Politics of the ‘South’: Discourses and praxis

Abstract

The introduction ‘Politics of the “South”’ refers simultaneously to the thematic focus of the special issue on political discourse studies in the southern hemisphere as well as a theoretical focus on the geopolitics of academic knowledge production and exchange. In the first part, concerns regarding the geopolitics of knowledge in the social sciences generally and linguistics particularly, and the problematic nature of the conceptual categories of the Global ‘South’ and ‘North’ are discussed. Following this, the concept of the ‘South’ as ‘an ex-centric locus of enunciation and praxis’ is advanced, and explained in terms of critical reflexivity and transformation of epistemic attitudes and practices. In the second part, five studies on political discourse analysis from selected areas in the Global South (Taiwan, Thailand, Colombia, Ghana, and Cuba and Mexico) are described through a southern lens. The aim is to highlight what these studies reveal about political discourses and practices in and of the South, as well as how they contribute to the wider knowledge ecology of critical political discourse studies.