Paper Abstracts
Linda Martin Alcoff, Syracuse University
"Latinos Beyond the Binary"
Any account of "Latino Religious Thought" must be held accountable to the reality of U.S. Latin@ life. The paper considers how U.S. Latin@ theology and Biblical studies could benefit from a rasquache sensibility that is attentive to the variety of religious beliefs and practices from all sectors of Latin@ communities. A rasquache religious thought and scripture has the potential to undermine the standard academic canons for studying U.S. Latin@ religion.
While claiming to embrace a theology of mestizaje and mulatez, Latino/a theology remains rooted in a Western Christian paradigm that limits the nature and scope of its discourse. Non-Christian elements of Latino/a religion appear as add-ons to flavor Christianity in the Americas latinamente. This paper will explore three Latino/a religious worldviews/practices (Santería, evil eye, and Espiritismo) and the implications of their serious consideration for Latino/a theology. Underlying this dialogue is the impact that a serious consideration of non-Christian worldviews would have upon Latino/a theology. Ultimately, this paper will push Latino/a theology into an authentic encounter with non Christian religion, ultimately opening a new epistemological horizon.
As a short introduction to the colloquium, this presentation proposes new knowledge arising from Latina and Latino experiences as a liberative praxis. Decolonized epistemologies can effectively impact what is normative in society by opening institutions and structures to understandings forged by minoritized and marginalized struggling communities in the USA and around the world.
Gender and gendering are inseparable from the constantly changing, tense site of colonial domination that Walter Mignolo calls "the colonial difference." To understand the deep, ongoing resistances to gender as a central tool of colonial domination from the colonial difference, we follow the active, historical, be-ing inhabiting bodies and selves in relation, non-dichotomously.
In the production of history the bodies of Latinas, as places of identity and power relations with others, has long been ignored. Yet if the bodies of Latinas, as both subjects and objects of history, are used as an epistemological lens for the writing of Latina/o religious history, how would this history be different from the dominant history currently accepted as normative? This paper will examine how Latina bodies, bodies that act in dialogical relationship with other bodies, can become a text for the reading and writing of a Latina/o religious history that will provide a more inclusive historical narrative into histories predicated on race, gender, religion, culture, and social location.
In this brief paper, written as a series of short (hypo)theses, I try to construct an invitation to rethink our understandings of knowledge and truth in a perspective that I would call "epistemological humility" (as opposed to the "epistemological arrogance" of thinking we already have the true knowledge of anything). This effort is accompanied (and animated) by the idea that oppression, exclusion, domination, and exploitation usually result from/in (and benefit from) "epistemological arrogance." Connections with ethics & politics, and particularly with democracy, justice, and peace, will be underscored.
"Theologies of Liberation, Decolonization, and Post-continental Philosophy"
I will discus: 1) Philosophy and theology in a US colony; 2) Latin American liberation theology and the post-continental question (from dependency to coloniality and from continental identity to post-continentality); 3) Identity and liberation in Latin American and Latina/o Philosophy; and 4) Identity and Liberation in Latina/o theology. My paper focuses particularly on the first three points.
For Latina/os in the United States, memory is covered and re-presented by those in power. Thus, by dis-covering memory we are able to construct our own representations of the past while constructing our own visions of the future. In this article, I explore not only the way the concept of memory serves us historians in the process of constructing representations of the past, but also how memory can be use as a decolonizing tool if it is understood as a cultural artifact.
This papers explores the development of new archetypes of masculinity for the Latino males in the US in the absence of a stable economic base, the ubiquity of consumerist models of masculinity, and the still to be completely dismantled colonial baggage of ways of conceiving and living la masculinidad.
The main points are
: the links between religion and economy in the modern/colonial world
: that decolonizing religion and capitalist economy begs the question,
what kind of religions and economy can be de-colonial, that is, non-imperial and non-capitalist?
: decolonizing religions and capitalist economy and practicing decolonial religions and non-capitalist economies means to work with a non-managerial conception and pratice of liberating subjectivities.
Viramontes' story draws upon themes and symbolism arising from the myth about the death and dismemberment of the Mexica goddess Coyolxauhqui to present a critique of religion through the substitution of a patriarchal Catholicism with a matriarchal spiritual alternative. The larger concern of this paper has to do with the roleof literature written by minorities in mediating and contesting the pervasive socio-cultural ideas of the dominant society.
The U.S.-Mexico border is a paradoxical space for queers of color. Many lesbian and gay Chicanas/os and Mexicanas/os find it difficult to oppose inequitable moral codes--which are not only imposed through laws and Catholicism but also by way of hate crimes. As a result, a number of contradictory issues emerge as is substantiated in oral interviews that serve as case studies from the border region.
Latina theologies claim embodiment as a central theological category and as a source of their distinctive epistemology. Yet what do we mean when we claim to speak from or about the body? How do we avoid the common problems of the its reification as "nature" or its absorption into discourse? This essay explores the main theoretical approaches that Latina theologies have adopted to respond to these challenges and suggests areas for future development.
This paper will explore the move toward minority criticism in general and Latino/a criticism in particular in the field of biblical interpretation. What does it mean to foreground the minoritized voice and how does one go about doing so? These are main questions to be addressed as a project in The Bible in Latino/a Society and Culture gets under way in both the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion.
Contemporary U.S. Latino/a religious discourse has made important contributions to liberation methodology by highlighted the liberative potential of culture and everyday aesthetics, yet an ongoing challenge is how best to integrate these emphases with ethico-political concerns. This paper argues that pragmatic method can help liberationists better theorize the integral unity between the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of faith.