Chicana Feminist Epistemology: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

In 1998, Dolores Delgado Bernal charted a path from Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands into the heart of educational research in the pages of this journal. Drawing inspiration and critical direction from Chicana feminists and feminists of color more broadly, Delgado Bernal sought to interrupt habits of “epistemological racism” in educational research. Her article “Using a Chicana Epistemology in Educational Research” criticized conventional notions of objectivity and universal foundations of knowledge for erasing the specific intersectionality and location of Chicana experiences. Delgado Bernal defined cultural intuition as the deliberate employment of Chicana identity—its substance and its expression—in the theoretical and interpretive repertoires of Chicana researchers. She then, by example, through an oral history of Chicana students, showed how this feminist framework served the broader aims of educational research by amplifying rather than silencing Chicana voices. The article and the framework it put forth inspired a number of researchers and theorists.