Main Article Content

Abstract

The notion of (anti) racism in applied linguistics has been feverishly accentuated and animated, making it the buzzword du jour in the field.  Drawing upon the insights generated mainly from postcolonial studies, applied linguists have become eager to resuscitate this notion, often implicitly averring that racism has long been insidiously penetrating in the field and surreptitiously operating under the so-called raciolinguistic ideologies. It is these ideologies that are alleged to perpetuate, and even to further the hegemony of White supremacy and empire, eventually giving rise to racial inequalities and racial hierarchies. The antiracism movement, it has been asserted, needs to be enacted. This article will argue that the fervent pronouncement of linguistic racism, and of antiracist movement in applied linguistics may amount to both political mystification and conceptual obfuscation of racial inequalities and racial hierarchies. Moreover, professing and even providing evidence of the existence of racism without accounting for the critiques of its intellectual basis, to which the idea of antiracism is affiliated and irrevocably rooted, is such an avant-garde endeavor that the notion masks the very fundamentals of humans as social and political beings. In the end, the article provides examples of how the so-called “racialized subjects” subvert their identities as a manifestation of doing infra politics.

Keywords

racism postcolonial studies raciolinguistic ideologies antiracism movement infra politics

Article Details

Author Biography

Setiono Sugiharto, Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia

Setiono Sugiharto is a Professor of English at Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia. His works have appeared in Applied Linguistics, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Journal of Philosophy of Education, International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, Journal of Multilcultural Discourses, TESOL Journal, The Journal of ASIA TEFL, The Routledge Handbook of Educational Linguistics, and Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies. His research focuses on language, politics and ideology, and the sociolinguistics of globalization
How to Cite
Sugiharto, S. (2022). Antiracist applied linguistics, Marxian utopian, and infra politics. JOALL (Journal of Applied Linguistics and Literature), 7(2), 311–320. https://doi.org/10.33369/joall.v7i2.21475

References

  1. Bakhtin, M.(1986). Speech Genres and other Late Essays. Trans. V. W. McGee. University of Texas Press.
  2. Bhattacharya, U., L. Jiang, & S. Canagarajah. (2020). Race, Representation, and Diversity in the American Association for Applied Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, 41(6), 999-1004 https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amz003.
  3. Canagarajah, S. (2004). Subversive Identities, Pedagogical Safe Houses, and Critical Learning. In B. Norton & K. Toohey (Eds.), Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning (pp. 116-137). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  4. Hutami, N.S. (2016). Teachers’ Mediun of Instruction and Attitudes towards English as a Medium of Instruction in the Classroom: A case study. Unpublished Master thesis.
  5. Krishna, S. (2009). Globalization and Postcolonialism: Hegemony and Resistance in the Twenty-first Century. Plymouth, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
  6. Kubota, R. (2015). Race and Language Learning in Multicultural Canada: Toward Critical Antiracism, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 36: 3–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2014.892497.
  7. Kubota, R. (2020). Confronting Epistemological Racism, Decolonizing Scholarly Knowledge: Race and Gender in Applied Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, 41(5), 712-732. https://doi:10.1093/applin/amz033.
  8. Kubota, R. & A. Lin, (Eds). (2009). Race, Culture, and Identity in Second Language Education: Exploring Critically Engaged Practice. New York: Routledge.
  9. Maher, J. (2000). Metroethnicities and Metrolanguages. In N. Coupland (Ed.), The Handbook of Applied Linguistics (pp. 575-591). New York: Wiley Blackwell.
  10. Motha, S. (2020). ‘Is an antiracist and decolonizing applied linguistics possible?,’ Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 40, 128–133. https:// doi:10.1017/S0267190520000100.
  11. Pennycook, A. (2000). English, Politics, Ideology: From Colonial Celebration to Postcolonial Performativity. In T. Ricento (Ed.), Ideology, Politics, and Language Policies: Focus on English (pp. 107-119). Amsterdam: John Benjamins,.
  12. Scott, J.C. (1990). Domination and the Art of Resistance. Yale: Yale University Press.