COW as a Feminist Praxis: Definition and Conceptual Foundations
摘要
Critical Organic Writing (COW) emerges as a feminist, decolonial praxis grounded in embodied knowledge, ancestral memory, and border pedagogy. Drawing on Gloria Anzaldúa, Indigenous cosmologies, and feminist scholars, COW positions personal narrative as a political and epistemic act of resistance. Through autobiography, myth, and ethnography, this chapter traces COW’s origins in Ciudad Juárez community projects and its evolution into a methodology that resists appropriation and commodification. Using metaphors of cows, cosmic lineages, and Rarámuri worldviews, the chapter critiques colonial, patriarchal, and extractive systems while honoring ancestors. COW is framed as both theory and praxis, centering the body as archive and affirming storytelling as a sacred, relational practice that bridges self, community, and cosmic consciousness.