Foreword: LatCrit XII – The Critical Locality and the Processes of Community

Abstract

The foreword to each annual LatCrit Conference Symposium is a document that situates the current Symposium within the parameters of LatCrit and outsider jurisprudence discourse. In addition to examining the role that the current Symposium plays in the elaboration of LatCrit theory and praxis, the foreword calls for reflection on the evolution of the LatCrit project and its future development. The LatCrit XII Conference sought to focus attention on the notion of the critical locality, a geographic space simultaneously occupied by different racial, ethnic, and cultural, social, linguistic, and political communities, to name but a few of the potential identifications present or believed to be present. The essays contained in the Symposium have been grouped into the following six Clusters: Immigration and Cosmopolitanism; Economics: Interpersonal, Structural and Political; Regions and Cultures; Critical Politics and Jurisprudence; Gender and Orientations: Consequences and Implications; and Critical Education. This foreword attempts to identify the ways in which the Symposium contributions relate to the conference theme as well as how they further the development of themes and streams of programming begun in earlier LatCrit Conferences.

Keywords: LatCrit, critical locality, race, globalism, immigration, citizenship, ethnicity, cosmopolitanism, economics, interpersonal, structural, political, cultures, critical politics and jurisprudence, gender