Conversation: Decolonial and feminist research

Yoalli Rodríguez and Sofía Zaragocín are Latin American scholar-activists who have written on the relationship between bodies and territories in the Americas. This conversation piece was envisioned as a critique of ethnography and extractivist academic processes more broadly. Yoalli and Sofía move between Latin America (Mexico and Ecuador) and the US to consider how theory moves to and from embodied places. They discuss ethnography, exposure, and decolonial/feminist methodologies, intertwining their feelings, histories, and struggles about the intersections of medical and environmental humanities and critical feminist and decolonial methodologies within the social sciences from and in Latin America. Yoalli and Sofía also consider the importance of care, solidarity, and collectivity in academia and the classroom. Finally, both point to the urgency of accountability to mestizaje across the Americas as the next step in decolonising knowledge construction processes.