Believing in an Otherwise
Studying Religion as Spiritual Activism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26443/arc.v51i1.1470Keywords:
Gloria Anzaldúa, spiritual activism, religious studies, decolonization, decolonialityAbstract
This paper will propose that Gloria Anzaldúa’s “spiritual activism,” as a praxis wrought through the confluence of the spiritual and the political, could also be a model for embarking upon the study of religion differently. Walter Mignolo emphasizes that to understand what it means to decolonize requires specificity, through “looking at other W questions: Who is doing it, where, why, and how?” I shall suggest that spiritual activism as a decolonial framework demands that scholars of religion ask themselves, in turn, what they believe.
References
Ahmed, Sara. “This Other and Other Others.” Economy & Society 31, no. 4 (2002): 558–572. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085140022000020689. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03085140022000020689
Alemán, Sonya M., and Flor de Maria Olivo. “Guided by the Itzapap-lotl Spirit: Chicana Editors Practice a Form of Spiritual Activism.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies 40, no. 1, (2019): 245–271. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/article/719771/pdf. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/fro.2019.a719771
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 2012.
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Interviews/Entrevistas. Edited by AnaLouise Keating. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Anzaldúa, Gloria. “La Prieta.” In This Bridge Called by Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, 198–209. San Antonio: Third Woman Press, 2002. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781438488295-054
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822375036
Anzaldúa, Gloria. “Making Alliances, Queerness, and Bridging Cono-cimientos: An Interview with Jamie Lee Evans (1993).” In Gloria Anzaldúa, Interviews/Entrevistas, edited by AnaLouise Keating, 196–209. New York: Routledge, 2000
Dussel, Enrique. “Europe, Modernity, and Eurocentrism.” Nepantla: View from South 1, no. 3 (2000): 465–478. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/23901.
García Mazari, Sheila. “Beyond El Arrebato: The Seven Stages of Conocimiento as Instruments for Radical Reflection and the Unlearning of White Supremacy Culture.” Reference Services Review 50, no. 1 (2022): 40–50. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/RSR-07-2021-0030/full/html. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/RSR-07-2021-0030
Henderson-Espinoza, Robyn. “Gloria Anzaldúa’s El Mundo Zurdo: Exploring a Relational Feminist Theology of Interconnectedness.” Journal for the Study of Religion 26, no. 2 (2013): 107–118. https://www.jstor.org/stable/jstudyreligion.26.2.107.
Iseke, Judy. “Spirituality as Decolonizing: Elders Albert Desjarlais, George McDermott, and Tom McCallum Share Understandings of Life in Healing Practices.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 2, no. 1 (2013): 35–54. https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/19142.
Joy, Morny. “Postcolonial and Gendered Reflections: Challenges for Religious Studies.” In Gender, Religion and Diversity: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, edited by Ursula King and Tina Beattie, 28–39. London: Continuum, 2005.
Keating, AnaLouise. “Editor’s Introduction.” In Anzaldúa, Light in The Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality, edited by AnaLouise Keating, ix–xxxvii. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1220hmq.3
Keating, AnaLouise. “Risking the Personal: An Introduction.” In Gloria Anzaldúa, Interviews/Entrevistas, edited by AnaLouise Keating, 1–15. New York: Routledge, 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203950265-1
Keating, AnaLouise. “Shifting Perspectives: Spiritual Activism, Social Transformation, and the Politics of Spirit.” In Entremundos/ Among Worlds: New Perspectives on Gloria E. Anzaldúa, edited by, AnaLouise Keating, 241–254. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403977137_24
The Kino-nda-niimi Collective, eds. The Winter We Danced: Voices from the Past, the Future, and the Idle No More Movement. Winnipeg, Manitoba: ARP Books, 2014.
Klassen, Pamela. “Back to the Land and Waters: Futures for the Study of Religions.” Religion 50, no. 1 (2020): 90–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2019.1681106. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2019.1681106
Kulchyski, Peter. “What is Native Studies?” In Expressions in Canadian Native Studies, edited by Ron F. Laliberte, 13–26. Saskatoon, SK: University Extension Press, 2000.
Kusch, Rodolfo. Indigenous and Popular Thinking in América. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn220
LaRoque, Emma. “‘Resist no Longer:’ Reflections on Resistance Writing and Teaching.” In More Will Sing Their Way to Freedom: Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence, edited by Elaine Coburn, 34–75. Halifax; Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2015.
Little Bear, Leroy. “Jagged Worldviews Colliding.” In Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision, edited by Marie Anne Battiste, 77–85. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2000. DOI: https://doi.org/10.59962/9780774853170-009
Maduro, Otto. “2012 Presidential Address: Migrants’ Religions under Imperial Duress: Reflections on Epistemology, Ethics, and Politics in the Study of the Religious ‘Stranger.’” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 82, no. 1 (2014): 35–46. https://www.jstor.org/stable/i24488015. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lft100
Maia, Filipe. “Betrayed by Accent: Theological Notes on a Racist Worldsound.” In Religion and Sustainability: Interreligious Resources, Interdisciplinary Responses, edited by Rita Sherma and Purushottama Bilimoria, 205–211. Cham, CH: Springer, 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79301-2_24
Masuzawa, Tomoko. The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226922621.001.0001
McGuire, Meredith B. “Contested Meanings and Definitional Boundaries: Historicizing the Sociology of Religion.” In Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life, 19–44. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195172621.003.0002
Mignolo, Walter. “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom,” Theory, Culture and Society 26, no. 7–8 (2009): 159–181. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409349275. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409349275
Mignolo, Walter, and Catherine Walsh. On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822371779
Moraga, Cherrie. “Preface 1981.” In This Bridge Called by Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, xliv¬–xlv. San Antonio: Third Woman Press, 2002.
Quijano, Anibal. “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality.” Cultural Studies 21, no. 2–3 (2007): 168–178. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601164353. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601164353
Quijano, Anibal. “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America.” Nepantla: View from South 1, no. 3 (2000): 533–580. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/23906/.
Rivera, Mayra. “Embodied Counterpoetics: Sylvia Wynter on Religion and Race.” In Beyond Man: Race, Coloniality, and Philosophy of Religion, edited by An Yountae and Eleanor Craig, 57–85. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478021339-003
Rivera, Mayra. “Where Life Itself Lives.” In Beyond the Doctrine of Man, edited by Joseph Drexler-Drei and Kristien Justaert, 19–35. New York: Fordham University Press, 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823286898.003.0002
Sefa Dei, George J., and Cristina Jaimungal, eds. Indigeneity and Decolonial Resistance: Alternatives to Colonial Thinking and Practice. Bloomfield: Myers Education Press, 2018.
Sendejo, Brenda. “The Cultural Production of Spiritual Activisms: Gender, Social Justice, and the Remaking of Religion in the Borderlands.” Chicana/ Latina Studies 12, no. 2 (2013): 59–109. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43943329.
Simpson, Leanne. Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence. Winnipeg: Arneiter Ring Pub., 2011.
Simpson, Leanne. “I am Not a Nation-State,” Unsettling America: Decolonization in Theory and Practice, November 6, 2013, https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/i-am-not-a-nation-state/.
Slabodsky, Santiago. Decolonial Judaism: Triumphal Failures of Barbaric Thinking. Nyew York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137345837
Tirres, Christopher D. “Spiritual Realities and Spiritual Activism: Assessing Gloria Anzaldúa’s Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro.” Diálogo 21, no. 2 (2018): 51–64. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/15/article/704900/pdf. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/dlg.2018.0027
Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Bloomsbury, 2012.
Winters, Joseph. “Mestiza Language of Religion: Gloria Anzaldúa.” In Cultural Approaches to Studying Religion: An Introduction to Theories and Methods, edited by Sarah J. Bloesch and Meredith Minister, 153–270. London: Bloomsbury, 2010. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350303072.ch-009
Yountae, An. The Decolonial Abyss: Mysticism and Cosmopolitics from the Ruins. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2017. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823273072.001.0001
Yountae, An. “A Decolonial Theory of Religion: Race, Coloniality, and Secularity in the Americas.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 88, no. 4 (2020): 947–980. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfaa057. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfaa057
Zepeda, Susy. “Decolonizing Spirit in the Classroom.” In Voices from the Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Healing Practices, edited by Martha R. Gonzales and Lara Medina, 372–374. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvq4c07x.137
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Lucie Robathan
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.