Editorial Commentary

After five years as founding editor-in-chief of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, I offer here my final editorial commentary. At this transitional moment, I think about where we are now at LALVC, where we have been, and what the future will bring. It is a moment of reflection for me, one of gratefulness to all who supported the journal’s creation, and excitement as the journal—and I—move into new phases. Early in my career, I was inspired by postcolonialism, devoted to breaking down nationalist borders in my scholarship and teaching as I incorporated the study of the Americas into mainstream accounts of European art. In the last five years my work has evolved to a decolonial approach. I continue to resist borders, bringing important theoretical perspectives from ethnic studies into my scholarship, both historical and contemporary. I am a border-crossing art historian, committed to resisting geographic, temporal, and disciplinary boundaries, an approach deeply rooted in my personal history as a Chicana (Mexican American) from Arizona. This perspective also informs my editorial practice. I organize this commentary into two sections, first a consideration of decolonizing options in academic publishing and then a conclusion centered on gratitude.But allow me a few preliminary words of reflection on the path to founding LALVC. This journal was founded after many years of discussion at the Association for Latin American Art (ALAA), and after extensive research conducted by my cofounder, associate editor Emily Engel, and me. I tracked where research on Latinx art was being published, in the process discovering that most of it was appearing in ethnic studies journals such as Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, which I have edited since 2016, and in anthologies.1 At that time, the main flagship journals of art history, such as Art Journal or The Art Bulletin, published little on Latinx or Latin American art, a situation that has, thankfully, since improved.LALVC thus emerged as part of an effort to build new infrastructure and effect institutional change. A scholarly journal dedicated to the highest standards of academic peer review had the potential to put a variety of subfields on the map, bringing acceptance and visibility to research outside of the European canon. From the beginning, we envisioned LALVC as a journal that ranged over chronologies and geographies, publishing on all time periods. I vigorously fought to include both Latin American and Latinx art in the journal, in the face of at times vocal opposition. It was important to me to place these subfields in conversation, to think about them hemispherically, transnationally, and globally. This decision was informed by my commitment to breaking down nationalist borders in the field of art history. Simultaneously, I understood the importance of placing Latinx art within a US context, in dialogue with trends in what is still called “American art.” Correspondingly, we assembled large, international editorial boards, with representation from the United States and around the world. We paid attention to minoritized voices and gender inclusivity.I was inspired by and committed to decolonial options, not only in my research, activism, and personal life, but in this publishing venture. As I have read, taught, and discussed decolonial theory, I tried to bring its lessons to my role as editor of LALVC. Because the Americas were the epicenter of the emergence of decolonial thought, employing such an approach to the visual culture of the region seems particularly appropriate.2 Can an academic journal be decolonizing? Can one have an activist agenda as a journal editor? How do academic editorial practices uphold gatekeeping or foster harmful definitions of knowledge that serve coloniality, and how can we address these injustices?What do I mean by decolonial or decolonizing in this context? At the most fundamental level, as Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang point out in their foundational essay, decolonizing should always prioritize the return of stolen Indigenous land.3 I struggled to imagine how I might do that as a journal editor, all the while remaining an active ally, supporting and furthering this important work. Other decolonizing strategies beckoned. Most significantly, I consider decolonizing or decolonial options as means to unsettle Eurocentrism and to disrupt coloniality, the latter defined as the era in which we currently live—the current world—one still defined by colonialism’s legacies. Coloniality rests on the assumption of European superiority, the idea that only Europe can be modern or rational.4 These basic starting points inspire my practice to enact a decolonizing approach to academic publishing. How can academic publishing refuse coloniality and shift its terms?The question is particularly vexing because decolonial theorists have correctly pointed out the ways in which intellectuals, those of us engaged in shepherding, creating, and teaching knowledge, uphold coloniality. What the academy defines as knowledge is linked to European imperialism and colonialism, as Linda Tuhiwai Smith points out in Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. In her landmark book, Smith questions the assumption that what we call “knowledge”—as opposed to information—benefits humanity. She does this by shifting focus in her study to look at “the history of Western research through the eyes of the colonized.”5 Others have expanded upon this notion that what the academy considers knowledge is bound up with imperialism and colonialism. Anthropologist Audra Simpson notes that knowledge was collected and extracted from Indigenous peoples as from natural resources, in order to colonize and govern.6 Nelson Maldonado-Torres links the creation of the humanities during the European Renaissance to “metaphysical catastrophe.”7 Sylvia Wynter analyzes the emergence of the “ethnoclass of Man” during the European Renaissance as a specifically “Western bourgeois conception of the human,” which valorized Europeans at the expense of everyone else around the world. In other words, the rise of Europe in the early modern period was predicated on the invasion of the Americas, the enslavement of Africans, and “Asian subjugation.”8These thinkers remind me of Foucault’s point that our decision about what constitutes knowledge is an act of power, that knowledge is constituted by power.9 I have argued that this holds true for artworks. What we decide constitutes a work of art is similarly an act of power. No longer can only European works be considered worthy of study or consideration. This has been a motivating belief of my career and my editorial activism. The simple fact that this journal has moved beyond a focus on European art to look at the Americas, arguably the epicenter of decolonial thinking, can be understood as a decolonizing move.10 Thus, we contest one of the central tenets of coloniality: that only Europe can be modern and rational. We try to amplify Indigenous and Afro-descendant voices in research and scholarship. We have moved beyond English to publish in Spanish and Portuguese, but contributions in Indigenous languages are also in the works. Inspired by Walter Mignolo’s concept of “epistemic disobedience,” modeled on Gayatri Spivak’s “epistemic violence,” the journal has called into question the definition of knowledge in an attempt to delink the connection between rationality, modernity, and coloniality.11The Bolivian sociologist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui insists that “There can be no discourse of decolonization, no theory of decolonization, without a decolonizing practice.”12 But is it possible to exercise decolonial options in academic publishing or talk about decolonizing it?One could argue that, in fact, academic publishing is one of the prime locations of recreating Eurocentrism and other practices that uphold coloniality. A prime mechanism for doing this might be peer review, a topic considered in a previous editorial commentary I coauthored with Anna Indych-López. In that short essay, we noted: “While our fields need the legitimacy of peer review at this moment, historically both have also been victim to biases that center European art (and Eurocentric or dominant views, methods, and approaches) in the review process.”13 Critically assessing the role of peer review at LALVC was difficult, as we were facing the tricky task of creating something that would bring academic acceptance and authority to the study of Latin American and Latinx art while simultaneously trying to change the academy through activist movidas or tactics. What about getting rid of peer review? That was certainly an option we considered early on, but for the various subfields of Latin American and Latinx visual culture to gain acceptance in the academy, I felt we needed to keep this academic form of approval or assessment in place. Inspired by Simpson’s concept of ethnographic refusal, I began to think about editorial refusal, a practice in which I rejected publishing practices that looked like gatekeeping, or that seemed racist or upheld coloniality in other ways.14 We took care to cultivate peer review as productive, even as an activist practice, and to align it with “emancipatory learning and social justice principles.”15 LALVC has also been sensitive to issues of citational justice, making sure that not only the expected voices are cited. As research has demonstrated, scholars tend to cite up, that is, cite people more powerful than themselves, perhaps as a method of currying favor.16 What about citing the scholars who do the work? LALVC has also been committed to moving beyond the expected long-form academic research essay to more experimental types of contributions, particularly in our Dialogues section. These, in fact, have been some of the most important, most often downloaded and read writings in the journal.There are other means to decolonize academic publishing. Hiring more Indigenous or Afro-descendant editors and centering Indigenous and Afro-descendant voices is one. Consultation or collaboration with Indigenous or other descendant communities is another. I offer as an example the work of our Critical Mission Studies grant, funded by the University of California Office of the President as part of its Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives, from 2019 until 2022. The grant was overseen by a collective of eight researchers, four UC professors and four California Indian research partners. In order to foster collaboration and consultation, we established and worked with a California Indian Advisory Board and established a memorandum of understanding to guide our research and publications.17 The MOU outlines oversight over the types of research published; not all information, such as sacred knowledge, can or should be published. Currently, the eight of us are finishing our coedited anthology based on research conducted during the course of the grant. Every publication follows the MOU guidelines and has been reviewed by a member of the California Indian community. This type of collaboration and consultation offers one model to attempt to decolonize academic publishing.A recent 2022 article by Stephanie Sinclair, self-identified as “one of the only Indigenous people working in publishing in Canada,” explores other ways to foster structural change in the publishing industry. This was the topic of a virtual gathering that she organized in September 2021, Decolonizing Publishing. The event focused on “decolonizing editing practices” and fostering “effective allyship.” In order to support structural change, she invited not only editors but also authors, literary agents, and organizers of literary festivals. In addition to exploring ways to decolonize publishing from the ground up, Sinclair simultaneously began work on an anthology of Indigenous authors exploring this and related topics.18An article by Nicole A. Cook expands on how to decolonize both publishing and libraries. For her, the goal of decolonizing is “decentering whiteness, and being more inclusive to voices of color and to voices that represent diverse perspectives.” She makes the important point that decolonizing occurs at various levels, structural or institutional, which she describes as “macro,” but also at the “micro” or personal level. She writes, “Each of us must do the work required to develop empathy, cultural competence, racial literacy, intellectual humility, and a culturally responsive practice.”19There is much work left to do.I am grateful to leave LALVC in its thriving state, as an award-winning journal dedicated to publishing the latest research in all the fields that comprise Latin American and Latinx visual cultures, in all time periods. We fought to publish in languages other than English, with regular content in Spanish and Portuguese and Indigenous-language essays currently in the works. The research essays that make up the journal’s core, already including one award-winning one, have pushed our subfields into exciting, new directions. Our book reviews, with attention to the latest monographs, exhibition catalogs, and anthologies, are carefully balanced—reflective of the latest publishing trends but also attentive to geographic and chronological coverage. We have reviewed titles in various languages. Consideration of multiple publications in a single review essay has allowed authors to critically reflect on the state of a particular subfield. Our Dialogues, modeled on a similar feature in the other journal I edit, Aztlán, has allowed LALVC to publish thematic, more experimental pieces. These innovative essays, in a variety of formats and by a wide range of authors, from visual culture scholars to artists, critics, museum professionals, educators, and others, are helping define the cutting edge of what we study. The Dialogues offer a space for innovation, for carefully considered, focused treatment of an idea or theme. These have been particularly popular and seem to work well in the classroom setting.Allow me to end my final editorial commentary by offering my immense gratitude. I am thankful to have undertaken this journey with my associate editor, Emily Engel, whose vision, energy, and hard work facilitated the journal’s launch and success. Our first book reviews editor, Aleca Le Blanc, helped get us up and running; I appreciated her thoughtful approach to our published reviews. Gina McDaniel Tarver has more recently taken over the role, expanding and solidifying our reviews. She kindly and deftly works with authors from around the world, her efforts always focused on improving the final product. I am grateful for the experience and opportunity to have worked closely with an all-women team and for the ways we were able to support each other as professionals and in our personal lives.The team at UC Press has been visionary and supportive at every step. A special thanks is due David Famiano, our acquisitions editor. His vision and energy have been a significant reason for the journal’s success. We have enjoyed warm relationships with expert managing editors, initially Danielle Price and then Athena Lakri. Your efforts to keep us on track, to keep everything in production, and your editorial expertise have been greatly appreciated. Our copy editor, Beth Chapple, refines our prose and the writing of our many authors, as she gently reminds us of looming deadlines. Jacqueline Piña functions as expert proofer and at times, copy editor. Our Spanish copy editor Isaura Contreras Ríos and Portuguese copy editor Leticia Cobra Lima bring their expertise to our publications. I thank our many generous colleagues who have served on our editorial boards, especially those on the inaugural board, who took a chance on a fledgling journal, helping to usher it to success and stability. We are also indebted to colleagues in ALAA and the Latinx Art Forum, whose ideas and commitment to the success of this journal have inspired our first steps and whose unwavering allegiance has helped make it a reality.The arts could not be more important than at this transformational moment, as we emerge from the pandemic, global protests, and the toppling of racist statues around the world. The vision of LALVC as a space for transforming the study of the arts of the Americas and the humanities more generally could not be more timely or important. Working on this journal has been a labor of love for me, one based in my commitment to structural change, my desire to revolutionize the culture of academe and the arts, and our shared vision of a more inclusive world. As I try to radically decenter accepted authority and old definitions of knowledge, I try to live these ideals in the classroom, in my research, as an activist, and in my personal life. I think about Paulo Freire and his belief that to educate is an act of love, and I try to bring that love, that culture of care, to everything I do.20 I look to writers on decolonial love such as Chela Sandoval to provide models for us.21 I take inspiration from other women of color and their commitments to change academe, such as Clelia O. Rodríguez or Lorgia García Peña or Yvette DeChavez, the latter known for her recommendation that “It’s Time to Decolonize that Syllabus.”22 Inspired by these decolonial thinkers, commentators, and activists, I envisioned “a world in which many worlds fit,” where “another world is possible.” This pluriversal vision of the world takes its inspiration from Mignolo’s discussion of the concept, one derived from and put into action by the Zapatistas.23 As I write my final editorial commentary as LALVC’s editor, the words of Sylvia Wynter resonate in my mind: “We must now collectively undertake a rewriting of knowledge as we know it.”24 I look forward to seeing how these important idealist ambitions develop, as we sit poised on the edge of change in academe and throughout the world.

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