Presentation by Alison Phipps (University of Glasgow), presented at the Researching Multilingually at Borders symposium, 10 June 2015, Brussels, Université Libre de Bruxelles

1. ‘What does it mean to be languaged in
today’s world?’
A Human Ecological Perspective
Alison Phipps
University of Glasgow

2. Anti-Synthesis
Today’s World
Anthropocene
Royal Geological Society
2011

3. Language in the Anthropcene
“Extractivist attitude to
language – the fossil fuel
of rhetoric which we burn
in our universities”
(Michael Cronin –
yesterday)

4. Questions pointing to absence
“What does it mean to live
in communities?”
(New Scots project: 2013)
“What does it mean to be
languaged?”

5. Languaged
What
does it
mean?
To be
[…]
Languaged
In today’s
World.

6. To be languaged
Passive form
Enlanguaged
Porosity
(Irigarary) Human beings
are porous: open to air
and light.

7. What does it mean?
Open to diverse ecological
contexts of learning.
Open to pollution.
Open to colonisation.
Open to monopoly.
Open to militarisation.
(Brueggemann)

8. Today’s World
“Globalisation takes place only in capital
and data. All else is damage control.”
(Spivak 2013, p. 3)

9. Critical Effects: (Post)colonial
N’Gougi wa T’iongo
“Accept theft or die”

10. On the Postcolony: Mbembe
• “We should first remind
ourselves that, as a general
rule, the experience of the
Other, or the problem of the
“I” of others and of human
beings we perceive as foreign
to us, has almost always posed
virtually insurmountable
difficulties to the Western
philosophical and political
tradition.”

11. Butler: “Can we find
ethical and political ways
of objecting to forcible
and coercive
dispossession that do not
depend upon a
valorization of possessive
individualism?”

12. What are your languages?
My language is […]
I speak […]
I have […]
My English […]
Why are you learning [….]
Language Lobo? Language
Wrangles

13. Glossophobia
Critique
Excavate the ideological roots of
monolingualism (Gramling…)
….and multilingualism
Historicize
Mythologize
Poeticize/ aestheticize
Collectivize
Salvage ethnography
Decolonize (the University)

14. Theoretical & Critical Perspectives?
Does glossophobia produce
positive (individual)
psychological effects?
If so, happiness for whom?
To do what? At whose
expense?
1)Feminist, queer
2)Postcolonial

15. Lauren Berlant: Cruel Optimism
An incitement to inhabit and
track the affective
attachment to what we call
“the good life” which for
many is a bad life which
wears out the subjects, who
nonetheless find their
conditions of possibility
within it.

16. Sara Ahmed: The Promise of Happiness
“Can we rewrite the history of
happiness from the point of view of
the wretch? If we listen to those who
are cast as wretched, perhaps their
wretched-ness would no longer
belong to them. The sorrow of the
stranger might give us a different
angle on happiness not because it
teaches us what it is like must be like
to be a stranger, but because it might
estrange us from the very happiness
of the familiar”

17. Happiness work has a Political Economy
• Political economy: Happiness gets
distributed in all sorts of complicated
ways.
• “To be a good subject (good
language learner) is to be perceived
as a happiness-cause, as making
others happy. To be bad is thus to be
a killjoy.”
• Index certain forms as normative
which serve the unimpeded flow of
(linguistic) capital

18. Ahmed: The Killjoy
• “To killjoy, is to open a life, to
make room for life, to make room
for possibility, for chance.”
• If ethics is to preserve the
freedom to disagree, then ethics
cannot simply be about
affirmation, or for affirmation,
understood as good encounters.

19. “Estrangement” - Verfremdung
To the forces of monolingualism and
‘English-only’ happiness; to the
glossophobia of linguistic imperialism the
multilingual subject stands as a quixotic
figure.
The multilingual collective, is terrifying.
A killjoy. Saumoud
A condition requiring artistry. And
defiance.

20. Killing the Joy of Good English

21. Researching Multilingually:
• Killjoy methods;
• Taking the standpoint of
the ‘wretched’
• Languaged/ing under
Pain and Pressure.
• Troubling the cult of
English/monolingually
masked research.

22. What does it mean to be languaged in today’s
World?
• Working within demands for
Justice
• Decolonizing the University
• Addressing epistemic violence
(Pillay 2015)
• Attempting to think and act
from positions which do not
valorize individual possession
• Liberation theology;
Anthropology; Philosophy;
• Artistic

23. Epistemic Violence
“they came with the bible
and we had the land, they
told us to close our eyes.
We opened our eyes, and
we had the bible, but they
had the land”.

24. Africa is a Country
• “Because the university is
a place of authoritative
knowledge, certified
knowledge, it is at the
heart of epistemic
violence. It is where
authorized and legitimate
knowledge is cultivated,
preserved and protected
but also changed.” (Pillay)

25. “Deep language learning
and unconditional ethics
are […] out of joint with
this immensely powerful
brave new world-machine
“ (Spivak 2013) (26).

26. A human ecological language Perspective – with
Glenn Levine
● Context
● Complexity
● Capabilities
● Conflict
● Compassion
Responding to these creatively, reflexively and ethically defines
for us the characteristics required for a human ecological
language pedagogy.

27. Asserting Multilingualism in face of death /theft
• Nazmi Al Masri – TEFL model/ AFL
quality
• Employability/peace project
• Conflict and Compassion are
central concerns
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnxZ_tWPOT0

28. Presenting IUG as a multilingual campus:
– an allied position in conflict
.1‫اللغة‬‫العربية‬
2. English
.3‫עברית‬
4. Braille
5. Arabic sign language
6. Art, Languages & technology
designing gifts & furniture by
engineers & physically impaired
people (Mosaic Works, Arabesque
work)

29. Nau mai Haere Mai
Karakia
Whakawhanaungatanga
Whakapapa o te ao Māori
-Whakarongo (Visual-kite-ā-karu)
-Titiro (Audio-Rongo-ā-taringa)
-Kōrero (Kinaesthetic-Mahi-ā-tinana)
¨

30. Māori - Mihi (Decolonising Methodologies)
Te Whakapapa o Alison
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