Made in the Margins: Latina/o Constructions of US Religious History

Part 3: Theories and Methodologies from a Postcolonizing Perspective

p art iii theories and methodologies from a postcolonizing perspective Haitian historian Michel-rolph Trouillot asserts that “theories of history rarely examine in detail the concrete production of specific narratives.”1 because of this lack of examination, historical narratives are usually deconstructed and reconfigured only on the basis of “facts,” and not on the basis of the ideology behind their construction . in many cases the “new” versions of old historical narratives are infused with the same colonialist ideology that helped build the original versions. in order to challenge traditional historical narratives and the ideology behind them without reproducing its colonial aspect, historians need to look beyond the simple narrativizing of the story and engage theories of understanding within their work. This is why in the second part i explored the major theoretical and methodological approaches used within Latina/o religious historiography , following Trouillot’s challenge of looking at narratives beyond their facts. it serves as a way of evaluating the field at its core in order to maintain its development without compromising its value as a counter-discourse. in this third part, i examine different theoretical approaches i find to be useful in order to develop this field in two major areas: 1) Challenging and deconstructing the normative historical discourses that have dominated and/or silenced our histories; and 2) Creating subversive discourses that focus on the agency of the Latina/o community. These theoretical approaches are lived religion 101 1 Michel-rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (boston: beacon, 1995), 22. 102 made in the margins analysis, gender analysis, and migration and transnational analysis. i do not study these approaches in a vacuum, as if just their common understandings would serve perfectly the two major areas. i argue that in order for these to be useful for Latina/o religious historians, they must be seen through a postcolonizing perspective. hence, in order to break away from the old and new hegemonies, and from the colonial perspectives embedded within the field of history, it is important to reconstruct the way we approach our task as the interpreters of the past in light of a postcolonizing project. This postcolonizing project intends to look at history as an interpretation of the past, not as the truth about the past, in order for the subaltern to find themselves as historical subjects. in this sense, i agree with Arif Dirlik as he argues: For the marginalized and oppressed in particular, whose histories have been erased by power, it becomes all the more important to recapture or remake the past in their efforts to render themselves visible historically, as the very struggle to become visible presupposes a historical identity. in the face of a “historiographic colonialism ” that denies them their historicity, capturing the truth of history, of oppression and the resistance to it, is a fundamental task.2 This is why it is important not only to dis-cover stories and memories that challenge the colonial discourse, but also to develop new ways of writing history so that voices currently in the margins may be brought to the historical process. This inclusion should not be in the form of a footnote nor should it be peripheral; instead it should be a significant part of the history and the actual process of writing that history. The approaches i explore here from a postcolonizing perspective help integrate these voices within the discourses and the writing of these discourses while at the same time challenging the colonial historical discourses. in the first chapter of this part, i introduce and explain what i mean by a postcolonizing criticism and how this might help in the construction of subaltern histories. This chapter serves as the core of this section of the book because in it i look at the main characteristics of this theoretical approach. After this presentation, i explore 2 Arif Dirlik, Postmodernity’s Histories: The Past as Legacy and Project (Lanham , Md.: rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 215–16. part iii 103 two different methodological approaches that could be used in the development of subaltern histories. in chapter 6, i examine the lived religion approach and then, in chapter 7, i look at feminist criticism. While i examine each of these approaches separately, it is important to acknowledge that they are complementary to each other. in each of these chapters, i scrutinize these methodological approaches in order to provide a deeper understanding of...