For the Decolonization of the Researcher's Self: An Encounter with Brazilian Quilombola Women and Reflections about the Coloniality of Rurality

Abstract

AbstractThis article presents reflections on our experience with quilombola women, through the lens of the coloniality of power-knowledge. The text aims to challenge the contradictions we face as researchers (the place of power and knowledge) and as women (the self in its dimensions of race, gender, class, or labor). We describe the workshop we presented over four days with the participation of the quilombola women, as well as the quilombo community where the activities were held. We discuss the performance of coloniality during the time we spent together and how it was present in the organization of knowledge and in our bodies, the repercussions of coloniality on ourselves, and the possibility of decolonizing knowledge and subjects, in spite of the colonial pattern of power. The activities we carried out with these women left marks on us and served as a stimulus for us to decolonize ourselves, our judgments of the object-other, as well as our writing and research practices.