Action as deferment: Anzaldua’s conocimiento as critical thinking

Abstract

In this article I focus on a pedagogical notion inspired by Anzaldua’s ‘left hand maneuvers’ as critical thinking, which I call Tilting Pedagogies. Tilting Pedagogies are left hand maneuvers – connecting critical operations – that cross over to meet social urgencies as a way to incarnate theoretical thought inside the classroom. Tilting pedagogies represent those notions, actions and maneuvers that allow us to ‘incline’ – tilt – from academia to social urgencies, from Spanish to English and vice versa, from northern to southern epistemologies, from final to deferred signification and towards the classroom as a critical space. These operations dwell between urgency and deferment of final meaning. I use inclination in its double meaning: as a tendency, a preference, rather an incitation and as an act of bending and leaning. In short: inclination as an incitement to tilt towards interruption and deferment, as two actions that are necessary to read theory not only as a local frame, but to interconnect it with other active forms of knowledge. This is what Anzaldua’s conocimiento produces: incitation to tilt, interrupt and bend over.

Keywords

• tilting pedagogies
• left hand maneuvers
• classroom
• critical thinking
• interruption
• deferment
• social urgencies