Whiteness and antiracist epistemology: for a rather critical applied linguistics

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to propose a critical reflection on the role of whiteness in the production of academic knowledge in Critical Applied Linguistics, in line with its horizon of social justice when dealing with social phenomena in which language as a sociosemiosis plays a fundamental role. Simultaneously decolonial (CURIEL, 2017) and intersectional (COLLINS, 1990), I defend its consequently antiracist drive, within counter-hegemonic struggles in Academia as the instantiation of the “white-cube” (KILOMBA, 2019) in order to make the area truly critical by the consolidation of an antiracist epistemology across the field. In this sense, I highlight the need to scrutinize whiteness as a set of social practices (CONCEIÇÃO, 2020), reflecting on racial performances (MELO, 2018) of critical whiteness (CARDOSO, 2017) in academia. Assuming the critical-reflexive character of the research itself (DE FINA, 2015), I emphasize the relevance of active listening and processes of self-listening, where there is the possibility of “hearing yourself listening” (SOUZA, 2011), in order to bypass the transparency of racist ideologies of whiteness performed discursively by white analysts in their silence which is performative of racism (BENTO, 2002). Turning the idea of social transformation to the field itself, I propose to think of “study” (HARNEY; MOTEN, 2013), a way to oppose knowledge production as an exponent of a colonial and colonized academic doing, thinking also of the affective performativity of “critical feeling” to articulate new ways of being, acting and feeling in/ with the world (AUTOR, 2017a).