Locutora Radiophonic Testimonios: A Research Method

Re-configures the genre of testimonios to address the radiophonic formats utilized by Latina locutoras. Defines radiophonic hociconas. Outlines the role of an interlocutora in text+field academic research. Locutora Radiophonic Testimonos: A Research MethodologyThis talk concerns the cultural and political work of contemporary Latina radio and podcast broadcasters or locutoras. Locutoras make use and navigate the conditions of production—which include the technology, resources, industry-limitations, language ideologies, and sound aesthetics—to construct political discourses that contest and disrupt colonizing narratives which have silenced and mythicize Latinas, our knowledges, and our histories. I am interested in the work of those I am calling radiophonic hociconas, locutoras who stray from the norm of performing docile/hyper-sexualized and heterosexist femininity that perpetuates patriarchy and the capitalist status-quo. Instead, radiophonic hociconas perform femininity intentionally as a sonic and linguistic aesthetic that serves an emancipatory political purpose. This presentation reconfigures the testimonio genre as a research methodology to learn from the perspectives of locutoras themselves in order to explore how feminisms are constructed and how femininity is intentionally performed as a vehicle for Latina counterstory politics.