Denaturalizing Research Practices: (Re)Signifying Subject Positions Through Decolonial Theories

Abstract

This text proposes a theoretical reflection about research methodologies grounded in decolonial thought and the authors’ research practices. Challenged by conservative scenarios that emerge in many societies, we problematize how research and the relations embedded in it may serve as strategies for reproduction or resistance against oppressions and subalternities resulting from this context. We adopt denaturalization as a critical outlook which interrogates the scientific assumptions in the modern forms of knowledge production and in the relations involved in this colonial process. We consider as research subjects all those who, as researchers, activists and/or interlocutors, participate dialogically in unveiling the reality investigated through research. Our discussion is informed by decolonial studies and feminist epistemologies and methodologies. With this theoretical articulation, we hope to introduce elements that can make visible the positions of all subjects involved in scientific processes of knowledge co-production. Moreover, this reflection is a vote of trust in the visibility of subjects as co-authors and the ethics of otherness as strategies for recognizing the solidarity and emancipatory personal subject trajectories in their roles and contexts of social struggle.