This week’s reading demonstrated how colonization has made many people’s history of their ancestors vanishes under modernity. Susana Cota Amaral quotes, “This week’s readings played a debate on the hegemonic epistemologies of forgetfulness and denial. Western colonial capitalism modes of producing knowledge have disenchanted and disregarded the indigenous and colonized ancestral culture, turning a “vast experience into merely things and commodities” (Intzín, pg 11) Amaral highlights the significant meaning and context throughout the many readings this week with her introduction sentence. I would like to understand how we can reverse the harms of “forgetfulness” and “denial” through the readings.

 

With that being said I turn to Juan Lopez Intzin’s Knowledges and Epistemologies of the Heart. In this reading, I feel Intzin’s “insurgence” helps us combat the notion of “forgetfulness” and “denial” through epistemologies of the heart and native language. Intzin uses their native language to fuel the conversation which in return helps readers understand and gain a knowledge of the indigenous people that colonizers have tried to banish or assimilate. Throughout the piece Intzin tries to find a “common-unity” which not only deals with forgetfulness but also forgiveness; which I believe could help with the denial of the past.