Following the path of otherwise: subalternized subjects, academic writing and the political power of discomfort

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article draws on discomfort as an epistemological tool to rethink about how subalternized subjects have been positioned and can position themselves in relation to academic writing practices and academic spaces. The discussion is organized in four sections: in the first one, drawing on Black feminist thought, it is discussed how language has a role in experiences of being marginalized and feeling uncomfortable in these spaces and the ways in which these feelings have been theorized. In the second section, based on a personal account, I narrate my own journey of discomfort in the process of learning how to become a researcher in the field of applied linguistics, considering the practices of academic writing. In the third section, I review a few contemporary trends in Humanities, to evaluate their potential as alternatives to change the metapragmatics and the pragmatics of knowledge production systems and avoid their misrecognition effects on subaltern subjects. Finally, I consider how subalternized subjects can position themselves in relation to these systems, proposing a transhistoric and transtopical way of positioning that could be a path to avoid assimilation and opening up possibilities for new modes of producing knowledge.