“Latinas/os” and Latina/o Legal Studies: A Critical and Self-Critical Review of LatCrit Theory and Legal Models of Knowledge Production

Abstract

For the twelfth time in as many years, the LatCrit community convened its annual conference to underscore the importance of location and locality in the work that we do. The conference theme's framing around Critical Localities: Epistemic Communities, Rooted Cosmopolitans and Knowledge Processes not only focused our collective attention on questions of epistemic community and intellectual (as well as physical) location, but also invited reflection on the meanings we inscribe onto the positions we elect to stake out for ourselves and our work in light of the options and traditions that serve as background. The "Critical Localities" theme invites an examination of place and space as concepts that identify where we plant, however temporarily, the epistemic communities in which we as LatCrits devote ourselves to knowledge processes. The "Critical Localities" theme also invites analysis of the effects of subordination on place and space, on geography, on land-for some they provide a sense of rootedness but for others an experience of displacement. For some the lived reality of place and space offers an identity as cosmopolitan, and for others, their relation with place and space means an imposed identity as migrante or "illegal." The theme's concepts and tropes create perches for us to explore our worlds, both near and far, as we reflect on ourselves as knowledge producers and academic activists.