Unnamed decolonialities: some thoughts on decoloniality and (English) language scholarship in the Philippines.

In Decoloniality and language scholarship – a critical intervention, Rambukwella and Zavala identify three emerging challenges in the ongoing theorization and application of the term 'decoloniality' in current language scholarship: the assertion of an alterity untouched by modernity, the creation of new binaries despite efforts to deconstruct them, and the decontextualization and depoliticization of decoloniality. In this response article, we look into how these challenges play out in the Philippine context. Examining our own engagements with decolonial thinking and practice in academic circles in the country with particular focus on the field of English language scholarship, we find the same problematic trends and tendencies, while also observing that there are specific iterations of these issues in Philippine academia and in contemporary decolonial campaigns initiated outside of the academe. It is important to note that while decolonial thinking and efforts are not new in Philippine academic conversations and in the popular imagination, it remains a new, or perhaps an under-studied or under-utilized, approach and practice in applied/sociolinguistic scholarship, especially as it concerns English. With this broad comparison in mind, our response to the article is divided into three sections. In the first section, we provide a brief historicization of the trajectory of decolonial thinking in the academe after the second world war, right after the Philippines was granted independence by the United States in 1946. In the second section, we focus on English language scholarship and trace the developments in the field, underscoring what we have observed as a movement from a postcolonial position towards a path that offers more possibilities for decolonization. In the third and final section, we end with the idea of wariness as a useful emotion and disposition with which to make sense of the present decolonial moment that we are experiencing. This wariness has allowed us to, first, examine our own fraught position as English teachers and scholars and the tensions this creates in our attempts at decolonizing English Studies in the country; and second, recognize possibilities of decolonial and decolonizing thought, acts, and practices that are not so named but do the work of such. We call these unnamed decolonialities. Overall, we believe that the decolonial project in the field of English language scholarship can only be an ever-continuing and ever-evolving one as the project of disrupting existing and emerging power structures associated with the teaching and study of English in the Philippines in the hope of replacing them with more equitable and socially just ones never ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]