Factibilidad de la construcción de una pedagogía líquida

This research focuses on practice. Like Bourdieu (1977) argues, an emphasis on practice is necessary to grasp social dynamics. It is also in practice that individuals perform everyday life and reification and change occur. In order to understand the process of identity construction and subjective transformation, I approach identities as a result of the intersection of individual trajectories, history, context, and culture. I conceptualize identity as the most elaborated and objectified component of subjectivities, a fluid process (D. M. Nelson 2009) of self-

understanding that takes into account and contributes to the construction of “figured worlds”26 _in

specific local contexts while engaged in practice (Holland et al. 1998).

Drawing on Bourdieu’s insights, Holland, Lachiotte, Lave, and others (1998; 2001) have developed the framework of a social theory of practice. According to this framework, identities are historically and culturally situated. This implies that notions about the self and personhood are conversely specific, that is to say, we have to avoid modern biases and essentialism (Rouse

25 _{Zibechi and Esteva recognize the productivity of power and that subalterns hold it. However, they do not reflect}

on the microphysics of power, and on its implications in daily life and political projects such as Zapatismo or those that have been taking place in Bolivia.

26 _{Figured worlds are created and performed in spaces in which cultural politics are enacted, and they result in}

particular personal and collective identities. New activists become actors in and through these figured worlds as a result of “situating learning” in “communities of practice.”

1995; Escobar 2008). Identities are constructed and performed in practice, where individuals are positioned in a relational way with others.

There are multiple contexts in which one becomes a person, and contexts are not static (MacDermott 1993). Individuals have multiple subject positions and develop different relational identities crossed by different relations of power that configure their subjectivity. Holland et al. (1998) point out that there are three essential time/space dimensions in identity construction: intimate space, local contentious practice, and enduring historical struggles. These dimensions correspond with intimate identity, socio historical identity, and localized identity.27

Identity is a process of intimate and social struggle. The “I” is always unfinished, and is a result of what Bakhtin (1982; 1986) names dialogism. Identity is a discourse about us and for us. Identities are the production of objectifications of self-understandings that may guide subsequent behavior, as well as the imposition of certain categories, as is the case with the notion of victims. Escobar, following Grossberg’s analysis, considers that identities have certain fluidity, and precisely “this context of flux is the ground for identity development and sets the condition for ‘a space of authoring’” (2008: 218). The permanent construction of the self does not mean that there is not at least a possible modicum of self-direction. The notion of history-in-person (Holland and Lave 2001) recognizes the possibility of relatively stable identities that are the result of personal histories intermingled with habitus and embodied dispositions in a local terrain.

Identities are dialogic, practice-oriented, and processual dynamics that have place in local contentious spaces of practice (Holland et al. 1998; Escobar 2008). It involves the creation and at times dissolution of boundaries between the self and others. Local contentious practice mediates

27 _{Since I will focus on individual as well as on collective identities, I consider it necessary to investigate the manner}

between history-in-person and enduring struggles.28 Thus, the local is the concrete space where change takes place. It is the space of the emergent, changeable, and not definable.

Identities (Holland et al. 1998) are “possibilities for mediating agency” (4). They are “key means through which people care about and care for what is going on around them” (5). In this dissertation, I pay attention not only to the construction of individual identities but also to collective ones. These collective identities impact subjectivity, creating different subject

positions. I focus on the manner in which collective identities of “victims” are constructed. Some central aspects in the construction of collective identities are: the recognition of injustice through experience; a political decision to act, product of a slow process of awareness that enables trajectories of becoming; collective dialogues and discussions around “experiences” of

subordination and exclusion; circulation, use, and creation of discourses that explain the unfair conditions under which neglected subjects live as well as the transformative possibilities that those discourses enact (Gómez Correal 2011a).

Satterfield (2002), Escobar (2008), Price (2009), Holland and Lachicotte (2007), and Nelson (2009) introduce identities in a broad set of discussions related with social change and new ways to inhabit the world. Satterfield argues that identities are expressions of particular combinations of larger cultural forms and means through which transformation is possible. Holland et al. (1998) similarly stress the cultural production of new figured worlds and

associated identities. Identities thus articulate dialogues of change and reconfiguration of cultural                                                                                                                

28 _{Social struggles are related with cultural dispute, with conceptions about the world. The same cultural resources}

are used for different actors but in diverse ways or with dissimilar goals and meanings. Although the actors share the same space, they conceive the world and relate with it in different manners. For Satterfield (2002) the dialogical approach allows an understanding of identities as something improvised and modifiable for other actors and different contexts (local and political). Identities are negotiated and situationally constructed through dialogues across difference. Thus, for Satterfield, it is essential to understand the implication of how the “other” conceptualizes his opponent, the manner in which it influences the construction of identity in both groups, their repertories of struggles, and the way in which the dispute is performed. In the case of Colombia, the identity of “victim” of State crime and paramilitary violence is constructed to some extent in dialogic relation to “victims” of guerrilla groups, although they share some aspects. This is the result of the configuration of the war, its actors and relationships in Colombia.

and ontological forms. For this reason, identity is an important means for the creation of

collective actors and transformation. This is an undesired and unexpected outcome of domination in regard to the production of “victims.”

As feminists point out, change cannot occur unless it includes a personal dimension. This makes vital to reflect about subjective transformation. Both identity and subjectivity are central to liberatory change. They are more a means than an end; “less a thing than a set of relations” (Nelson 2009: 47) that enable certain actions and goals. According to Nelson, the formation of new identities not only results in the creation of new subjects, but it also impacts contexts of violence and political dispute. Since identities and subjectivities are the result of power productivity, they in themselves are expressions of power and driving forces in

liberatory/emancipatory collective transformation.