A pedagogia decolonial como ferramenta de combate às colonialidades na obra outros cantos (2016), de Maria Valéria Rezende

Abstract

Within decolonial studies, knowledge is already well established regarding the strategies of domination used during the colonial period in Latin America—namely, the colonialities of power, knowledge, and being (Quijano, 2005; Mignolo, 2003; Maldonado Torres, 2022)—which continue to persist today through modernity and the capitalist way of life. It is also known that an effective response to combating such colonialities lies in border thinking (Mignolo, 2003), which promotes the recognition of knowledge from the margins and places it at the forefront of Latin American intellectual development. Another step taken along this path of decolonial studies is the legitimization of decolonial pedagogy as a tool for confronting these colonialities. In this context, questions arise concerning the ways and methods that can enable the realization of a decolonial pedagogy that fulfills this critical role of resistance. In this regard, Maria Valéria Rezende’s novel Outros Cantos (2016) offers an example to be analyzed as a journey of abandoning colonial modes of thought, ultimately achieving a decolonial pedagogy through everyday experiences. Therefore, the objective of this project is to analyze the process of econstruction undertaken by the narrator-protagonist as she moves away from the colonialities of power, knowledge, and being, through the valorization of the epistemologies of the sertão, by practicing a decolonial pedagogy embedded in the literary fabric of the narrative. To achieve this, the research will follow a descriptive-explanatory methodology and will analyze the narrative elements that sustain the diegesis of the novel—particularly the memorialistic aspect, autofiction and viatic—as well as other literary strategies used by the author in the construction of the work. It will also examine the narrator-protagonist’s process of deconstruction, exploring the paths she follows toward an educational practice that values the knowledge of the sertão. The analysis will be grounded in the decolonial theories of Aníbal Quijano (2005), Walter Mignolo (2003) and Maldonado-Torres (2022) as well as in the theories on decolonial pedagogy developed by Catherine Walsh (2013), bell hooks (2013) and Paulo Freire (1987).