Conscientization from Within lo Cotidiano : Expanding the Work of Ada María Isasi-Díaz

Lo Cotidiano

As an analytical category, lo cotidiano first emerged within feminist critical theory in the 1960s and 1970s in Eastern Europe and Latin America, areas that faced varying forms of ideological totalitarianism. Latina feminist theologian María Pilar Aquino (1999: 38) notes that the aim of feminist critical theory during this period was ‘the reinvention of the ethical and political foundations of true democracy in social life.’ Toward this end, feminist theorists turned to the category of lo cotidiano – or daily living – to expose problematic social hierarchies, such as patriarchy, that pervade people’s daily living. Scholars like Agnes Heller, Teresita de Barbieri, Julieta Kirkwood, and Ana Sojo deployed lo cotidiano to highlight those aspects of daily life that have been passed over by androcentric theories, including questions of sexuality, culture, desire, and aesthetics.

From early on in her career Isasi-Díaz attempts to validate women’s religious insights as they emerge within lo cotidiano. In her earliest work, Hispanic Women: Prophetic Voice in the Church (1988), which she co-authored with Yolanda Tarango, Isasi-Díaz utilizes an ethnographic and narrative approach. This book was groundbreaking in that it was one of the first to give direct voice to the theological wisdom of grassroots Hispanic women. ² Over time, Isasi-Díaz began to look more closely at the theoretical significance of lo cotidiano. As her later work makes clear, she understands lo cotidiano in terms of both a ‘what’ and a ‘how.’ As a ‘what,’ lo cotidiano serves as a descriptive category of experience; as a ‘how,’ it sheds light on the epistemology of everyday thinking.

As a descriptive category, lo cotidiano ‘constitutes the immediate space of our lives, the first horizon in which we have our experiences, experiences that in turn are constitute elements of our reality’ (Isasi-Díaz, 2004c: 95). In saying this, Isasi-Díaz is interested in exploring experience in all of its many layers, nuances, and contradictions. Her empiricism is what I would describe as a ‘rich empiricism,’ for lo cotidiano is meant to cover all that experience has to offer, from its smallest details to its felt qualities to its latent possibilities. In this regard, I could imagine Isasi-Díaz finding much resonance with William James’s A Pluralistic Universe or John Dewey’s Art as Experience. For Isasi-Díaz, as for these pragmatists, experience is heterogeneous and messy; it is both actual and ideal.

Like many Latin American and Latina feminists before her, Isasi-Díaz takes this position a step further, arguing that everyday living is always intimately connected to larger structures of thought and power. While largely sympathetic to the project of Latin American liberation theology, Latin American and Latina feminist theologians have lodged two important critiques against Latin American theology, especially in its early years. First, they point out the obvious: early Latin American liberation theology (which, at the professional level, was mostly generated by male clerics) sidestepped questions of gender. Whereas early Latin American liberation theology does take as a central point of departure the poor and oppressed, it gives little to no attention to the concrete realities of Latin American women and the way they are triply oppressed by virtue of not only their economic status and race (traits common to many Latin American men), but also their gender. Second, and perhaps even more significantly, Latin American feminists point out that liberation theology tended to show a preference for structural forms of analysis at the expense of looking at the dynamics of everyday life. As Brazilian feminist theologian Ivone Gebara (1999: 45) puts it,

Despite the unquestionable value of [the work of Latin American liberation theologians], these authors understood history in terms of the mechanistic structure that prevailed in the science of their day. So although liberation theology did move beyond classical and medieval epistemology, it ended up using a modern epistemology that is still somewhat mechanistic … In fact, liberation theology did not in reality propose a new epistemology.

For feminists, a new epistemology demands that structural analysis be intimately tied to the realities of lo cotidiano. So long as lo cotidiano is ignored, processes of liberation will never gain a real foothold.

Significantly, it is for this very reason that Isasi-Díaz (2004c: 94) pens one of her most important essays on lo cotidiano. Writing in 2002, she argues that the previous four decades have evinced ‘little change in structures of oppression.’ ‘Structural changes have not come about or lasted,’ she explains, because ‘structural change has not been seen as integrally related to lo cotidiano.’

Isasi-Díaz’s ‘Conscientized Cotidiano’

It is in this aforementioned 2002 article ‘Lo Cotidiano: Everyday Struggles in Hispanas/Latinas’ Lives’ (which was later included as a chapter in her 2004 book, La Lucha Continues: Mujerista Theology) that Isasi-Díaz (2004c: 94) introduces the idea of a ‘conscientized cotidiano.’ She writes:

[Lo cotidiano] has to do with the practices and beliefs that we have inherited, with our habitual judgments, including the tactics we use to deal with the everyday. However, by lo cotidiano we do not refer to the a-critical reproduction or repetition of all that we have been taught or to which we have become habituated. On the contrary, we understand by lo cotidiano that which is reproduced or repeated consciously by the majority of people in the world as part of their struggles for survival and liberation. This is why this conscientized cotidiano carries with it subversive elements that can help us to question the reality in which we live.

In this passage, Isasi-Díaz approaches lo cotidiano as an epistemological category: her goal, it seems, is to call our attention to the ways in which lo cotidiano may function as a critical mode of thought. Although she begins with a discussion of lo cotidiano as a type of practical reason and habitual judgment, she underscores the fact that, at its best, lo cotidiano does not speak to just any type of practical reason. Rather, it refers to a practical reason that is thoroughly critical in that it is a ‘conscious’ practice undertaken by people in ‘their struggles for survival and liberation.’ Here, we clearly hear echoes of the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire (1992).

I find Isasi-Díaz’s move toward the idea of a ‘conscientized cotidiano’ quite significant, since it attempts to take seriously the liberating potential of everyday epistemologies. Perhaps moreso than any other category within US Latino/a theology, a ‘conscientized cotidiano’ explicitly connects the two types of contextual theologies that Shreiter and others have identified – liberationist and ethnographic. This being said, Isasi-Díaz leaves this idea largely underdeveloped. Furthermore, when describing a conscientized cotidiano and lo cotidiano, Isasi-Díaz has a tendency to speak of both as active subjects. As she phrases it (Isasi-Díaz, 2004c: 95; 2011: 49; 2004: 100), a conscientized cotidiano ‘carries with it subversive elements;’ lo cotidiano ‘has an extremely important role in our attempt to create an alternative symbolic order;’ lo cotidiano ‘plays a key role in [the] whole process’ of ‘apprehending and facing up to reality.’ While this style of writing allows her to speak of what lo cotidiano does, it elides the question of how a conscientized cotidiano functions and works. Along these lines, a more fundamental set of questions would be: How do grassroots Latinas and Latinos come to entertain subversive positions from within lo cotidiano? How do people construct an alternative symbolic order out of their experience of lo cotidiano? And how can we apprehend and face up to reality in ways that are more in tune with the realities of lo cotidiano?

One helpful resource in answering these questions is the work of Hungarian philosopher Agnes Heller, who was one of the first theorists to write about ‘the everyday’ as an analytical category and who has proven to be a major influence on Latin American and US Latina feminists. As I see it, Heller’s discussion of everyday knowing as a form of reflective judgment can help to deepen our understanding of a conscientized cotidiano.

In Everyday Life, one of her most important works first published in Hungary in 1970 and translated into English in 1984, Heller reflects on the dynamics of knowing. First, she establishes (1984: 195) how perception, feeling, and thinking, while separable in theory, ‘form an indissoluble unity’ in practice and in everyday life. As she argues, we cannot engage one of these faculties in any meaningful way without the assistance of the others. Heller observes (1984: 195), for example, that there is no such thing as ‘pure’ perception, save ‘certain extreme cases of no great significance,’ such as the perception of a sudden strong light. Rather, in most cases, ‘our perception is ordered by conceptual schemata: our way of perceiving is socially performed.’ In saying this, Heller is underscoring the fact that we are creatures of culture. Our perception is guided by the knowledge we have taken over from previous generations. By the same token, perceptions and knowledge are shot through with feelings. ‘Can we possibly separate perception from feeling when we sink into a warm bath, or see a beautiful colour?,’ asks Heller (1984: 196–97). In a similar way, knowledge and intelligence are shaped by emotion. Heller (1984: 196) affirms the role of emotion in deepening our knowing when she notes: ‘The lover sees more in the face of his beloved than the casual onlooker.’

In much the same way, Isasi-Díaz (2004a: 166) underscores emotion and desire as a starting point for knowledge. She notes, for example, that desire is ‘a way of reaching out for what we believe is good for us. ³ Desire also makes it possible for us to ‘break loose from oppression in order to resist, oppose, and transform,’ which, in turn, allows us to imagine differently. As Isasi-Díaz (2004: 167) makes clear, this ‘imagining differently is part of the process of conscientization that anchors our struggles to be self-defining, to become subjects of our own history, to struggle to make our utopian vision a reality. On these questions of emotion, desire, and imagination, Isasi-Díaz and Heller share insights, which, indeed, continue to be validated by recent scholarship (Shallice and Cooper, 2011; Johnson, 2007) in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy.

Where Heller may begin to deepen Isasi-Díaz’s understanding of a conscientized cotidiano is in Heller’s second major insight, which is that all significant knowledge – whether everyday or abstract – comes about through an encounter with a problematic situation. ‘First and foremost,’ Heller (1984: 197) writes, ‘everyday thinking is thinking concerned with solving the problems of the “person” in his environment.’ So long as there is no ‘felt difficulty,’ no problem that presents itself to us, our thinking will proceed in a repetitive and habitual way. Though this type of thought may take the form of ‘mere’ habit and custom, habitual thought, it should be pointed out, may also serve as a useful form of practical reason, folk wisdom being a point in case. Thus, the sensus fidelium, or ‘sense of the faithful’, as described by Orlando Espín (1997), would count as a significant form of practical reason since its truth can be communally verified over multiple generations. It is not ‘mere’ habit and custom, but rather, a form of habit and custom that carries with it its own forms of truth testing.

Isasi-Díaz (2004c: 95) is attentive to both of these valences of habit and custom. On the one hand, she warns against appropriations of mere habit and custom, which often result in the ‘a-critical reproduction or repetition of all that we have been taught.’ On the other hand, she wants to uphold a more intelligent and critical use of habit and custom as valuable forms of practical reason. However, the question that arises is: How does one get from one to the other?

As I have already indicated, it helps to keep in mind that all forms of reflective thought – whether everyday or more abstract – emerge out of the encounter of problematic situations. Isasi-Díaz (2011: 48) seems to recognize as much when she makes a passing remark about lo cotidiano as a ‘problematized daily reality.’ But it is precisely at this juncture that we could dig deeper. When we do, we find that problematic situations give rise to doubt, and it is doubt that fuels an alternative way of approaching reality.

Heller (1984: 208) writes about doubt in her discussion of ‘scepsis.’ Scepsis is ‘what we might call a “local” suspension of belief in relation to a certain event, an item of information, a person, a solution, an expectation.’ Heller makes clear that scepsis is not the same thing as skepticism, since the latter is a way of life, a ‘mode of behaviour which sets out principally to suspend not a specific area of belief but belief, the ‘feeling of certainty’ in general.’ Whereas scepsis is an everyday attitude, skepticism is akin to a philosophical attitude, coupled to a total outlook on life, or Weltanschauung.

Heller (1984: 208) sheds light on the significance of scepsis to our everyday lives. She writes:

The importance of the part played by scepsis, by the suspension of the feeling of certainty, in our daily lives, should be clear to everyone. I believe in someone – as a friend, as a partner, etc. – until a piece of evidence comes my way, suggesting that my belief is not well-founded: I then suspend my belief and try to find certainty, that is, to reinforce my knowledge either way. I am told conflicting stories about life in a foreign country – so I suspend belief in my sources till one or another is proved right, etc. Scepsis can indeed be generalized in daily life.

Heller’s understanding of scepsis echoes a central tenet of pragmatism, which is that ‘real doubt’ fuels inquiry. Real doubt is not doubting for the sake of doubting, as is the case with Cartesian skepticism, but rather, it is doubting with an express purpose and reason, forged when our epistemic encounter with experience no longer seems ‘well-founded,’ as Heller would say. As C.S. Peirce (1966: 99), the father of US pragmatism, points out, ‘Doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief.’ Moreover, this struggle to attain a sense of belief is, at its core, representative of inquiry itself.

On my reading, Isasi-Díaz’s articulation of a conscientized cotidiano could be deepened by taking account of the way in which critical forms of everyday knowing always arise from within problematic situations and through an encounter with doubt.

Expanding a ‘Conscientized Cotidiano’

In combining the idea of conscientization with lo cotidiano, Isasi-Díaz underscores the fact that everyday knowing has the potential to be a critical form of knowledge. She explicitly states (2004c: 95), for example, that ‘the majority of people in the world’ consciously and critically engage lo cotidiano ‘as part of their struggles for survival and liberation.’ Elsewhere, Isasi-Díaz (2004c: 97) observes that ‘All those who work with grassroots people marvel at the way they use every possible minute and how they manage to bring something out of nothing.’ For Isasi-Díaz, the majority of the world’s poor people know how to navigate their precarious lot in life and they do so in a way that affirms their dignity, even in the face of tremendous struggles. Following Gramsci, she writes (2004c: 95) that the poor and oppressed are ‘organic intellectuals.’ They are ‘admirably capable of understanding and explaining their experiences and beliefs.’

As I have argued, however, Isasi-Díaz never fully explains how this everyday critical epistemology works. To be sure, on more than one occasion she does borrow from Ignacio Ellacuría’s threefold understanding of knowledge as hacerse cargo de la realidad (‘realizing the weight of reality’), cargar con la realidad (‘shouldering the weight of reality’), and encargarse de la realidad (‘taking charge of the weight of reality’). Ellacuría’s discussion of epistemology, and how it intersects with questions of ethics, is no doubt a valuable resource. But even here, one is left wondering how these three dimensions of our knowing intersect with lo cotidiano specifically. Put negatively, how does knowledge that is rooted in lo cotidiano avoid what Isasi-Díaz (2004c: 95) describes as ‘the a-critical reproduction or repetition of all that we have been taught or to which we have become habituated’? Put positively, How can everyday custom and habit prove critical and reflective?

As we have already seen, reframing the question in terms of a problematic situation and the function of doubt therein marks one important step forward. A second major consideration, I would add, has to do with how one theorizes the relation between abstract forms of thinking and everyday forms of thinking.

As I read her, Isasi-Díaz (2004c: 97) seems at times to set up a divide between knowledge as a form of ‘common sense,’ on the one hand, and knowledge as a more abstract and deductive endeavor, on the other. She hints at such a split when she writes, first, that ‘Grassroots Hispanas/Latinas have a great capacity to pay attention to and to deal with a multitude of things at the same time … Grassroots Hispanas/Latinas have the ability to see the connections that exist among things, elements, and people who are very different.’ Having established this point, she then goes on to say, however, that grassroots Latinas ‘would dull this ability if they were more methodical and dealt with things in a deductive and systematic way.’

I am not quite convinced by this distinction. To be sure, there is no doubt a qualitative difference here between intuitive and deductive forms of thinking. For example, intuiting or sensing danger before it presents itself exercises a style of knowing that is quite distinct from more methodical forms of testing for danger (automobile crash tests, which are highly controlled, would be a point in case). This being said, I have learned from pragmatism that whereas there is a qualitative difference between these kinds of knowing, there is no categorical difference. The same general process of knowing is operative in both situations.

To help underscore this point, it might be helpful to turn to two interpretations of John Dewey’s pragmatic theory of inquiry. In his influential 1910 work, How We Think, Dewey identifies five ‘logically distinct steps’ of inquiry: 1) a felt difficulty (which, we could add, gives rise to doubt); 2) the location and definition of this difficulty (the further concretization of this doubt); 3) the suggestion of a possible solution to the problem; 4) reasoned consideration of the proposed suggestion; and 5) further observation and experiment leading to the acceptance and belief, or the rejection and disbelief, of the proposed solution. Presented as such, these steps may no doubt sound a bit mechanical and dry.

If seen solely in this light, it would seem that Dewey would have a lot to say about how we deal with things in a ‘methodical, deductive, and systematic way’ (as Isasi-Díaz would put it) but very little to say about the kind of intuitive knowing that emerges out of lo cotidiano. Fortunately, however, over the last couple of decades Dewey scholars (such as Alexander, 1987; Fesmire, 2003; Fishman and McCarthy, 2007; Garrison, 1997; and Johnson, 1993) have done much to retrieve a more intuitive, aesthetic, and passionate side of Dewey’s theory of inquiry. They have reframed Dewey’s theory of inquiry in light of his ruminations on the rich reality of the lifeworld, incorporating insights from his theory of aesthetics and theory of education. What we get from these scholars, I would argue, is a new appreciation for what knowing looks like from the perspective of lo cotidiano. From this new scholarship on Dewey, we gain a richer picture of Dewey’s theory of inquiry, whereby the technical-sounding steps in How We Think can be re-infused with elements of desire, eros, passion, and creative imagination – the very lifeblood of lo cotidiano. Thus, in this richer reading of Dewey, knowledge – at all levels, whether abstract or intuitive – demands that we 1) take in and perceive a felt difficulty, 2) define and express it, 3) creatively imagine and suggest a solution, 4) artfully deliberate and reason over this proposed solution, and 5) skillfully act and experiment upon our best reasoning.

To bring the argument back to Isasi-Díaz, I think that it would be more appropriate to say that not only can Latinas practice a kind of creative and intuitive common sense knowledge that helps them to navigate the demands of ‘a multitude of things at the same time’ but also that they can engage this reality in a more ‘methodical, deductive, and systematic way.’ The difference here is one of degree, not of kind. After all, intuitive common sense knowledge already implies a theoretical engagement with what Ernst Bloch calls ‘anticipatory thinking’ or what John Dewey refers to as ‘ends-in-view.’ In both cases, and in the words of Heller (1984: 198), thinking is always ‘directed towards a future object and towards action likely to bring this object about.’ Although the epistemology of lo cotidiano may seem somewhat self-evident and ‘given’ as it unfolds in real time, as an epistemic process, it actually involves a number of emerging processes (which, as we have seen, includes perceiving a felt difficulty, working through one’s doubt, weighing one’s options, and forging a new way forward). Furthermore, the more deliberative one’s engagement with lo cotidiano becomes, the more it will take on the character of ‘methodical, deductive, and systematic’ analysis. In many ways, Isasi-Díaz’s own scholarly trajectory is indicative of this relative shift between honoring the practical activity of lo cotidiano (as seen in her early ethnographic work) and critically assessing it in a more deductive and systematic manner (as seen in her later, more theoretical meditations on the subject).

To put the matter another way, illuminating the connection between intuitive knowledge and more abstract and deductive forms of knowledge need not be seen as a betrayal or lessening of the uniqueness of the epistemology of lo cotidiano. Rather, making this connection may be seen as a consistent application of method. If lo cotidiano is indeed embedded in and integrally related to larger social structures, then it should follow that forms of knowledge associated with each are also integrally related. Although analytically distinct, intuition and abstract thinking are cut from the same epistemological cloth.

Expanding Philosophy: Isasi-Díaz on Religion and Gender

I have argued that Isasi-Díaz’s articulation of a conscientized cotidiano could be enhanced by certain insights gleaned from pragmatic theories of knowledge, such as those articulated by Agnes Heller and John Dewey. In making this claim, however, I would be remiss were I not to add that Isasi-Díaz’s conception of a conscientized cotidiano has much to offer both of these thinkers. Whereas Heller and Dewey are, at best, ambivalent about the redeeming aspects of religion, Isasi-Díaz appreciates the ways in which lo cotidiano may productively intersect with religion as well as with questions of gender.

Heller’s attitude toward religion is mixed. On the one hand, Heller (1984: 188) recognizes that ‘[s]tructurally, religious thinking is akin to everyday thinking.’ She admits that ‘[w]here a corpus of religious knowledge has already crystallized, such elements of it as are indispensable for efficient everyday knowledge are propagated in the everyday knowledge of the adult segment in any one generation, thence to be transmitted to the successor generation.’ One could easily connect what Heller says here to what US Latina/o theologians generally refer to as popular religion. Indeed, Latina/o popular religion may represent a ‘corpus of religious knowledge’ that is ‘indispensable for efficient everyday knowledge’ and that is passed down from one generation to the next. The problem, however, is that Heller gives scant analysis to the implications of such a grassroots type of knowledge. Instead, she is quick to focus on how everyday religious knowledge is taken over by a priestly class. Following Max Weber, she has a tendency to speak of religion in terms of institutionalization and bureaucratization. Heller (1984: 188-89) writes:

[T]he institutionalized representatives of the religion in question (priests, soothsayers, the theocratic establishment, etc.) keep on “chipping in” and preventing the transmission of this knowledge from following its natural path: otherwise, as a result of the infusion of local idiom and particularistic knowledge, the corpus of knowledge as transmitted would gradually drift further and further from the original dogmatic system. This constant process of intervention and rectification aimed at “restoration” of the original doctrinal body, is particularly striking in the case of the great world religions.

I don’t disagree with Heller’s position here, but I do find it incomplete. What would the transmission of local and particularistic (religious) knowledge look like were it to follow it’s ‘natural path’? It seems to me that one of the major contributions of US Latino/a theology is that it takes this question quite seriously.

Like Heller, John Dewey also tends to reduce religion to a question of its institutional strictures. Although Dewey does offer quite significant insights into a type of religious knowledge and outlook that grows organically out of our everyday experience (which Dewey labels ‘the religious’), he remains quite unimaginative when assessing how this type of knowledge can intersect with institutional religion. In fact, he tends to hold a sharp distinction between the two. In some ways, Dewey seems to betray his own philosophical commitment to continuity – indeed, a touchstone of his thought at large – when dealing with questions of religion.

Isasi-Díaz, on the other hand, understands that lo cotidiano and religion – and, we could add, gender (a topic that is even less present in the work of Heller and Dewey) – all operate on the same plane, affecting one another in both positive and negative ways. This is no doubt one of the great strengths of Isasi-Díaz’s thought, her ability to keep all three of these considerations in play at the same time.

Along these lines, there is perhaps no better way to close than with one of Isasi-Díaz’s own stories. ⁴ In ‘La Lucha: My Story,’ she recounts how a friend of hers in the Women’s Ordination Conference called her one day and said that she needed a break, that she felt burned out. ‘What she said impacted me greatly,’ writes Isasi-Díaz. In fact, she adds, it ‘scared me out of my wits!’ Although Isasi-Díaz herself did not feel exhaustion at that point in time, she observes that ‘I did not want to become so drained that I had to step away from my commitment to the women’s movement.’ She feared that her involvement with efforts to ordain women would leave her as psychologically spent as her friend. Then, in what I find to be one of her most telling and moving autobiographical passages (2004b: 17–18), she writes:

One day, as I drove home from work in the middle of a snowstorm, three things became clear for me. First of all, I realized that sexism was a category of oppression and that it did not exist from poverty but compounded it and vice-versa … Second, as I slowly inched ahead on slippery roads, I could hear my mother saying the words with which she always ended her letters to me: as long as God gives us the energy we need for the struggle, we will be all right. Mamá has always insisted we should not ask God to free us from struggling but rather we should thank God we have something to struggle for. What we need to do is ask God to give us fuerzas para la lucha, strength for the struggle. (Years later I would work on developing la lucha as a category of social analysis and as a theo-ethical category.) Third, the snow-covered windshield of my car became like a movie screen where I could see my next-door neighbor in Lima, a woman who lived in extreme poverty yet never lost her sense of dignity and purpose of life. I remember the steadiness of her struggle: day after day she dealt with the reality of the present and survived that day in order to be able to face the next. (That reflection has led me to develop the category of lo cotidiano as the main site for struggle, as the site that reveals oppression at the same time it illuminates the preferred future.) … From that day forward I have never been scared of burning out, often singing to myself, ‘I ain’t no ways tired. I’ve come too far from where I started from. Nobody told me the road would be easy.’ And, as to burning up, that is what life is all about, isn’t it? For me life is about being passionate for justice! That is what fulfills me; that is what gives me energy and creativity.

I am drawn to this passage for several reasons. First, it clearly underscores three of Isasi-Díaz’s central themes: gender (as seen in her discussion of sexism), religion (as connected to giving thanks to God for la lucha), and everyday living (as developed later in her articulation of lo cotidiano). One cannot fully appreciate the profundity of Isasi-Díaz’s thought without seeing how these three themes interconnect and overlap throughout her writings. Second, I believe that Isasi-Díaz had these insights and visions within the context of her own problematic situation and process of doubt: was she going to burn out like her friend? Her story provides insight into her own thought process, which took her from a situation of uneasiness to an outlook of resolute joy and hope. Third, I am drawn to the small but significant descriptions that she includes about the experience itself, namely, the fact that she had this realization while driving in ‘the middle of a snowstorm’ as she ‘slowly inched ahead on slippery roads’ and as the windshield of her car ‘became like a movie screen where I could see my next-door neighbor in Lima.’ These details no doubt reflect Isasi-Díaz’s own experience of lo cotidiano. If taken out of context, these details might seem mundane and insignificant. But when placed in the context of Isasi-Díaz’s life and commitments, the particularities of her story heighten what she argues all along: it is in the details of lo cotidiano that new forms of beauty and prophecy emerge. What she is sharing here is nothing less than a prophetic and mystical vision that emerges organically out of the daily ebb-and-flow of her own engaged, passionate, and beautiful life.