In the United States of America (USA), daily living (lo cotidiano, vida cotidiana) in its varied concrete expressions is explicitly or implicitly the starting point for much of the theologizing done latinamente. Attention to la vida cotidiana by Latin@´ theologians and biblical scholars shares a thread with other contemporary movements from the latter half of the twentieth century whose consideration of the quotidian is noteworthy. In Latin America, liberation theologians turned toward critical scrutiny of socioeconomic and political realities in order to articulate, encourage, and enact gospel-based praxis that was both liberative and transformative. The âturn to the subjectâ in European theologies influenced Karl Rahner, for example, to begin his analysis with such human experiences as knowing, freedom, and the search for meaning. The turn to the experiences of women, specifically, characterized the early efforts of primarily North American, feminist scholars to retrieve long-ignored stories across the span of the Christian tradition, resulting in a necessary re-evaluation of what had been considered normative. The focus on daily lived experience by theologians and other scholars from the global South and marginalized racial and ethnic communities in AmĂŠrica insured that these investigations would not exclude the exploitative consequences of racism, colonialism, and imperialism as well as sexism in all its diverse manifestations.
Lo Cotidiano as Locus Theologicus
For any number of Latin@´ theologians lo cotidiano functions as locus theologicus. In other words, ordinary living is privileged as source, provides content, particularizes context, and marks the spaces and place(s) from which Latin@´s do theology. Such theologizing avoids abstraction and is admittedly polyvocal and fluid.
Latin@´s affirm that lived reality is source for divine revelation and as such worthy of theological reflection. Lo cotidiano as lived en nuestros barrios y nuestras casas, en comunidades y familias, in the particular and the local, from the underside, peripheries, and grassroots is a dynamic matrix of sin, grace, and ambiguity, of the perceived presence of God as well as of the perceived absence of the divine. The ordinary as experienced through our hybridities, bodies, senses, struggles, fiestas, socioeconomic status, and migratory and historical legacies offers legitimate starting points for critical investigation.
Lo cotidiano provides the content for theologizing. The concrete and miscellaneous stuff of life informs humble attempts to articulate understandings of the sacred and their implications for our relationships with each other and the whole of creation. A forthright preference for those who are poor and/or marginalized makes la vida on the borders, or on the move, or on the edges of poverty necessary foci for consideration of the imago dei. Bodies broken by addiction, violence, incarceration, or the burdens of conditions that disable speak to the mystery of the incarnation. Celebrations of life amid struggles, or praxis navigating the tensions of social justice, or popular religious practices taunting the sting of death signify eschatological hopes.
La vida cotidiana does not occur in a vacuum; neither does the theologizing that arises from within the rhythms and disruptions of the ordinary. While certain experiences such as death may be both inevitable and to a degree universal, theologizing from lo cotidiano appreciates the particularities of context in ways that challenge scholarly flights of abstraction and temptations to impose homogeneity. Such a stance takes seriously not only the questions arising from particular slices of life (trozos de la vida), but the multiple responses, expressions, and strategies for making sense, surviving, and thriving.
To conceptualize lo cotidiano as the place of theologizing is to admit the situatedness of all interpreters and perspectives. To do theology latinamente entails an intentional mapping of the theologianâs location in relation to the slices of the daily being explored and the communities to whom one is accountable. Presumptions of objectivity are dismissed as the biases and preferences of being implicated are critically taken into account and identified. Locating oneself within a web of relationships, influences, and experiences indicates an awareness of theologians as embedded and implicated insiders/outsiders. In the academy, this seems to be an expectation only of so-called âcontextual theologiansâ; however, Virgilio Elizondo noted âI would like to see theologians and biblical scholars start with a brief biographical statement of their sociocultural conditioning. It would help the reader to appreciate both the richness and limitations of their workâ (2009: 268, footnote 14).
Some would like to dismiss this careful concern for identity and its construction from rich and varied pieces and experiences of life; but for Latin@´ theologians it is an ethical responsibility to be self-aware, especially for those who seek to articulate, signify, and make meaning from within faith communities. Biblical scholar Fernando Segovia points to the particularity of perspective that each theologian brings to this enterprise: â[a]t a fundamental level I have used my life story as a foundation for my work as a critic in biblical studies, as a theologian in theological studies, and as a critic in cultural studies ⌠. I have relied on both the individual and the social dimensions not as binary oppositions but as interrelated and interdependentâ (2000: 155).
Methodological Considerations
Doing theology from the departure point of la vida cotidiana is necessarily an interdisciplinary enterprise. This type of engagement draws on the wisdom, observations, and methods of other disciplines, fields of study, and interpretive perspectives. These include, but are not limited to, the natural sciences and social sciences; liberationist, postcolonial, diasporic, migration, linguistic, and culture studies; gender studies, and feminist and queer theories; critical race theory, literary theory, and philosophy; grassroots activism, street art, and even the culinary arts. Inevitably such scrutiny reveals the complexity of each trozo de cotidianidad and cautions against simplistic appropriations and forced correlations in order to bolster a predetermined theological supposition.
Interrogations from multiple perspectives yield insight yet point to the limitations of all analysis. These limitations highlight the need for collaborative engagement and alliances especially with others who similarly find themselves and their communities on the margins. The commitment to collaboration is manifest practically in a doing of teologĂa en conjunto, in other words together in communities of mutual accountability, and de conjunto, in ways that affirm that the resulting creation belongs not to a single scholar but to the collective, to la comunidad. The use of the Spanish word for community is intentional here because it draws on a distinction made by Puerto Rican scholar Juan Flores that is helpful in comprehending both teologĂa en conjunto y teologĂa de conjunto. Flores observes that the term accentuates the two constitutive parts, comĂşn, i.e., what we share in common, and unidad, i.e., what binds us beyond our âdiverse particular commonalitiesâ (2000: 193).
For theologies done latinamente, this distinction emphasizes that the construction of knowledge is perceived in terms of a series of commitments to the networks from which they arise. Latin@´ theologians are responsible to each other, especially to those with whom they engage in communal processes that allow for spirited and mutual exchanges of lived experiences and ideas within physical and/or virtual space. Under the umbrella of our latinidad, with its multiple particularities, the fruits of these shared labors are not only âoursâ but belong to our communities and churches of accountability. This focus on la vida cotidiana serves as reminder that the work of theology is invested in and for the sake of real communities; therefore theology is always a matter of teologĂa y pastoral en/de conjunto, a lived experience of acompaĂąamiento.
Attention to daily living emerges from an appreciation for relationality, expressed in terms of convivencia, literally living (vivencia) together. Theologian Gary Riebe-Estrella explains that the âvida found in lo cotidiano, which forms the basis for vivencia, is not an individualistic kind of experience ⌠Rather, vida for Latinos is understood within our sociocentric cultural world as a shared reality⌠not simply vivencia, but convivencia ⌠. As such, convivencia speaks of the intimacy out of which la vida comesâ (1999: 211â12).
Exploring the Daily by the Trozo
This exploration of lo cotidiano is not intended to be exhaustive, comprehensive, or even representative. Instead the approach taken here is drawn from the lived experience of the Spanish gastronomic tradition of las tapas. These small plates of food typically are shared and are limitless in their variety; but any given taverna offers a limited selection based on local tastes, available resources, and culinary creativity. Tapas are rooted in the ordinary and some tales of their origins include provenance of a practical nature. They serve as invitation to enjoy the possibilities of a rich culinary cuisine, yet taken together they can suffice as a filling meal. Tapas inspire conviviality, because of the spaces and manner in which they are served; however, they are often complex in taste and sophisticated in presentation.
The same can be said for this selection of la vida cotidiana as investigated by a cross-section of Latin@´ Christian theologians and biblical scholars. These slices of life are organized thematically, and highlight the contributions of particular theologians and scholars. This organizing principle does not suggest that these are the only aspects of lo cotidiano accessed by each scholar, or that these trozos are mutually exclusive, or that these are the only sources forming and informing theology done latinamente. In fact often they intersect in ways that demonstrate the complexities of la vida cotidiana and the social location of the respective theologians. For the most part, commentaries on Latin@´ theologies identify these trozos as characteristics of doing theology latinamente and/or as theological loci (for example, Gonzales 2002). I am proposing instead that these are all slices of daily life that provide points of departure and are accessible from a rich variety of sources and investigated with any number of diverse analytical tools. As part of our daily weave they serve as loci theologici, tapas on an inexhaustible menu of possibilities.
Tapa: Hybridity
One of the earliest sources for theologizing latinamente was the daily lived embodiment of hybridity, articulated as mestizaje, by Virgilio Elizondo, one of the padrinos of Latin@´ theologies. A Mexican American Catholic from Texas, Elizondo experienced dis-location as a mestizo in the borderlands between the USA and MexĂco. In this region, Latin@´ descendants born of centuries of religious, cultural, linguistic, political, racial/ethnic, and biological mixture were frequently despised and considered as belonging to neither side of a contested border. From this experience of being mestizo in this land conquered by imperial powers, first by fifteenth-century Spanish conquistadores and later by nineteenth-century USA Anglo-Europeans, Elizondo conjectured Galilee as a borderland characterized by hybridity and peripheral to Jerusalem which he suggested was at the center of Jewish life in f...
