Rasifiering av kunskapsproduktion

Abstract

The central aim of this article is to examine intersectional processes of racialisation within the academic communities: racialisation of knowledge producers and their produced knowledge. We explore what kinds of knowledge productions and knowing subject positions are rendered (im)possible in everyday academic interactions. We use our racialised scholarly experiences as a methodological entry point to contextualise the navigations and negotiations of shifting and intersecting power relations. Our analytical reasoning is presented through several steps. First, we discuss how academic habitus and affiliations maintained in various formal and informal forums are based on established, racialised norms. Second, we discuss how the presence or absence of epistemic entitlement within different academic settings and communities is established through racialised hierarchies. Thus the physical, social, intellectual and emotional spaces that we inhabit create comfort zones for some and discomfort zones for others. Third, we argue how managing the existing accent ceiling becomes a mode for navigating the conditioning norms of whiteness. In our conclusions, we reflect on the passivity, silences as well as (mis)use of the vocabulary of anti-racism and intersectionality as a form of ‘white’ capital for shoring their privileges further rather than undoing it.