Fugitive Spaces

As a methodological tool within Chicana feminist epistemology (CFE) the testimonio inserts my voice as a Chicana and enables ‘different possibilities and interpretations of what exists in the gaps and silences but is often not seen or heard’ (Perez, 2003, p. 129). The methods presented in this paper combine Deleuzian concepts, testimonios, and anecdotes as methodological tools with visual methods including photo and video elicitation. The paper explores the ethnographic processes as a collaboration with my students in the San Diego County Juvenile Court and Community Schools in Barrio Logan, San Diego and the contradictions posed by my role as both a Chicana and researcher— as having ‘a foot in both worlds; in the dominant privileged institutions and in the marginalized communities’ (Villenas, 1996, p. 714).  The research locates assemblages within the anecdotes as ‘artefacts of place’ within Barrio Logan located in Atzlán (Somerville, 2010, p. 340).  Specific to the context of this research is the acknowledgement that the ‘hoods’ and streets are also places of enduring memories and sites of pleasure, comradery, family, culture and love; to omit that distills our beloved barrios and neighborhoods to stereotypical crime ridden places that serve as fodder for moral panics. Drawing upon my intuition and experiences, I  step aside from the deficit models and instead respond to Cahill’s (2008) suggestion to equip my students ‘to take up their own rewriting of the personal, social and political scripts that will shape their individual and shared futures’ (p. 28). The papers argues the hybrid methodology I have developed creates a space for students and me to share stories in the flesh through the expressive arts as witnessing through testimonios.