La Mesa Sabe Todo: Cultural Communal Pláticas as Sites of Unforgetting in Qualitative Inquiry

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 3:45 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Latinidad in Context

Abstract

This paper introduces Cultural Communal Plática (CCP), a trauma-informed qualitative methodology grounded in Critical Trauma Theory and Chicana Feminist traditions. CCP is designed to explore the collective memory of Mexican-American survivors of coerced Americanization policies and practices amid de jure segregation, to center experiential knowledge within communal rituals and spaces, like the kitchen (la cocina), as valid sites of knowledge-making. CCP challenges dominant research paradigms rooted in whiteness and objectivity while fostering trust, mutuality, and healing between researchers and participants. This paper positions CCP as both a humanizing research method and a mode of resistance that unearths erased histories, amplifies marginalized voices, and contributes to methodological innovation in the work of unforgetting and futuring within education research.

Author

• Joshua Mark Anzaldúa, University of Texas - San Antonio