136 CONCLUSIÓNES

A decolonial methodology has to make the effort to not reproduce the unequal power relationships that underlie knowledge production. Towards this goal, it is essential to begin debunking the foundational colonial/imperial dicothomy: the division subject/object. Therefore, both “victims” and myself are the subjects of this co-intentional production of knowledge. This means, more than a simple change of label, recognizing these subjects as agents of

transformation, knowledge producers, and senti-rationales beings.

Through different methodological strategies—workshops, collective discussions, and life stories—I have been able to learn about and explore a wide array of victimized subjects’

proposals and insights, some of which challenge the current boom in scholarship and practice on memory, peace, and political transition, as well as allow imagination of other paths, actions and projects. For example, people in the Bogotá Chapter of MOVICE talk about verdad verdadera (the true truth), questioning all attempts to make the country's history a relativist recounting of events narrated by certain points of view. They also propose renaming the “right to reparation” as the State’s and other victimizers’ obligatory indemnification, according to the reflections that

the loss of a loved one is irreparable, the State has a debt to its citizens, and victimizers should respond for what they have done, and not merely through jail time.

Exposing the place from which knowledge is generated, as well as the subjectivity that produces it, contributes to a critical and objective apprehension of reality. Situated

epistemologies (Flórez Flórez 2010) identify the limitations and potentialities that specific positionalities imply for the production of knowledge without discarding intentional objectivity (Gómez Correal 2013a), that is, an intellectual attitude seeking to account for the social

phenomenon that is being described, explained, and analyzed in close proximity with the materiality of the real, pursuing the task of giving a “total” account of the research topic from within the complexity that it contains.

Working with intentional objectivity must go hand in hand with Hale’s (2008) idea of deepening consciousness about the ethical and political context of research (11), and with Wynter’s (2001) question about the subjects with whom we are going to epistemologically marry, that is to say to which subjects’ realities we as intellectuals are going to engage and for whom we are going to center our concerns. It includes asking why, how, and with whom research is done. Following this logic I speak about a co-intentional investigation, since my research questions and objectives emerge from concrete personal and intimate trajectories, but also from within the victims’ movement, Sons and Daughters, MOVICE, and other

organizations’ preoccupations and demands.

The fact that I am part of the “subjects” of study gives me a privileged perspective to answer particular questions due to my personal history, political trajectory, and involvement with the movement. My positionality permits me to cultivate an approach that goes beyond the strictly academic, logo-centric one, which has led me to take seriously the role of emotions, dreams, spirituality, and the relationship with the dead. All of these expressions of other onto-

epistemologies, that have been rendered invisible, non-existent, and therefore useless for hegemonic knowledge, could contribute to the construction of another project of society.

One central element of my research is the participatory dimension, which I conceptualize as a “minga de senti-pensamiento (Minga of feeling-knowledge).” Minga is an indigenous word that implies not only collective work, but also the idea of taking responsibility for the other (Muyolema 2001). Some of the components of the participatory research included: a. Discussions of the main research questions with different organizations of the victims’

movement. b. Workshops and trainings in which we shared specific understandings useful for both their work and my research. c. Presentation and exchange of research findings. d.

Collaboration with the victims to define the ways in which the final results of my research will be discussed and presented, and to learn which audiences they consider most important to address. I also explored the networks they wish to create and strengthen.

The participatory component of this project initially began in my pre-dissertation fieldwork. During the summers of 2010 and 2011, I spoke with many members of victims’ organizations in Colombia and I asked them how my research could be made useful for them. They considered most of my questions important for their organizations and life experiences. The majority of second-degree victims think it is important to make their experience and their relatives and peers’ stories visible. For other victimized subjects, it is central to highlight their demands and struggles, their contributions to Colombian society and peace building, as well as to find out what happened during the “conflict.”

I developed the participatory component of this research most deeply with MOVICE’s Bogotá Chapter. We had workshops and collective interviews in which we explored the role of emotions in their struggles, the connection between body and emotions, the process of identity construction, subjective and body transformation, as well as the changes their life trajectories

experienced due to violence. We went into their definitions of memory, truth, justice, reparation, peace, and guarantees of no repetition, among other key concepts and demands. In July 2014, we had a session in which I presented the advancements of my findings. And finally, I collaborated with their activities in diverse ways, such as moderating discussions, organizing training and debate meetings, and helping them to define their annual plan of activities.

I seek to delve more deeply into what Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) mentions as part of a decolonial research: making myself the subject of research, challenging the imperial and colonial logic of studying the “Others.” It has been fundamental in this self-ethnography to be reflexive. This dissertation has been a project that has questioned research queries, findings, assumptions, activism, and the organizations I belong to. In this exercise I have cultivated an auto-critical perspective that looks to be productive and transformative. This includes an attitude that avoids universalizing my experience to that of the rest of the victims, or to idealize or essentialize the movement. This also involves recognizing my place within the movement and observe how my own experience is affecting the reflections I am generating about it.

In addition, to be part of the “subjects” of research does not mean that I am not

reproducing the power relationships that knowledge implies, or that all my understandings are correct. The privileges that being a researcher entails do not disappear simply because one is part of the community of study (Smith 1999). I have been attentive to these privileges, and I reflected on this with several of the victims, especially with Bogotá’s MOVICE chapter, in order to create horizontal relations during the development of the research and in the collaborative process in general.

In one of our meetings, when we were elaborating the Bogotá chapter’s annual plan of activities, we had a discussion about the power relationships between researchers and “victims,” since they, as many other victimized subjects, are continually sought to be interviewed and

investigated. That day I recognized my differential power as someone that although a “victim,” is a PhD student from a U.S. institution coming from a middle-class background. It was inevitable to talk about the specialized and complicated language that academics and even human rights defenders use, as well as about rural and popular languages and understandings that sometimes are not in dialogue with one another. That day I realized again, as I did when I was part of the Iniciativa de Mujeres Colombianas por la Paz, IMP (Initiative of Colombian Women for Peace), that “educated” and urban populations have always had the tendency to impose their

understandings of the world onto people from rural areas and popular sectors of society. After that discussion, we agreed to make an effort to not talk using complicated terminology, and to listen carefully to what the other people have to say. The fact that we are Colombians and speak Spanish does not necessarily mean that we are talking with the same “language.” Inasmuch as epistemic colonialism and imperialism have included the imposition of languages, any decolonial research should make a big effort to be communicative with those with we are working with.