A 'revolucionista' ethic of care - with Mia Sosa-Provencio
Episode 19 of Careful Thinking
Episode 19 of the Careful Thinking podcast features my conversation with Mia Sosa-Provencio.
Mia is an Associate Professor of Secondary Education in the Department of Teacher Education, Educational Leadership, and Policy at the University of New Mexico in the United States. She taught Language Arts for seven years at Rio Grande High School in the South Valley of Albuquerque, before studying for a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Critical Pedagogies at New Mexico State University.
Mia has published widely in the field of critical education studies, with a number of her recent articles seeking to develop a Mexicana/Mestiza critical feminist ethic of care, drawing on her research, using Testimonio methodology, with educators working along the U.S.-Mexico border.
I was really interested to explore the ways in which Mia's research applies a care-ethical framework to the theory and practice of education, specifically in the context of the issues faced by educators and students in New Mexico, and at the same time, how Mia's work offers challenges to those existing frameworks and suggests ways in which feminist care ethics might need to change and adapt to that context.
It was a pleasure to meet Mia, if only virtually. She’s a dynamic communicator who has a real ability to bring her research to life through storytelling. I’m sure she was – and is – a brilliant and much-loved teacher.
Mia Sosa-Provencio
We began our conversation on the podcast by exploring Mia’s roots and her mestiza Mexicana / Chicana identity, against the background of New Mexico’s complex history of conquest and colonisation. Mia shared personal stories, from her own childhood and from her experience as a high school teacher, to illustrate the ways in which the US education system often denies and devalues the embodied knowledge and intergenerational wisdom of children from Mexicano/a and other non-white backgrounds. In her current role, Mia prepares future teachers to enable students to bring their whole, ‘enfleshed’ selves into educational spaces, and to promote education as a practice of social justice.
We went on to discuss Mia’s ethnographic research with educators working along the U.S.-Mexico border, and the way it draws on the work of Chicana feminist scholars, in particular by using Testimonio methodology, a narrative approach which focuses on stories of resistance in the context of structural inequality. Mia talked specifically about the stories told by two of her participants, Diana and Rosa, and the ways in which their practice exhibits what she describes as a revolucionista ethic of care. This led on to a discussion of Mia’s critique of white feminist care ethics and her work developing, through her practice, a critical feminist ethic of care that builds on the work of Black and Latina feminist scholars. Our conversation focused in particular on the ways in which Mia’s writing has highlighted the centrality of the body, humour, and play, in creating ‘new worlds’ of resistance and humanity.
Maurice Hamington’s name was mentioned a few times in the course of the interview, and in a way this episode was a natural sequel to my conversation with him in Episode 6 of the podcast. In his recent book Revolutionary Care, Maurice cites Mia’s work, as an example of the voices from marginalised communities, representing intergenerational knowledge and wisdom, from which mainstream care ethics has much to learn. However, one of the striking points to emerge from Mia’s work is that ‘revolutionary’ care may not look like our received notions of political action, but may deploy tactics, such as humour and playfulness that are (to use Mia’s phrase) hidden in plain sight. And as I suggested in the episode, the reference to play recalled my conversation with Petr Urban in Episode 4 of the podcast, about the often overlooked connections between play and care. There were also some echoes in this episode of my conversation with Sarah Munawar in Episode 13, particularly with regard to a shared emphasis on the importance of land, and in fact Mia has contributed an article to a forthcoming journal special issue that Sarah and Maurice are co-editing.
Black and Latina feminist scholars mentioned by Mia in the episode. Top L to R: Gloria Anzaldúa, Vanessa Siddle Walker, Chela Sandoval, Dolores Delgado Bernal. Bottom L to R: Beverly Cross, Cherríe Moraga, Aida Hurtado, Lourdes Diaz Soto.
On a personal level, I found that talking with Mia brought back memories of my own time working as a community educator, before I became a university teacher. The contexts in which I was working in England – whether rural white working-class or African-Caribbean inner-city communities – were very different from those in New Mexico as described by Mia. However, some of the issues that Mia highlighted, such as finding ways to validate the informal knowledge of students from marginalised communities, while also creating a bridge to bodies of knowledge which would empower them to bring about change, were remarkably similar.
And while I can’t identify with Mia’s experience of living out a hybrid ethnic identity, as someone who was born into a working-class community in the East End of London, and who later acquired middle-class status via grammar school and university, the notion of navigating different identities and living ‘in between’ worlds certainly resonated with me, and it’s something I’ve written about elsewhere.
I also found Mia’s application of a care-ethical framework to her educational practice, and her description of the ways in which educational spaces often exclude care, intriguing. It made me realise that I tend to keep my own experience as an educator, and my research interests in care, separate in my mind. Listening to Mia made me re-think those connections and imagine ways of reconceiving my educational practice as a practice of care.
Finally, as a researcher, I found Mia’s description of Testimonio methodology fascinating, particularly its emphasis on following the direction set by the narrator and holding back from imposing one’s own agenda as a researcher. It made me think of the work of my former Open University colleague, the psychologist Wendy Hollway, and her development, with Tony Jefferson, of the free association narrative interview method, which is underpinned by rather different theoretical assumptions, but which, like Testimonio, encourages a profound respect for the storyteller’s perspective on his or her own life.
Here are some quotes by Mia from the episode:
To be a mestiza, to be a Chicana, to be of the borderlands, is a hybridity...but not just along bloodlines... And the mestizaje, the blending, the hybridised identity is in our language, it's in our worldview, it's in...the way we see the world, the way we approach the world, the way that we self-identify...Our identity is beyond naming. It's beyond those names that have been attached to us, and that we have chosen...And as a researcher, as a practitioner, as a writer, I do approach everything I do with the understanding that within our bodies is the coloniser and the colonised...but also recognising that, in all of us, how we self-identify, if that sometimes doesn't match the way we are identified, our street race or our street ethnicity, that there are, as Anzaldúa talks about, the choque, the crashing and the colliding between worlds. I would say that I live in between, I navigate as many of us do navigate, in between worlds.
...
We, as a community across borders, Mexican immigrant, long-standing Nuevo Mexicano communities, we care deeply about the education of our children, we participate deeply in their education outside of school spaces. And...when that doesn't count, what happens to how our students are viewed, how our families are viewed...where are those of us that see brilliance in these students from day one, where are those of us who see brilliance and support and knowledge and wisdom in their families from day one, and bring that into the classroom as a way to help these students really bridge to the academic knowledge that they're going to also need to manoeuvre and navigate the academic spaces and the professional spaces that they need to navigate? And so I really worked hard to create curriculum where they could see themselves, because indigenous scholars talk about that invisibility, when you cannot see yourself, that is a form of cultural annihilation, annihilation of everything that you are.
...
I experienced first-hand from my own upbringing, my own schooling, and also as a teacher, how disembodied our educational spaces are...And so, coming with that, and knowing that these spaces require us to leave our bodies at the door as educators, they require students to leave their bodies, and their bodies that are layered with histories of colonisation and conquest and resilience and joy…how do we reclaim all of the pieces of ourselves? How do we bring those in and how do we use them as the stuff of curriculum and pedagogy? That's the work I do...How do we allow diverse students to bring all of who they are to change those spaces? And so I think...that's my life's work...education as justice in all of these different spaces.
...
Testimonio...offers us the ability to do deep reflection into our own sites of privilege and voice and positionality and to really reflect on that and how to navigate that while creating a really a sacred space...a sacred space of research. And so much of that involves recognising who we are, recognising that I do walk in white skin, English dominance citizenship that is never questioned, and what that means for the research space. But also recognising that there are pieces that are shared, that I do share with my participants, in terms of worldview and intergenerational knowledge that has been passed down...and so the ability to see ourselves in each other. Testimonio also allows us...to see the shared identities without erasing our difference.
...
What I found with these women... they taught me that their revolución, and it wasn't the revolution that I was looking for, or that we know in dominant society as social justice revolution, their revolución was nuanced and it was connected to land and spirit and intergenerational knowing. And it came from intergenerational wisdom that understands that you can engage in this kind of advocacy, you can work for rebuilding and the fierce protection of knowledge and children and families, but you have to hide your tracks, because those who work on behalf of marginalised folks and to protect this wisdom are also subject to the same punishments and the same silences. And so these women knew that. And so my theory on a revolucionista ethic of care of what these women were doing came through...these women waged this advocacy through their bodies. They wage it through the responsibility that they carry in and out of the classroom. They wage it through their willingness to be vulnerable. They wage it in all of these different ways.
...
What we find in the white feminist ethic of care...we see that there's this very interpersonal, emotive, inert, often maternal sort of care and loving that Nell Noddings describes as not attempting to change the world...but being changed by the world, by being changed by our students. And that's a beautiful notion, and I think there is space for that in interpersonal ways sometimes. But what we see, and what our scholars of colour and particularly critical feminist ethics of care that come out of Black and Latina traditions tell us, is that these are not strong enough to change the material and intellectual conditions that our students of colour face...They don't attempt to change the world that our students experience, at the same time as providing spaces of healing and dignity and interpersonal engagement and care and sacredness, because the interpersonal is not to be diminished, but we're attempting to transform these spaces...for the enrichment and the betterment and the dignity and the love of these children.
You can listen to the whole episode here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can download a transcript of the episode here:
The header image is from the mural ‘Resilience’, created by Nanibah (‘Nani’) Chacon, a Dine (Navajo) and Chicana artist, working alongside students from Washington Middle School in Albuquerque, New Mexico (permission requested). You can watch a video about the making of the mural here.