What's Next? Into a Third Decade of LatCrit Theory, Community, and Praxis (Afterword)

Abstract

In this multi-vocal Afterword, we reflect-personally and collectively to help chart renewed agendas toward and through a third decade of LatCrit theory, community, and praxis. This personal collective exercise illustrates and reconsiders the functions, guideposts, values, and postulates for our shared programmatic work a framework for our daily work as individuals and teams through our portfolio of projects, which in turn emerged as a "reflection and projection of LatCrit theory, community and praxis." These early anchors expressly encompassed (1) a call to recognize and accept the inevitable political nature of U.S. legal scholarship; (2) a concomitant call toward anti-subordination praxis to connect theory to action; (3) a commitment to build both intra-Latinx communities and inter-group coalitions; (4) a commitment to find commonalities while respecting difference; (5) a recognition of past critical outsider scholarship in new applications; (6) a commitment to ongoing self-critique, individually and collectively; and (7) a recognition of specificity and diversity in constructing LatCrit theory, praxis, and community. These early guiding commitments were rooted in substantive values, and accompanied by working postulates, that we likewise made explicit to help anchor our programmatic initiatives, and our mutual aspirations, over time and its exigencies.

Keywords: latcrit, crt, critical race theory, critical legal theory, outsider jurisprudence