Weaving tejiendo/tecendo Anti/Decolonial Feminist Epistemologies from Abya Yala in so-called Australia

Session Submission Type: Workshop

Abstract

Drawing from our own experiences as Latin American scholars embodying and/or encountering the rich traditions of feminist, communitarian, Black, Indigenous anti/decolonial feminist epistemologies from Abya Yala, we aim at opening an intentional space for a plática/conversa.

Following small provocations from our own epistemic standpoints, participants will engage experientially with feminist anti/decolonial approaches that challenge patriarchal, heteronormative, racialist, coloniality and colonial legacies. Through self-reflection (processes of situational and relational learning and unlearning) we will explore forms of privilege and oppression as we trace our trajectories within systemic and structural barriers in and outside neoliberal academia, as well as collective and individual micro practices of agency, resistance, sovereignty and solidarity.

During the workshop we will establish connections between lived experience and theoretical and methodological praxis within and beyond institutional realms of knowledge production. We will do so by collectively exploring personal narratives, engage in creative exercises, and build epistemic bridges between our ways of being and knowing in the liminal spaces we occupy and in the multiple identities that intersect us —scholars, educators, artists, migrants, advocates- in (and at times against) the colonial Australian context.

Workshop format:
In this workshop, we utilise a web of thread and collage to collectively weave/tejer/tecer different patterns of teaching, learning and research based on anti/decolonial ways of knowing. We invite participants from any background that are interested in challenging normative, colonial ways of knowing and experiment with wool and art materials to collage, weave and share stories, dreams, reflections and critiques and holding space for each other.

Sub Track

• Asia-Oceania and Latin America: Intellectual Encounters

Chair

• Glenda G Mejía, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University)

Discussant

• Consuelo Martínez-Reyes, Macquarie University

Presenters

• Victoria Bonilla-Báez, University of Sydney

• Alejandra Lizbeth Gutierrez Hernandez, Macquarie University

• Fernanda Penaloza, University of Sydney

• Laura Rodriguez Castro, Faculty of Education, Southern Cross University

• Gabriela Silva Loureiro, University of Wollongong

Session Organizers

• Fernanda Penaloza, University of Sydney

• Laura Rodriguez Castro, Faculty of Education, Southern Cross University