The ontological differences between wording and wordling the world

• Authors: Mika Carl , Andreotti Vanessa , Cooper Garrick , Cash Ahenakew , Silva Denise
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

We propose a distinction between two onto-metaphysical orientations: one that reduces being to discursive practices, which we call ‘wording the world’; and another that manifests being as co-constitutive of a worlded world, where language is one amongst other inter-woven entities, which we call ‘worlding the world’. Speaking from Indigenous and racialized loci of enunciation, in this article we do not aim to dialectically propose an antithesis to the theses of modernity-coloniality or decoloniality, but to highlight the co-constitution of things in the world by making an ontology that is currently invisible, noticeably absent. We start with a brief outline of a common and arguably unavoidable pattern in scholarship in decolonial studies that tends to conflate knowing and being, inadvertently reproducing the modern-colonial grammar of wording the world that it, dialectically, aims to delink from. We then present a Maori philosophy of language that grounds a completely different relationships between language, knowledge and being to those that can be imagined and experienced within the grammar of modernity. In the final section we explore the implications of this philosophy for the call of decolonizing discourse studies, offering some (im)practical suggestions, given the current context of intelligibility and affective investments in academic settings.

Keywords

EN

modernity;; coloniality;; Maori language;; Indigenous

• Publisher: Akademia Pedagogiki Specjalnej. Language and Society Research Committee
• Journal: Language, Discourse & Society
• Year: 2020
• Volume: 8 (1)
• Pages: 17-32

Dates

published

2020-36-30

Contributors

author

Mika Carl

author

Andreotti Vanessa

author

Cooper Garrick

author

Cash Ahenakew

author

Silva Denise

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Notes

EN