Undoing Citation: Reflections on institutional bias towards West-produced knowledge
Written by Pranjali Das and Anika Anjum, January 2019
Our journey in ‘western’ academic institutions, so far, has been long, arduous, and tiring. We have increasingly come to realise that the validation of our academic work has to be sought from the dominant literature produced in the ‘West’ known as the ‘canon’. We do not intend to discredit the richness of this literature; rather, we believe the hegemony and validity of this canon are rarely questioned—particularly when scholars from the Global South are expected to refer to them in contexts where the canon bears little relevance.
Further, any scholarly work produced in geopolitical locations beyond this Western/Euro-US/Global North gets catalogued as ‘regional knowledge’, reduced for specific thematic consumptions only. These practices lead to the (re)production of the universality of white, Western knowledge, which we find deeply problematic. To bring this to institutional attention, we proposed the radical approach in our Thesis-writing Workshop: to fully dispense with the West-/white-centric canon and to adopt a challenging practice of citation.
The citational practices and matrices of credibility adopted by academic institutions perpetuate the ‘superiority’ of West-produced knowledge. For instance, we are urged to develop theoretical frameworks through establishing connections with this canon. When we contest this, we are recommended to remove names like Foucault and Freud from their ‘person’, i.e. their identities as white, upper-class, European men. The suggestion that they, divorced of their spatial and temporal context, can be applied elsewhere also establishes their universal applicability. It is further implied that our academic credibility can only be earned by showing knowledge of the canon. As such, the extent to which we are allowed to question the relevance of the canon is by critiquing it, signalling knowledge of it. This is also a substantial engagement with the canon implying that our existence in academia can only be in conversation with them.
Certain disciplines in Social Sciences and Humanities do acknowledge this hegemony, but do not significantly address the problem. “‘Add Brown names and stir’” is considered an effective strategy, eschewing responsibility of inclusion by either claiming the existence of an impenetrable language barrier, or reducing their names to mere tokens.
The argument, often encountered, is that the scholarship produced in non-Euro-US space is available only in ‘regional’ or ‘vernacular’ languages, hence inaccessible to English-language academia. Firstly, the canon that we know today, comprising Foucault and Marx writing in their regional languages, had to be translated to English to be accessible to this very community. Secondly, this ignorant argument heavily disregards the colonial realities experienced by our countries that witnessed systematic attacks on vernacular institutions to establish the hegemonic order of the colonial tongue. This institutional ‘colonial hangover’ manifests itself in the fact that we write in English better than Bangla, to the extent that we would have struggled to articulate this op-ed solely in it.
Furthermore, the mere inclusion of Brown names in syllabi is often a consequence of tokenism, assigned to special sections of the reading list, without the possibility to engage adequately. These Brown names are usually academics situated in ‘western’ institutions, writing in a dialogue with the canon about issues back home. Rarely can we find a Brown name primarily affiliated with an institution located in the geopolitical context they are writing about. Such convenient inclusions reinforce the idea that only Brown names producing knowledge in the West—that too, engaging with this canon—merits inclusion in the syllabi. The effort to study works produced beyond Euro-US boundaries is limited, if not non-existent—while classroom discussions are generally co-opted, making the seminars often trail off topic.
Therefore, we believe, as academics, it is significant to reflect upon the origin of our knowledge—where do we gather our knowledge from, what biases inform it, how we respond to it, and what we treat as common knowledge. It might be more convenient to cite and critique the canon; however, it is important to go a step further to undo the institutional bias towards West-produced knowledge. Instead of dedicating a considerable amount of space invoking the canon, let us consider adopting the agenda of introducing authors from local institutions whose work might bear more relevance to our research.
