Untangling the politics of (re) production of nonexistence in academic writing and publishing

Abstract

ABSTRACT A plethora of studies on the decentering and decolonializing knowledge construction and production in global academic writing and publishing has ineluctably cast important light on how Euro-Western-centric hegemonic knowledge is preserved and perpetuated in the academia, often leading to detrimental consequences for non-Anglophones researchers and writers. While laudable, the insights generated from such studies need to be further accentuated from another look – ‘the politics of production of nonexistence’ proposed initially by Boaventura de Sousa Santos. This article will first argue that undergirded this politics are the notions of Eurocentricism and metonymic reason. Then, using samples of some of the reviewers’ comments on the author’s own manuscripts, this article will untangle how the politics of the production of nonexistence has been perpetuated and even sustained in academic writing and publishing practices primarily through a mode of the monoculture of rigor of knowledge. In so doing, this study further expands, and hence enriches valuable findings derived from the previous studies on hegemonic knowledge decoloniality.