Gloria E. \u00a0Anzald\u00faa defines, \u2018Este quehacer\u2019 as \u201cinternal work coupled with commitment to struggle for social transformation \u2013 changes your relationship to your body, and, in turn, to others bodies and to the world. And when that happens you change the world.\u201d (574). This quote articulates my own struggles within as well as beyond Geography 495 to bridge the gap between my everyday experiences and larger collective efforts and relationships. Investigation of our simultaneous positions of marginalization and privilege denaturalizes dualistic essentializations and reveals constructed identities as multiple and often paradoxical.<\/p>\n
Through her acceptance of hybrid identities, Anzaldua disrupts the normalization of the privileged \u2018centre,\u2019 as well as the conventional \u2018downward gaze\u2019 of academic research and social justice activism largely. Geography 495 is framed by a radical pedagogy that questions as well as makes visible the epistemological hierarchies that are active in Western academic institutions. These distributions of power become transparent as \u201cthe lechuza eyes of your neguala open, rousing you from the trance of hyper-rationality induced by higher education\u201d (Anzaldua, 548). Moreover, the perpetuation of democracy, liberalism, Euro-centrism and masculine rationality is taken for granted and made invisible within my experiences of the classroom. Discussion of how knowledge is produced and whose is valued has hopefully allowed us to move outside and disinvest in the hierarchical commodifications of knowledge, people and place. The relationships built in solidarity with Marla, Celia and Jennifer; K\u2019inal Antzetik, Jolom Mayatiek and la mano respectively, have enabled an interconnectedness and a space for new forms of agency.<\/p>\n
Although the experience of this class has been overwhelmingly positive, fully stuffed with cheesingly delicious clich\u00e9s, as many of us continue to state, \u201csolidarity ain\u2019t easy\u201d. I feel unable to submit a gushing and fully satisfied admission. Thankfully, I continue to feel inundated by the fear of a personal deference into an apathetic comfort through the failure to preserve what we have learned. I included a bell hooks\u2019 quote in my first journal entry, \u201cOur struggle is also a struggle of memory against forgetting\u2026; a politicization of memory that distinguishes nostalgia, that longing for something to be as once it was, a kind of useless act, from that remembering that serves to illuminate and transform the present\u201d (147). Its relevance has blossomed and helped resolve my lasting anxiety post-graduation. This relevance became most apparent during our class de-briefing when Marla powerfully articulated that she sees Canadian youth as remaining less political because we do not have to be. Political activism and the questioning of our privileges are not necessary within our everyday lives. Anzald\u00faa likewise writes, \u201cWe are collectively conditioned not to know that every comfort of our lives is acquired with the blood of conquered, subjugated, enslaved, or exterminated people, an exploitation that continues today\u201d (541). When we look to ourselves, our roles, our privilege we see these naturalized ideas and habits practiced in everyday life as no longer tolerable. Thank you, to all my classmates, but especially to Marla, Celia, Jennifer and Juanita for not only providing a space for internal and collective transformation, but perhaps more importantly encouraging the motivation for change in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gloria E. \u00a0Anzald\u00faa defines, \u2018Este quehacer\u2019 as \u201cinternal work coupled with commitment to struggle for social transformation \u2013 changes your relationship to your body, and, in turn, to others bodies and to the world. And when that happens you change the world.\u201d (574). This quote articulates my own struggles within as well as beyond Geography […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6742,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geog495\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geog495\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geog495\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geog495\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6742"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geog495\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geog495\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":358,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geog495\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions\/358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geog495\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geog495\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geog495\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}