Puzzlement of a déjà vu

Illuminaries of the global South

Bibliographic Data

ID3405142
AuthorsN Puwar (0000-0002-1652-5069, Goldsmiths University of London, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume68
Issue3
Pages540-556
Publication date2020-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0038026119890254
OpenAlexW2996161051
LanguageFR
Citations received29
References cited71

The act of decentring established Euro-North American sites and flows of knowledge as longstanding geopolitical anchors of epistemological authority presents déjà vu scenarios, involved in centre-staging processes. The very position of being a messenger from the 'North' of knowledge and theory from the 'South' can reproduce the same patterns the undertaking seeks to unsettle. The context in which academic performativity is shaped is integral to both the making and taking of space in intellectual circuits of production and circulation. This article considers how centre-staging in academia performatively involves particular features. As a case in point, the focus is on the centre-staging of Boaventura de Sousa Santos (epistemology of the South) and Raewyn Connell (Southern Theory), who have become globally known for insisting on bringing knowledge from the South to the North. The wider ecology of the global circuits of academia, as well as their own performative dramaturgy, constitutes points of observation. A self-enterprising ownership of big global conceptual programmes places them high in the decentring of knowledge. There is a leap frogging over former stocks of published academic knowledge, as well as a centre-staging of knowledge projects, whereby it is they who become the flag bearers of this enterprise. Within this process it is important to recognise who is illuminated. Bibliographic tracks become traced over, in the very ways in which fields are mapped in order to produce a point of intervention

Actor–network theory · Archaeology · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Focus (optics · Geopolitics · Linguistics · Order (exchange · Performative utterance · Performativity · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Space (punctuation) · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Gender Studies · Global Educational Policies and Reforms · History · Law · Philosophy · Social and Cultural Dynamics

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