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Faithful Witnessing as Practice: Decolonial Readings of Shadows of Your Black Memory and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Yomaira C. Figueroa
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Abstract

This article considers María Lugones's concept of faithful witnessing as a point of departure to think about the ethics and possibilities of faithful witnessing in literary contexts. For Lugones, faithful witnessing is an act of aligning oneself with oppressed peoples against the grain of power and recognizing their humanity, oppression, and resistance despite the lack of institutional endorsement. I engage the work of Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Denise Oliver, and other scholars who offer methodologies and discourses on recognition, witnessing, and resistance. I argue that the feminist philosophical concept of faithful witnessing is a critical element of reading decolonial imaginaries. The article undertakes close readings of two novels in the Afro‐Latinx and Afro‐Hispanic tradition: Donato Ndongo's Shadows of Your Black Memory and Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. In these readings, the concept of faithful witnessing enriches the analysis of religious colonization and the gender violence inherent to coloniality.

Type
2015 Diversity Essay Prize Winner
Information
Hypatia , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , Fall 2015 , pp. 641 - 656
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 by Hypatia, Inc.

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