Date of Award

2026-05-22

Degree Name

PhD Education for Social Justice

Dissertation Committee

Cecilia A. Valenzuela, PhD, Chair Zulema Reynoso, PhD, Member

Keywords

Chicanx Epistemology, Lowrider Culture, Epistemic Agency, Criminalization Of Knowledge, Pedagogies Of The Home, Research For Social Justice

Abstract

Lowriding culture has long been situated at the margins where state-sanctioned criminalization processes delegitimize the intellectual agency of lowriders, rendering their knowledge systems institutionally illegible. This dissertation argues that such epistemic invisibility denies lowriders the agency to define their own intellectual contributions, and it reclaims lowriding as a site of profound resourceful innovation. Grounded in Chicana feminist epistemologies, the study theorizes how nepantla—the process of navigating and living at the margins—works alongside rasquachismo, the working-class sensibility through which constraint becomes a site of knowledge production, to frame lowriding in Chicanx San Diego communities as an embodied tension where subversive, resourceful ways of knowing emerge. Utilizing pláticas as a decolonial methodology, alongside photo documentation, this research asks: (1) How do six San Diego-based Chicanx lowriders utilize the aesthetic and cultural sensibilities of lowriding to navigate their lived experiences? (2) What do pláticas offer them in narrating their lowriding practices as a form of knowledge production?

Findings reveal that lowriders create and sustain learning and teaching experiences that are intergenerational and draw from a collective brilliance of community-sourced innovations. Pláticas provided original lowriders, particularly those from the 1970s and 80s, the agency to share how their lowriding practices, from hydraulics to pinstriping, function as a visual curriculum of resilience and healing. Findings reveal that lowriders create and sustain learning and teaching experiences that are intergenerational and draw from a collective brilliance of community-sourced innovations. Pláticas provided original lowriders, particularly those from the 1970s and 80s, the agency to share how their lowriding practices, from hydraulics to pinstriping, function as a visual curriculum of resilience cultivated within the margins of deligitimacy and erasure.

While global markets increasingly co-opt lowriding as simply deviant, extracting it as a cultural commodity, this study reveals the garage and the boulevard as sites of specific, regional, and historical epistemic justice. By reframing lowriding as Chicanx epistemology these findings assert that aesthetic expression is an essential tool for decolonial healing and community justice.

Document Type

Dissertation: Open Access

Department

Learning and Teaching

Download

Share

COinS