Abstract
In this essay, we describe our path toward a shared understanding of a love-based onto-epistemic orientation to de/coloniality. Our exploration includes the negotiation of our intersectional and entangled identities, subject positions, and understandings of research ethics in education. A de/colonial sensibility is critical in urban educational contexts given the predominance of uninterrogated westernized epistemologies in curriculum and instruction. We seek to bring awareness to the colonial ways scholarly knowledge is constructed, disseminated, and used in urban teacher and leadership education. We critique colonial assumptions from a post-oppositional approach that moves away from antagonistic discourse and toward considering possibilities for a transformative future. We enact our proposed ethical orientation through personal narratives, critical self-reflection, and prioritizing knowledge construction from (non)traditional spaces such as those created by our mothers. We conclude with points of consideration for those engaged in urban education research that center love-based onto-epistemologies and the lived realities of people who are traditionally minoritized, racialized, or ignored in academia.
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Notes
Global North refers to nations that historically referred to themselves as “developing” “more developed countries,” “more developed regions,” “First World” that are generally located in Europe, North America, East Asia, and Australia.
“I am also suggesting here that the work of constructing identities is deeply embedded in acts of memory and of (re)membering. Memory can be thought of as a thing, person, or event that brings to mind and heart a past experience. But (re)membering is both the ability to recall that experience (or think of again) and the ability to put it back together again (to re-‘member’)” (Dillard 2016, p. 51).
U.S. soldiers spent eight years in the Dominican Republic and occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934.
We conceptualize onto-epistemology as our hybridized ways of knowing and being while we navigate different terrains of our lived experiences.
Global South refers to countries that are dubbed as “developing” or “less developed countries,” or “less developed regions,” or “Third World” typically located in Asia, Africa, and Latin America by those who have exploited (and in some instances still exploit) the resources and the people of those countries and regions.
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Boveda, M., Bhattacharya, K. Love as De/Colonial Onto-Epistemology: A Post-Oppositional Approach to Contextualized Research Ethics. Urban Rev 51, 5–25 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-018-00493-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-018-00493-z