Maps for a Fiesta: A Latina/o Perspective on Knowledge and the Global Crisis
What can theology offer in the context of neoliberalism, globalization, growing inequality, and an ever more ecologically precarious planet that disproportionately affects the poor? This book, by one of the country's best-known Latino theologians, explores possibilities for liberation from the forces that would impose certain forms of knowledge on our social world to manipulate our experience of identity, power, and justice.

Beautifully written in a refreshingly direct and accessible prose, Maduro's book is nevertheless built upon subtly articulated critiques and insights. But to write a conventional academic tractatus would have run counter to Maduro's project, which is built on his argument that ignorance is masked in the language of expertise, while true knowledge is dismissed because it is sometimes articulated in pedestrian language by those who produce it through the praxis of solidarity and struggle for social justice.

With a generosity and receptivity to his readers reminiscent of letters between old friends, and with the pointed but questioning wisdom of a teller of parables, Maduro has woven together a twenty-first-century reply to Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach." Neither conventional monograph nor memoir, neither a theological nor a political tract, but with elements of all of these, Maps for a Fiesta arrives as Maduro's philosophical and theological testament one that celebrates the knowledge-work and justice-making of the poor.

What Maduro offers here is a profound meditation on the relationship between knowledge and justice that could be read as a manifesto against the putatively unknowable world that capitalist chaos has made, in favor of a world that is known by the measure of its collective justice. His fiesta grants us the joy that nourishes us in our struggles, just as knowledge gives us the tools to build a more just society. What Maduro offers is nothing less than an epistemology of liberation.
"1126846689"
Maps for a Fiesta: A Latina/o Perspective on Knowledge and the Global Crisis
What can theology offer in the context of neoliberalism, globalization, growing inequality, and an ever more ecologically precarious planet that disproportionately affects the poor? This book, by one of the country's best-known Latino theologians, explores possibilities for liberation from the forces that would impose certain forms of knowledge on our social world to manipulate our experience of identity, power, and justice.

Beautifully written in a refreshingly direct and accessible prose, Maduro's book is nevertheless built upon subtly articulated critiques and insights. But to write a conventional academic tractatus would have run counter to Maduro's project, which is built on his argument that ignorance is masked in the language of expertise, while true knowledge is dismissed because it is sometimes articulated in pedestrian language by those who produce it through the praxis of solidarity and struggle for social justice.

With a generosity and receptivity to his readers reminiscent of letters between old friends, and with the pointed but questioning wisdom of a teller of parables, Maduro has woven together a twenty-first-century reply to Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach." Neither conventional monograph nor memoir, neither a theological nor a political tract, but with elements of all of these, Maps for a Fiesta arrives as Maduro's philosophical and theological testament one that celebrates the knowledge-work and justice-making of the poor.

What Maduro offers here is a profound meditation on the relationship between knowledge and justice that could be read as a manifesto against the putatively unknowable world that capitalist chaos has made, in favor of a world that is known by the measure of its collective justice. His fiesta grants us the joy that nourishes us in our struggles, just as knowledge gives us the tools to build a more just society. What Maduro offers is nothing less than an epistemology of liberation.
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Maps for a Fiesta: A Latina/o Perspective on Knowledge and the Global Crisis

Maps for a Fiesta: A Latina/o Perspective on Knowledge and the Global Crisis

Maps for a Fiesta: A Latina/o Perspective on Knowledge and the Global Crisis

Maps for a Fiesta: A Latina/o Perspective on Knowledge and the Global Crisis

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Overview

What can theology offer in the context of neoliberalism, globalization, growing inequality, and an ever more ecologically precarious planet that disproportionately affects the poor? This book, by one of the country's best-known Latino theologians, explores possibilities for liberation from the forces that would impose certain forms of knowledge on our social world to manipulate our experience of identity, power, and justice.

Beautifully written in a refreshingly direct and accessible prose, Maduro's book is nevertheless built upon subtly articulated critiques and insights. But to write a conventional academic tractatus would have run counter to Maduro's project, which is built on his argument that ignorance is masked in the language of expertise, while true knowledge is dismissed because it is sometimes articulated in pedestrian language by those who produce it through the praxis of solidarity and struggle for social justice.

With a generosity and receptivity to his readers reminiscent of letters between old friends, and with the pointed but questioning wisdom of a teller of parables, Maduro has woven together a twenty-first-century reply to Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach." Neither conventional monograph nor memoir, neither a theological nor a political tract, but with elements of all of these, Maps for a Fiesta arrives as Maduro's philosophical and theological testament one that celebrates the knowledge-work and justice-making of the poor.

What Maduro offers here is a profound meditation on the relationship between knowledge and justice that could be read as a manifesto against the putatively unknowable world that capitalist chaos has made, in favor of a world that is known by the measure of its collective justice. His fiesta grants us the joy that nourishes us in our struggles, just as knowledge gives us the tools to build a more just society. What Maduro offers is nothing less than an epistemology of liberation.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780823263059
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Publication date: 04/01/2015
Pages: 200
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

OTTO MADURO (1945-2013) was Professor of World Christianity at Drew University. His life's work includes more than one hundred articles published in a dozen languages on five continents, and five books in five languages. Involved in Latin American theology since its inception, Maduro was the first Hispanic president of the American Academy of Religion.

Eduardo Mendieta is Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University.

Table of Contents

FOREWORD TO THE 1ST ENGLISH EDITION

INTRODUCTION

FIESTA, SORROW AND KNOWLEDGE
A CURSORY AUTOBIOGRAPHY TO BEGIN WITH
WITH LIBERATION THEOLOGIES
HOW DID I GET INTERESTED IN THIS KNOWLEDGE THING?
AND WHOEVER COULD BE BOTHERED BY THIS STUFF?
A SHORTAGE OF SUITABLE READING MATERIALS
WHAT, AFTER ALL, DO WE MEAN HERE BY "KNOWLEDGE"?
SOME KEY CLARIFICATIONS

1 - DOES EXPERIENCE SHAPE OUR KNOWLEDGE?
SOME DIMENSIONS OF THIS QUESTION
· Life's Formative Experiences
· Life's Joys and Difficulties
· Loving Acceptance
· Social Norms
· What is "Known and Accepted"
· Certainties
· Power
· Frustrations
· Contradictions and Inconsistencies
A BASIC SYNTHESIS OF THE DISCUSSION

2 - CALMLY REFLECTING ON OUR KNOWLEDGE
SOME DIMENSIONS OF THIS QUESTION
· Why Make Life More Complicated than it Already Is?
· Why Reflect Deeply on Our Reality?
· Examining the Place from Which We Know
· Studying the History of What We Want to Know
· Contrasting the Familiar with the Different
· Walking A Mile in Somebody Else's Shoes
· Carefully Reviewing Our Convictions and Positions
A BASIC SYNTHESIS OF THE DISCUSSION

3 - OPPRESSION, LIBERATION, AND KNOWLEDGE
SOME DIMENSIONS OF THIS QUESTION
· Static Visions and Power Dynamics
· Need and Limits of Theories of Oppression
· Who is Responsible for Our Burdens?
· Isn't Knowledge for Intellectuals Only?
· Practical Context and Theoretical Knowledge
· Expanding Our Criteria for Discerning Truth
A BASIC SYNTHESIS OF THE DISCUSSION

4 - HOW DO WE EXPRESS AND SHARE KNOWLEDGE
SOME DIMENSIONS OF THIS QUESTION
· Language as an Instrument for World-Construction
· Domination and Language Control
· Communicating in Silence
· For a Creative Re-appropriation of Language
· Marginalization, Liberation, and Language
· Common-Folk Language: Elitist versus Populist Assessments
· Beyond the Written Word
A BASIC SYNTHESIS OF THE DISCUSSION

5 - RETHINKING OUR UNDERSTANDING OF KNOWLEDGE
SOME DIMENSIONS OF THIS QUESTION
· Modern Sciences: Usefulness or Idolatry?
· Reason, Emotions, and Knowledge
· Knowledge as Imaginative Reconstruction of Relationships
· Knowledge of What (Still) Isn't
· Knowing as Pre-judging, Re-cognizing and Co-knowing
· Knowledge as Misrecognition and Exaggeration
· Knowledge as Continuous Transformation
· Another Way of Looking at the Question of Truth and Error
· Knowledge and Reality: Unity and Distinction
A BASIC SYNTHESIS AND A REDEFINITION

CONCLUSIONS
FROM PAST CERTAINTIES TO A TENTATIVE QUEST FOR THE FUTURE
SHARED QUEST(ION)S, RATHER THAN PREFABRICATED ANSWERS

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY
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