Using intersectionality: A critical reflection of how coloniality crosses the process of knowledge production

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 1:45 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Art, Creativity, Intersectionality And Participatory Approaches To Decolonial Education

Abstract

This reflective paper explores how modernity/coloniality shapes knowledge production through intersectionality in research conducted in Chile and Colombia. Through a critical literature review and self-reflexive analysis, we examine how U.S.-based African American and Women of Color feminisms initially shaped our thinking. While foundational, this orientation often obscured localized understandings of racism and Latin American intersectional perspectives. We analyze this within broader colonial dynamics—particularly publication pressures and bibliometric coloniality (Mills et al., 2023), where English-language, high-impact journals dominate academic legitimacy. We call for deeper individual and collective reflexivity to recognize how even critical scholarship can reproduce epistemic asymmetries. Our transnational positions invite a return to the core questions of intersectionality and their application to politics of knowledge production.

Authors

• Francisca Irelva Figueroa-Vidal, Pennsylvania State University

• Roxana Chiappa, Universidad de Tarapaca

• Maure Aguirre-Ortega, Pennsylvania State University