El Calambache Workshop. Collectively Situated Knowledge: A decolonial research method for constructing collective auto-narratives and positionalities.

Date: February 15th, 2025
Time: 9am-6pm
Place: Athens, Greece
For whom: Scholar-activists that are actively engaged or beginning to practice, research and theorize decolonial social movements. Everyone is invited to participate while women, people with diasporic heritages, indigenous people and LBGTQ++ are especially invited. 
To apply: Please fill out the application form here.

This workshop addresses two principal discrepancies that arise in the creation of scholar/activist knowledge with indigenous, rural and organized urban communities that seek to create a decolonial research methodologies. Through participatory practices of knowledge exchange we will first work to incorporate collective forms of knowledge creation drawing on the decision-making structures of community assemblies present in many rural and indigenous communities around the world and then, explore collective auto-narrative as method. Second, we will dismantle the construction and practice of situating knowledge in order to create collective positionalities that reflect the construction of the self within the collective contexts that we inhabit. By exploring collective forms of agency in knowledge creation we will delve into the multiplicitous protaganisms that conglomerate in creating praxis and have the potential to resist epistemicide.

Decolonial methodologies call for shifting the power relationships within the construction of knowledge. This involves not only recognizing the obfuscation of the persistence and value of the great multitude of epistemes present in the majority world but also the consequential urgency to shatter the hierarchy of intersectional structural violences that deny the inherent diversity, wealth and abundance of these ontologies. The disparate nature of epistemicide within academia simultaneously seeks to innovate in the creation and practice of institutionalized minority world forms of knowledge while silencing, devaluing and ultimately eliminating the epistemic polyphony present in the majority world. In order to shift this dynamic new forms of research methods are necessary. In order to create new methodologies we, as researchers, are pushed to transform ourselves and our systems of valuing.

In Capitalism social power is constructed through the acquisition of wealth through commodities and currency. Access to wealth is limited through intersectional structural violence across geographies which consequentially restricts access to social power and, as such, diverse epistemes are devalued. Many pre-hispanic empires and now, indigenous communities in the Americas have persistently functioned with moneyless economies that are sustained through collective work, exchange and thought. However, these forms of thought and practice have no value in a capitalist/colonial economy because they have no monetary value. These forms of indigenous praxis create non-capitalist social power which is the most available form of social power in the world.

Ethnography creates knowledge through the investigation of ethnic expression, experience and is now recognized as intercultural research across epistemologies and ontologies. Ground-up approaches to ethnography such as photo-voice, community cinema, community radio, varied forms of artistic expression and podcasting seek to decenter the investigator while privileging the agency of research participants in the co-creation of knowledge. Meanwhile, beyond academia, social media around the world has created a platform for people from all walks of life to express themselves and their ontological experiences. Simultaneously, indigenous and rural communities in the Americas (and around the world) employ the structure of community assemblies to create knowledge about themselves, their context and resolve problems that they face.

The push towards collective knowledge creation amplifies the imperative to recognize the polyphonic nature of life on Earth. In order to audaciously create knowledge about resistance to coloniality and the expressions of flourishing in spite of all of the violence and chaos that greets us in the beginning of 2025 academic practice would do well to incorporate and recognize the collective nature of our own experience, the interwoven immersion that accompanies us through our fields of research, our protagonism and that of others as we mutually influence and transform ourselves and each other in the co-creation of knowledge. The community assembly as method for decision-making and knowledge creation simultaneously recognizes the incredible strength to persist in cultural maintenance and innovation inherent in those communities whose epistemes and territories are under constant attack through the mechanisms of capitalism/coloniality while also shifting away from the extractive nature of academic research. If we want to change the system it would do us well to let those that have always had different ways of knowing and being to take the lead in constructing the expression about their quotidian experience and its implications. This is not to say that these practices are not fraught with contradiction and complexity. However, giving voice to those experiences creates the possibility for actively change what we consider knowledge and who we understand to have access to it. Consequently, it is also necessary to piece apart the fraught nature of individualism, ethics and relationality within tacademic practice so that we may innovate towards a future that seeks liberation from capitalism/coloniality through a multiplicity of epistemologies and ontologies.

Through this workshop we will practice collective work and thought through sharing our research experiences, challenges and steps towards developing futures that resist genocide and epistemicide.

Cost for participants in Euros*:

- $500 - $350 Solidarity price for well employed participants or collectives who want to participate with a single contribution. This price is suggested for people who have some kind of funding for their professional development or can afford it because of their high salary level. This price contributes some support to other people, with less economic possibilities of work, so that they can pay less.

- $350 - $200 Students and participants who can afford it because they have access to some type of financing or are collectives that want to participate through a single contribution.

- $200 - $80 Students, grassroots activists and participants who have little access to money.

- Work exchange options are available for participants that cannot meet the fee requirements and will be organized with the workshop facilitator.

*All proceeds from this workshop will go to support El Cambalache’s research, com­munity and decolonial work.

To apply: Please fill out the application form here