Faithful Witnessing and Resistance in Tight Spaces: Notes From the Field

• In Event: “Politic Born of Necessity”: Latina and Latinx Feminists Remembering Genealogies, Imagining Futures

Abstract

Objective
This paper centers the concept and praxis of Maria Lugones’ (2003) faithful witnessing. Faithful witnessing is a relation where we learn with others the difficult practice of recognizing resistance in the smallest of gestures and spaces. It is very hard work to reconsider, revise, and reconfigure experience. It is also difficult to move against the grain of power and refuse to act in loyalty with oppression.

Faithful witnessing is a calling for Chicanx and feminists of color to find different ways of accessing meaning that can be constructed against the grain of oppression, to “world”-travel in ways that are not agonistic or hierarchical, racist or transphobic, to learn to sense resistance, to interpret behavior as resistant even when it is dangerous. It is a key practice in building coalition among queer and trans* street youth. It is also a pedagogy of decolonial feminist research that creates an attitude of dignity against deficit and dehumanizing portrayals of young people and their communities.

This presentation will center two field observations from my work with queer and trans* street youth about “storying the self” (Goodman, 1995) in a public school classroom and another in a youth focus group about digital technology use and surveillance.

Methods and Theoretical Framework
This project is a long-term ethnography at a non-profit community space in a metropolitan city in California. Data was collected through field observations, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups with 78 LGBTQ+ identified youth between the ages of 14-21. All field notes and interviews are completely anonymized and no names or any identifying information about the participants were collected. Grounded methodologies (Strauss & Corbin, 1997) and U.S. feminist of color theory and decolonial feminist theory inform my approach as a resistance researcher. Data is analyzed using the practice of “close reading” of student narratives, video, and field observations.

Implications
Decolonial feminist practices such as faithful witnessing are the foundational skills necessary to build and work in coalition with others, to learn to recognize resistance and maintain dignity as both teachers and researchers.

Author

• Cindy Cruz, University of Arizona