The resignification of everyday spaces and the situatedness of knowledge, from the pedagogy of commitment

Abstract

This article is intended as a working paper for the Study Group of which the author of this work is a founding member. The group focuses on the resignification of everyday spaces and the situational nature of knowledge—approaches that, despite the ground gained in recent decades, still require greater attention in academic scholarship. In this sense, this text explores the affective bond that a group of urban women who have become agricultural producers in the Central Valley of Catamarca (Valle Viejo department) develop in the territory where they practice agroecology. We understand this act of “being-there” in Heidegger’s sense, which implies creation and not merely the repetition of an action. Given that the production of knowledge is always a situated experience, we are interested in observing how Eurocentric biases seep into this daily practice as a subtle perpetuation of colonial relations of domination that continue to this day in renewed forms of political practice. In response to this, our interlocutors deploy creative responses and imagine other ways of organizing work and living spaces. We access these ways of instituting new realities —which they unfold through their practice— through conversation, a methodological strategy that runs throughout the ongoing research project, grounded in the pedagogy of commitment and the experience of collective learning.