Kansas State University

DePaoli presents research at Grenoble Alpes University

Submitted by Maria Teresa DePaoli

María Teresa DePaoli, associate professor of Spanish, presented "Can the Undocumented Immigrant Speak?: Exploring Decolonial Thinking in Mexican and Latinx Literature and Film" at the Migrations and Borders in the United States: Discourses, Representations, and Imaginary Contexts Conference, March 29-31, at Grenoble Alpes University in Grenoble, France. 

DePaoli's research explores the theme of undocumented immigration in Mexican and Latinx writers and directors. Since migration theory has largely failed to recognize the importance of race and racism in the process of migrant integration, theories that focus on dismantling western binaries to create hybrid, new nonlinear, third spaces of subaltern enunciation are urgently needed. Latina theorist Gloria Anzaldúa's concept of "Nepantla," Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano's idea of "Coloniality of Power," and Argentinian-Mexican philosopher Enrique Dussel's notion of "Transmodernity," provide helpful decolonial thinking in the analysis of the always fluid and complex concept of undocumented immigration from Latin America to the U.S., and other western countries.