Testimonios with/from Una Mirada al Sur

• In Event: Decolonial Theories and Pedagogies of Liberation: Resistance and Re-Existence

Abstract

This paper examines testimonios’ contributions of decolonizing practices and lived experiences from immigrant women from the Global South. Drawing on decolonizing aesthetics in Global South traditions (e.g., Marcos, 2001), this study centers on decolonial aesthesis (Mignolo & Vazquez, 2013) paying particular attention to the ways people decide to express their sensing and perceiving of their decolonial subjectivities. La Mirada al Sur aims to emphasize issues of representation, interpellation, and interlocution. In qualitative research, testimonios are used as personal narratives that evidence events of oppression, marginality, mistreatment, and injustice. Scholars make use of testimonio to theorize about personal experiences of struggle (Latina feminist group, 2001), survival and survivance (Velez & Lees, 2019), resistance, and subjectivity (Delgado Bernal, et al., 2012). Drawing from decolonizing aesthetics in Global South traditions (Eltit, 1983; Paz 1993) this presentation will denounce inequalities and the systemic structures of power through sharing people’s stories while highlighting their decolonizing practices in everyday life. Using testimonio as research methodology and epistemology (Calderon-Berumen, 2021), I interviewed and collected personal narratives from immigrant women from the Global South living in the U. S. as undocumented. Empirical data from immigrant women’s interviews, field notes, and the researcher’s journal are analyzed through “qualitative” coding, and results from a thematic analysis will be presented. This methodological approach allows for creating spaces for silenced marginalized voices to take part of history. These characteristics are what makes testimonio an important vehicle for activism. Its precise feature of urgency calling for political action gives testimonio a particular component for social justice. Moreover, creating space for silenced marginalized voices to take part of history, claiming their existence by voicing acts of memory gives testimonio a special place in the social construction of reality. Thus, there are some issues concerning the interlocution, interpellation, and representation when telling and sharing testimonios, in addition to the issue of representation, especially because testimonios could be represented through infinite possibilities with “Una Mirada al Sur” (a look to/from the Global South), particularly with decolonial aesthesis (Mignolo & Vazquez, 2013) perspective. La Mirada al Sur promotes situating testimonio within a feminist decolonizing framework with possibilities as epistemological, methodological, and pedagogical tool makes testimonio one of the most valuable devices in the field of educational research. Its potential for contributing to decolonizing knowledge production and educational practices is yet unbounded. It encourages scholars to keep making theory in the flesh.

Author

• Freyca Calderon-Berumen, Pennsylvania State University - Altoona