Theorizing the palimpsest as a tool of critical spatial inquiry for unruly Latinidades

This article advances the palimpsest as a tool for analyzing the multiplicitous, layered, and relational becomings of Latinidades. Contributing to scholarship about unruly Latinidades that pushes back against marginalization, oppression, and erasure, the palimpsest offers a spatial lens to this work. Drawing on research vignettes, media documents, and cultural texts about Latinx-driven demographic change in the US South, we show how critical spatial thinking adds insights to discussions about the construction, contingency, and complexity of Latinidades. As educational scholars, we use an interdisciplinary approach to contend that the palimpsest provides a heuristic to intertwine Black, Latinx, and Indigenous geographic thought with the often invisibilized layers of spatial narratives that entangle with and unravel bounded notions of Latinx identities and places. This critical spatial lens pushes back against linear, assimilationist, and fragmented logics that tend to dominate much education scholarship.