinoza, 1990; Montoya 1994) of our stories as legal educators, the deep presence of our ancestors that shape the manner of our plácticas, and how this impacts our teaching and research. Finally, we discuss how the method of plácticas requires a type of relationality to the place we live, demanding a different set of practices that are in service to local communities (Brayboy et. al 2012).

Authors

• Ceci Lopez

• Dolores Calderon, Western Washington University