The Locus of Enunciation as a Way to Confront Epistemological Racism and Decolonize Scholarly Knowledge

Abstract

AbstractIn this forum article, we seek to contribute to the discussion initiated by Kubota (in the article entitled ‘Confronting epistemological racism, decolonizing scholarly knowledge: race and gender in applied linguistics’) on how to confront epistemological racism and to decolonize scholarly knowledge. We begin by endorsing Kubota’s three recommendations on how to achieve such goals, as we feel they are an important step to challenge the abyssal line that exists between knowledges that are considered scientific and universal and those that are regarded as peripheral. We then propose a fourth suggestion that we feel is important to complement what is put forth by Kubota: that scholars expose their own loci of enunciation (as well as that of others) in order to localize knowledges that are often taken as global and all-encompassing. By doing so, we argue, academics in applied linguistics and other fields are able to acknowledge the limits of their claims and to present their research in ways that can shift the universality of white Eurocentric knowledge.