| Description |
This study examines the spiritual activism of seven Chicana@ higher education faculty through a Chicana feminist epistemological framework. Through this framework, spirituality is identified as an epistemological source that grounds the professors’ scholar activism. This work is in response to two main barriers to the visibility of Chican@ feminist spiritual activism: the marginalization of Chican@ activist praxis and the marginalization of spirituality in spaces of higher education. The argument is that both of these issues stem from a silencing of knowledges other than that which originates from the White Western male positivistic perspective, or in other words, the domination of Eurocentric Western epistemology/knowledge. The narratives in this project draw attention to the creative and transformative ways Chican@s challenge positivistic notions of epistemology and activist praxis based on Eurocentric principles of objectivity, rationality, and scientific rigor. The study employs the Chicana feminist methodology of pláticas y encuentrosâ€"conversations that take place in one-on-one or group spaces, and which are, according to Gonzalez, a “way to gather family and cultural knowledge through communication of thoughts, memories, ambiguities, and new interpretations.†In this particular study, pláticas took place in various sites across California and were used as the actual method of collecting the professor’s stories. The pláticas focused on the pedagogical and curricular strategies, research and community projects, and publications of the seven professors in order to identify the various ways their own spiritual epistemology manifested in their work. The pláticas revealed varied academic and teaching interests amongst the professors, yet a similar foundation to their workâ€"one rooted in their spiritual epistemology and a commitment to activism. The personal narratives presented here showcase the professors’ academic projects, which expand our ideas of epistemology and of spiritually-minded praxis by highlighting the necessary component spirituality plays in their making sense of the world, and by underscoring the creative ways spirituality is employed in academic settings and the transformative potential of this. These narratives highlight the central role of individual and community well-being in the struggle for equity and justiceâ€"a particularly necessary component of activist struggle given our current political climate. |
