Resisting academic hegemonies in knowledge production and dissemination

Abstract

Global knowledge production is similar to colonialism in that the voices of scholars from the periphery (i.e., the global South) are more often than not subjected to linguistic and epistemic exclusion. Linguistic exclusion results from the hegemony of English as the language of international scholarship which places anyone not publishing in English at an immediate disadvantage. Epistemic exclusion takes many forms. The positions of privilege and power held by institutions of the global North, the intense competition to publish one’s research in international spaces, and the transformation of knowledge into a commodity subject to quantification by abstract metrics, have placed peripheral scholars in positions of vulnerability, exploitation and subjugation. In addition, the control exercised by so-called high impact publishers through a network of “academic buddies” on the dissemination of knowledge has made scholarly imperialism a very real threat to knowledge production in the global South. As a peripheral scholar, I argue that we have a responsibility to recognize and resist forces of academic hegemony. We need to question who has the right to produce ‘new’ knowledge in local spaces; whose voices are heard in the dissemination of knowledge; and whether equitable access to knowledge is available. It is only when these questions receive satisfactory answers that the responsibility of ethics and care can be ensured in knowledge production, and peripheral cultures, people and scholars can be safeguarded from exploitation and misrepresentation.