From Reification to La Facultad: Autotheory and the Transformation of Epistemic Privilege
Both Marxist standpoint theory, and decolonial epistemologies ground knowledge claims in embodied experience, particularly the experience of oppressed groups. Central to both traditions is the concept of epistemic privilege: the thesis that marginalized positions (the proletariat, women*, the colonized, the subaltern) provide unique access to aspects of social reality that remain invisible to dominant groups. Our article examines autotheory not as a tradition with clear genealogical lines but as a constellation of parallel epistemological practices emerging from various margins of dominant knowledge systems. We follow autotheory from Georg Lukács’s analysis of reification to postcolonial and decolonial frameworks, as articulated by Gloria Anzaldúa, arguing that queer-feminist Marxism serves as the crucial bridge between these traditions. Furthermore, we argue that epistemic privilege emerges from con-tradictions between oppressed groups’ normative self-understandings and the practices they are compelled to perform under systems of domination. This framework reveals how dominant epistemologies objectify oppressed groups by treating them instrumentally –as objects of study– while systematically denying their status as autonomous knowledge producers. Autotheory responds by reclaiming epistemic subjectivity without abandoning robust truth claims. This illuminates Anzaldúa’s concept of la facultadas the heightened perceptual capacity developed by those in-habiting borderlands, a survival epistemology born from navigating structural contradictions. Autotheory in Marxist, queer-feminist and decolonial registers contests objectification, theorizing how those positioned at capitalism’s, heteropatriarchy’s and colonialism’s margins might transform themselves and their worlds through practices of epistemic self-liberation.