Elaborating a (Digital) Methodology of the Oppressed in US Latina/o Digital Humanities

Archives and Digital Humanities (DH) projects that showcase minority voices can disrupt the mainstream perceptions of history and the literary canon; yet all too often, large-scale DH projects and archives reinforce Western epistemology and ontology. In response, some postcolonial and feminist scholars have approached DH from the margins of cultural and political life in order to encourage DH scholars to create and adopt methodologies that engage decolonial theory. Such methodologies consider how digital scholarship frames knowledge and knowledge-production. While national archives help to structure knowledge through a state-sanctioned narrative, decolonial DH methodologies seek to address the silences not only in digital scholarship, but also in the official archive. Drawing on Women of Color (WOC) theory such as Chela Sandoval’s Methodology of the Oppressed (2000), I discuss the digital implications and applications of “oppositional consciousness” and Affect theory. In this talk, I focus on the emerging US Latina/o Digital Humanities initiative at the Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage project (aka “Recovery”) in order to examine structural colonial problems encountered in US Latina/o DH and the stakes of digital decolonial praxis.