ABSTRACT
In the name of science—consecrated under the colonial project of modernity—what has come to be known as methodology has proven to serve as one of the dominant mechanisms of (dis)qualifying and (dis)authorizing the production of knowledge. From its postcolonies, the complicities of academic investigation with Eurocentric and meritocratic principles push us to reconceive what it means to do research. Within this context, participatory action research has offered up possible intervals of dispute regarding the modes of cultivating knowledge in and through collaboration with extra-academic spaces, networks, and actors. This chapter proposes to reflect on the research process, from before fieldwork up until the formulation and dissemination of its so-called outputs, through a decolonial cartographic approach, grounded in the composition of an action research project within the GlobalGRACE network in Brazil and its construction of artistic residencies that articulate formative spaces to deal with racial-gendered violences. It is thus situated within attempts to renew the place and prospects of academic investigation in society, by questioning inherited methodological categories beyond their procedural or identitarian institutionalization, in a move to reaffirm the possibility of thinking in place and effectively decolonizing structures of knowledge, power, and being.
