A Nepantlera in the Academy: Sowing Seeds con El Hilo

Abstract:In 2018, several months after news broke about thousands of children separated at the US border, I was asked to help with translation at a detention center. The time I spent alongside attorneys, other translators, and mental health workers assisting families through the beginning stages of the asylum process helped me realize standard research practices alone cannot offer the care and human connection necessary in justice work. I offer a theorization of knowledge-making rooted in organizer/activist praxis that centers relationality and reflexivity to disrupt distanced and disconnected research. Using my lived experience, I illustrate how tensions arise for scholar/activists that offer us opportunities to see both the limitations and possibilities of scholar/activism. I also posit that although ideas and discourse about theory into action and activism are welcomed, scholar/activism toward actionable change remains heavily policed. I ground this paper in autohistoria-teoría to illustrate its praxis by moving between poetry, theory-building, and witnessing accounts, to make visible the tensions, conflicts, and negotiations of this work.