Taking Responsibility for Marginalized Epistemologies: A Case for Interepistemic Synergy

• In Event: Lived Racial Experiences and Pedagogies of Freedom and Care

Abstract

It is not an accident that at academic conferences, including those dubbed as international, there is a scarcity of nonwestern knowledge systems for analysis. Leading academic journals seldom feature articles or publications that rely on nonwestern epistemic systems to analyze data. Thus, the global south is cast as producing data, but the western/westernized worlds produce the analytical tools. To what extend are we complicit in sustaining epistemic marginalization? Through an interepistemic synergy approach, I employ indexicality and interactional sociolinguistics on one hand and Afrocentric methodology on the other in analyzing data produced in a grades 9/5 literacy collaboration in Nairobi, Kenya. Overall, I make a case for epistemic diversity to enhance scholarly insights on language and literacy.

Author

• David Bwire, The College of New Jersey