Researching Afro-descendent and indigenous women's lives in the tropics. Knowledge productions at a crossroads

Black and Indigenous knowledge productions are echoed by international academic research. However, the hierarchy between academic and non-academic knowledge produces not only histories of knowledge but also of silence. Cultural taboos and stereotypes and epistemic violence structurally inherent to academic institutions might hinder processes of decolonizing occidental presuppositions of superiority and practices of systematic fragmentation. The fact that knowledge systems are declassified as oral traditions in order to translate them in readable goods, evidences capitalist logics of property and commodification that objectify especially Indigenous and black women.

Departing from this fundamental critique and out of solidarity with my research participants I decided to do my PhD in Costa Rica. But instead of leaving dilemmas and contradictions behind, they came much closer. My positionality is marked by complex relations of power, multiple imaginaries and conflicting interests. In this paper I will draw attention to these paradoxical tensions, by bringing together experiences of black and Indigenous women with my own experience.