Counterspace Choques: Merging Critical Race Theory and Anzaldúan Thought in Theorizing Counterspaces

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 9:50 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Colliding Borders: Black and Brown Diasporic Pedagogies (Table 9)

Abstract

This conceptual paper pushes our conceptualizations of counterspaces further than what is currently in the literature by bringing together concepts within Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Chicana/Latina feminisms. Critical race counterspaces, sites where majoritarian narratives are disrupted and challenged, can serve as a reprieve for students navigating the educational survival complex, or in other words, navigating the ways that schools are structured intentionally to promote the suffering of students of color. Specifically, in this paper, I argue that choques, literal and metaphorical collisions as described through the works of Gloria Anzaldúa, are necessary components of counterspaces. Choques represent tension and contradiction within counterspaces and are normal parts of a transformation process that can and often does take place within counterspaces.

Author

• Socorro Morales, California State Polytechnic University - Pomona