Conference Theme

For theological discourse to be a liberating praxis, it has to emerge from the interstices and margins in which oppressed groups are kept.

Liberation theologies and philosophies have made a significant contribution to this endeavor by opting epistemologically, hermeneutically, and praxically for marginalized and minoritized peoples--an option that together with the resistance of those struggling to survive is responsible for many of the fissures endagering modernity. Liberation thought also provides a platform for the voices of oppressed groups as they name themselves and exercise their moral agency.

Postcolonial thinking likewise has made important contributions to the coming forth of oppressed groups from the perilous margins by countering the postmodern pretense of no-place--an attempt to disguise the universalizing hegemony of modernity, particularly Western modernity. Postcolonial philosophy and theology emphasize the historical resistance to colonialism, focusing on the ongoing effects of the colonial experience from the underside of history by using memories ignored by the colonizers, memories that indeed become dangerous to the status quo. Postcolonial thought highlights the "differentited, particularized, historicized, and marked perspective of the colonized-in-the-process of decolonization," (Eduardo Mendieta). However, postcolonial thinking, because of its "fixation on secularism, its critique of tradition, and its depiction of the empires of Spain and Portugal and its multiple colonial subjects as insignificant precedents of Western modernity" (Nelson Maldonado-Torres), has muffled the voices of some marginalized and minoritized groups.Within the postcolonial frame of reference, some among the subaltern are not heard.

Decolonizing epistemology builds upon the contributions of liberation and postcolonial theories in both philosophy and theology. This creative task of elaborating a decolonizing epistemology emerges from the questions and concerns of minoritized and marginalized groups--Latina/os among them. To opt for the oppressed today requires investigating their ignored histories and exploring the "sites of exception, fracture, dehumanization, and liminality" (Maldonado-Torres) they inhabit as epistemic locus: the place from which to start as well as the source of what is known and how it is known. Ignoring these sites or coming to them from the perspective and with the tools of Euro-American understandings only reinserts and reaffirms the colonizing oppressive enterprise which victimizes two-thirds of the world.

The 2008 Drew University Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquium seeks to facilitate the emergence of new knowledge by reflecting on the Latina/o reality in the U.S.A. as an epistemic locus. Because this reality is intrinsically connected with that of other oppressed groups, and because all "sites of exception, fracture, dehumanization, and liminality" respond and are indispensable to the creation and maintenance of the colonizing mindset, this focus on Latina/os in the U.S.A. provides methodological signposts to other marginalized and minoritized communities, and to those who stand in solidarity with them, for their own epistemic elaborations. The colloquium provides and opportunity for constructive dialogue of those involved in creating this new episteme from a philosophical perspective with those involved from a religious/theological perspective.