The Coyolxauhqui Process of a Scholar Unbecoming an Enemy of Youth: a Performative, Embodied, Self- Decolonizing Story of Transformation and Hope
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University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses March 2020 THE COYOLXAUHQUI PROCESS OF A SCHOLAR UNBECOMING AN ENEMY OF YOUTH: A PERFORMATIVE, EMBODIED, SELF- DECOLONIZING STORY OF TRANSFORMATION AND HOPE Carmen G. Hernández Ojeda University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Other Communication Commons, and the Performance Studies Commons Recommended Citation Hernández Ojeda, Carmen G., "THE COYOLXAUHQUI PROCESS OF A SCHOLAR UNBECOMING AN ENEMY OF YOUTH: A PERFORMATIVE, EMBODIED, SELF-DECOLONIZING STORY OF TRANSFORMATION AND HOPE" (2020). Doctoral Dissertations. 1829. https://doi.org/10.7275/65e9-8n63 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1829 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE COYOLXAUHQUI PROCESS OF A SCHOLAR UNBECOMING AN ENEMY OF YOUTH: A PERFORMATIVE, EMBODIED, SELF-DECOLONIZING STORY OF TRANSFORMATION AND HOPE A Dissertation Presented by CARMEN GLORIA HERNÁNDEZ OJEDA Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillments of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 2020 Department of Communication © Copyright by Carmen Gloria Hernández Ojeda 2020 All Rights Reserved THE COYOLXAUHQUI PROCESS OF A SCHOLAR UNBECOMING AN ENEMY OF YOUTH: A PERFORMATIVE, EMBODIED, SELF-DECOLONIZING STORY OF TRANSFORMATION AND HOPE A Dissertation Presented by CARMEN GLORIA HERNÁNDEZ OJEDA Approved as to style and content by: _________________________________________________ Kimberlee Pérez, Chair _________________________________________________ Claudio Moreira, Member _________________________________________________ Kristie Soares, Member _______________________________ Sut Jhally, Department Chair Department of Communication DEDICATION A mi padre, Antonio. A mi madre, Dora. Por tanto. Por todo. Y a ti, Maite, por traerme de nuevo a la vida. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Creating knowledge is a collective endeavor. Not only do I join, as a researcher, an ongoing conversation that crosses oceans and time, mixing my voice and words with other voices and words. I am also able to do it thanks to the material and emotional investment of a large group of people, most of whom I will not be able to name in these pages. Human beings that have taught me, inspired me, challenged me, held me since I was a child. That child that never understood why life was so deeply painful. Why we had to hurt each other. Why communicating was so complicated. Keeping that closeted lesbian child alive was a tribe’s effort. Feeding her with reasons to carry on, to try to understand and change that painful world around her. As a student and activist, first; as a teacher and researcher, later. I want to use these pages to thank each of those human beings that have accompanied me through life, that have motivated me to go back and forth the Atlantic Ocean, gathering knowledge, embracing social movements, positing new questions, transforming me, generating love and hope. I am deeply fortunate for having met so many amazing human beings in my four decades breathing on this planet. I am unable to name all of them. I want to mention, however, some of the bodies that have accompanied me during the last five years. People that have, in different ways, supported me in the process of studying my Ph.D. degree, a process that almost took my health and sanity away—not the best moment to be a queer immigrant of color in the United States. Thanks to these people, not only I am about to cross the last ritual of the doctoral process, but I am doing it transformed, renewed, with a clearer vision of what I want to do as a scholar/activist. Among that group of people, I want to thank the faculty and staff at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for the mentorship and knowledge that they have v shared with me. Particularly, my Dissertation Committee members, Dr. Claudio Moreira—thanks to whom I discovered and fell in love with performance studies—and Dr. Kristie Soares. Their wise advice and constant support helped me believe and move forward in this project. Muito obrigada! I am also in debt with Dr. Mari Castañeda, Dr. Leda Cooks, and Dr. Martha Fuentes Bautista for their endless generosity, care, mentorship, and dedication. You have been essential figures in this stage of my life. I also want to thank my cohort peers and the Communication graduate students at UMass for their support and camaraderie. It has been an honor to spend these years with you, learn and grow with you. Particularly, I owe a debt of gratitude to my two writing partners, Victoria Alcazar and Porntip Israsena Twishime. Thanks to their insightful and inspiring feedback and care, I felt encouraged to finish this project. Other central figures in my doctoral process have been my students at UMass. Being in every class with them has been a gift, a priceless reminder of why I want to become a professor: to spend the rest of my life working with youth, learning with them, creating knowledge and changing this world together. In addition to my colleagues and students, there are three people who have, literally, kept me alive during my doctoral process: my therapist, Renee Mendez; my practitioner, Dr. Lisa Lazarz-Ciesla; and my acupuncturist, Jack Radner. Putting my bodymindsoul in their hands made this outcome, surviving a doctoral program, possible. I am also grateful to those working in the entertaining industries, because without their music, shows, and films, I would have not survived the isolating and precarious life of an international doctoral student, going through the endless and rough winters of New England. I cannot conceive a section of acknowledgements without mentioning those human beings that have accompanied me throughout my life, those friends who have vi showed me that another world is possible. Friends that keep loving me despite the distance. They remind me why we must remain hopeful and keep resisting, trying to change this world and ourselves. I am also grateful to those people whose bodies I never met, but whose voices have accompanied me every day: Gloria Anzaldúa, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Audre Lorde, Stuart Hall, young performers and activists, and so many other committed human beings fighting against oppression and colonization. I likewise want to acknowledge those activists and researchers who are committed to decolonizing my beloved homeland, the Canary Islands. Their words inspired me and helped me address the complexities of being a colonize(d)(r) subject in the diaspora. Of course, I thank my family, those who thankfully are still here—my mother Dora, María, José, Jeff, Lourdes, my Aunt María Jose, my nephews and niece—and those who already departed—my father Antonio, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents, and all my ancestors. Particularly, my great-grandmother “La Meliana,” a woman who fought, a hundred years ago, for land and social justice in a small town in the Canary Islands; and my Aunt Fela, for teaching me the power of storytelling. Without them, I would not be here, I would not be the person I am, the person I will be. My family is my life beacon. I thank my mother, brothers and sisters (blood and in-law) for their support, helping me overcome the financial and emotional burden of being an international student. For their faith in me. Always. I would not be in this process without the guidance and mentorship of two phenomenal scholars, mentors, and friends: my sister Dr. María Hernández-Ojeda and my brother-in-law, Dr. Jeff Strickland. Counting on their unconditional support has been pivotal. Lastly, I want to dedicate my final words to the most important person in this process: Dr. Kimberlee Pérez, my dissertation Chair, mentor, advisor, and intellectual vii shaman. I assume my inability to express how deeply grateful I am to her, to all the energy, time, faith, wisdom, patience, care, gently challenge that Professor Pérez has invested in me. It is such an honor to work with a talented scholar like her, but it is a gift to share time, space, conversations and hope with a generous human being and nepantlera like Kimberlee. She taught me to take care of my bodymindsoul as a mindful scholar. She encouraged me to carry on when I was emotionally and physically depleted, to overcome anxiety and fear. She held my hand while I undertook the painful, transformative Coyolxauhqui process that I explain/enable in this dissertation. She made sure that my pieces were able to go back together again after spending years of critical self-reflexivity and transformation. She helped me transition between ontological frameworks and become a performance scholar. Moreover, she showed me that I belong in academia, that I have relevant things to share, that all this effort is worth it. If I am able to conclude this exhausting ritual, the Ph.D., and hopefully become a professor it will be thanks to you, Professor Kimberlee Pérez. I will be forever grateful. viii ABSTRACT THE COYOLXAUHQUI PROCESS OF A SCHOLAR UNBECOMING AN ENEMY OF YOUTH: A PERFORMATIVE, EMBODIED, SELF-DECOLONIZING STORY OF TRANSFORMATION AND HOPE FEBRUARY 2020 CARMEN GLORIA HERNÁNDEZ OJEDA B.A., UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID M.A., UNIVERSITY OF HARTFORD Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Kimberlee Pérez Scholarly work may be used to foster colonizing processes upon people of color whether scholars are aware of it or not. That is the case of the study of youth bullying in the United States, an old issue that, however, became a central social concern in the United States in the late 1990s.