Revolutionary Testimonios That Heal: Testimonio as a Research and Healing Tool

• In Event: Research Positionality and the Process of Developing One´s Voice in Decolonial Projects: A Transnational Dialogue

Abstract

This presentation explores my positionality as a first-generation professor and researcher, sharing my experiences as former nontraditional student, adult English learner, and immigrant Mexican woman navigating the western academy, which is rooted in Eurocentric epistemologies that are oppressive and violent towards black and brown bodies (Anzaldua, 1987). Historically, research design has been dominated by the white male establishing objectified methodologies that create binary, and hierarchical relationships between the researcher and the participants. Westernized research is informed by culture, beliefs, feelings, and attitudes, often derived from what author Audrey Lorde calls the “mythical norm”. This norm is usually defined as white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and financially secure, and it is within this mythical norm that society informs its culture (Lorde 1987).

As a first-generation researcher, professor, and activist scholar, I utilize testimonio as a research method that elevates and centers voices of those living at the margins, effectively disrupting epistemic violence in traditional western research (Spivak, 2002). Testimonio is a genre of authentic first-person narratives and counter stories, in oral form where its main goal is to share an experience about a significant event or episode in the narrator’s life. The narration is shared to a listener, an interviewer or an audience and the academic process includes recording of the session and transcription of the narration to be used as a source of conocimiento (knowledge), conocimiento that is shared from the lived experience (Beverly, 1996). Testimonio writing originally rooted in Latin America’s revolutions has become an essential tool for disrupting the persistence of policies, procedures, and practices gatekeeping access to higher education, where racialized subjects experience intersectional oppression. U.S. Latinx and Chicanx people tell collective stories that resonate with each other and powerfully allow us to learn about resilience and survival.
In this presentation I highlight testimonio for its multiple uses, not only as a research method but its application in the classroom as a healing pedagogical tool. As an instructor, I incorporate testimonio as a healing practice in the curriculum, where the students create digital testimonios to tell their experiences of struggle and resilience in navigating unequal educational systems founded in systemic racism (Casteneda-sound et.al, 2022).

My positionality comes from experience as a transnational immigrant to the United States is precisely what inspired me to produce research that centers on collective knowledge, but specifically on the knowledge shared by other immigrant women like me accessing and surviving in the U.S. higher education system. Being an adult English learner, immigrant, and nontraditional student, I noticed that much of the existing literature on first-generation Latinx students did not help me to better navigate the ivory tower.

As the experiences of those who went through the k-12 education system in the U.S., and adult English learners are vastly different because the social capital each group holds involves different challenges, oppressions, and privileges (Coleman 1988 & Portes 1998). I use my positionality to produce critical inquiries that analyze how the lived experience becomes knowledge and how knowledge transforms into tools of freedom.

Author

• Elizabeth Ramírez Arreola, University of Washington