Singing as "Un Saber del Sur", or Another Way of Knowing

In this article, I show how one song, “El Espíritu de Dios,” can be a source of knowledge and an act of epistemic disobedience, even amid the increasingly complex dynamics of the “coloniality of music.” When it is sung in embodied ways from below, it affirms knowledge as something that emerges out o...

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Bibliographic Details
Subtitles:A different tenor
Main Author: Whitla, Becca 1966- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: School [2018]
In: Toronto journal of theology
Year: 2017, Volume: 33, Issue: 2, Pages: 289-294
IxTheo Classification:FD Contextual theology
KBR Latin America
RD Hymnology
Further subjects:B liberationist theology
B decolonial theology
B decolonial thinking
B Congregational Singing
B Liturgical Theology
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Summary:In this article, I show how one song, “El Espíritu de Dios,” can be a source of knowledge and an act of epistemic disobedience, even amid the increasingly complex dynamics of the “coloniality of music.” When it is sung in embodied ways from below, it affirms knowledge as something that emerges out of the oral tradition arising from the heart of a community's life and experience. It is understood to belong to the community, in this case multiple local Latin American communities. This embodied, oral, communal singing challenges prevailing Eurocentric norms that emphasize written texts, individual ownership, and rationalist intellectualism, represented in Euro-North-Atlantic epistemologies of the Enlightenment. When it is sung as a fully embodied holistic human expression, it instead actualizes an act of hope, another way of knowing, un saber del sur (knowledge from the South), which defies forces that oppress and the pervasiveness of coloniality. Who we are and who we want to become as active agents of a liberative praxis proclaiming what is and what ought to be, the already and not yet of the Reign of God, emerges. Understanding the dynamics of (de)coloniality in hymns and songs involves affirming songs like “El Espíritu de Dios,” which express an-other way of knowing and singing and a decolonial mode for doing theology.
Item Description:Seite 290: 1 Notenbeispiel
ISSN:1918-6371
Contains:Enthalten in: Toronto journal of theology
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.3138/tjt.2017-0150