Recontextualising race, politics and inequality in transnational knowledge circulation: Biographical resignifications

Abstract

This article examines shifts in the meaning and relevance of institutionalised knowledge about social inequalities as it circulates globally. In so doing, it contributes to research critiquing an unequal geopolitics of knowledge that grants greatest authority to theories produced in the global north (Connell, 2007; Mignolo, 2003). I discuss the resignification of globally circulating texts in terms of their entextualisation and reflect on my own role in this process through an auto-ethnographic narrative. I focus on two widely circulating texts that explicitly deal with questions of social power and globalisation: ‘On the cunning of imperialist reason’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1999) and ‘A pedagogy of multiliteracies’ (The New London Group, 1996). Examination of their re-entextualisation in Brazil points to the need to bring to bear additional epistemological resources attuned to social and political struggles in order to address the racial inequalities that have come to be at the forefront of my own scholarly concerns. The article concludes by suggesting ways of engaging with globally circulating knowledge through the incorporation of knowledge produced by local struggles and emerging from everyday categories, giving the example of possible uses of the Brazilian concept of gambiarra.

Transnational identity: The struggles of being and becoming a Japanese female professor in a neo-kokusaika phase of Japan

“…Previously, as a PhD student situated in the U.S., I strategically and willingly joined in the "sexy," scholarly trend of critiquing the intent of kokusaika, without questioning the very tradition of critique culture that I had perhaps been socialized into while being trained in the United States. A similar example has been raised in this Special Issue by Joel Windle (2020), that the Western tradition of academic practice is often taken for granted while when implementing those theories (produced in the global north) into practice, a locally situated interpretation and felt experiences must be applied. What is more, I had claimed my "binary" insider/outsider positionality maintaining affiliations to both sides and believed that the effects of kokusaika were imminent and real to me.…”

Emotion labor and affect in transnational encounters: Insights from Western-trained TESOL professionals in Saudi Arabia

“…His painful adaption to the teaching situation in his Saudi university is another display of emotion(al) labor. It corresponds to the insider–outsider, local–global, Global North–Global South emotion(al) discourses which are felt, consumed, resented, encountered, and put up with by many transnationally trained scholars/academics/teachers discussed in this Special Issue (see Karakas, 2020; Nonaka, 2020; Phan and Mohamad, 2020; Phung, 2020; Windle, 2020).…”

The making and transforming of a transnational in dialog: Confronting dichotomous thinking in knowledge production, identity formation, and pedagogy

“…What we would like to argue further here is that these emotions and experiences as expressed by transnational returnees result from the very dichotomous representation and projection of the global/transnational versus the local/home that they themselves also entertain and circulate in their own identification, research, pedagogy, and teaching (also cf. Alshaikhi and Phan, 2020;Kelley, 2020;Nonaka, 2020;and Windle, 2020 (all this Special Issue)).…”