A1 Journal article (refereed)
Imperial straightening devices in disciplinary choices of academic knowledge production (2021)

Cushing-Leubner, J., Engman, M. M., Ennser-Kananen, J., & Pettitt, N. (2021). Imperial straightening devices in disciplinary choices of academic knowledge production. Language, Culture and Society, 3(2), 201-230. https://doi.org/10.1075/lcs.21001.cus

JYU authors or editors

Publication details

All authors or editors: Cushing-Leubner, Jenna; Engman, Mel M.; Ennser-Kananen, Johanna; Pettitt, Nicole

Journal or series: Language, Culture and Society

ISSN: 2543-3164

eISSN: 2543-3156

Publication year: 2021

Publication date: 05/11/2021

Volume: 3

Issue number: 2

Pages range: 201-230

Publisher: John Benjamins

Publication country: Netherlands

Publication language: English

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/lcs.21001.cus

Publication open access: Not open

Publication channel open access:

Publication is parallel published (JYX): https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/79751

Abstract

In this piece, the authors question whether critical language research, in its complex collection of researcher choices, is possible beyond the discursive imaginary of critical academic scholarship. In other words, how do (allegedly) anticolonial efforts re-orient towards contribution to the imperial record? We present three vignettes, through which we grapple with the notion that researcher choice exists within the solipsism of academia. In doing so, we frame research and scholarship as a collection of choices, which we believe are better understood as a collection of fraught dilemmas. These dilemmas recognize that all academic scholarship production and its processes are birthed from, and serve, an epistemology of hierarchical social configurations, which serve empire maintenance and expansion. As critical language scholars who bring overlapping and distinct sociopolitical, geographic, and methodological positionalities, these autoethnographic narrative vignettes allow us to begin to see the landscape of researcher choice in the processes and projects of accumulating knowledge production. We identify imperial straightening devices for legitimization into the imperial archive and examine how they work to orient and re-orient critical language scholars towards the ideological and material production of the imperial archive.

Keywords: science publishing; knowledge production; legitimacy; power structures; cultural imperialism; decolonisation; critical theory; autoethnography

Free keywords: imperial archive; knowledge production; empire; critical language studies; straightening devices

Contributing organizations

Ministry reporting: Yes

Reporting Year: 2021

JUFO rating: 1