Setiono Sugiharto / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 11 No. 4 (2024) 547 Online version available in : http://arbitrer.fib.unand.ac.id | 2339-1162 (Print) | 2550-1011 (Online) | JURNAL ARBITRER Submission Track A B S T R A C T Received: October 17, 2024 Final Revision: November 18, 2024 Accepted: November 24, 2024 Available Online: December 25, 2024 The fetish for disseminating knowledge through scholarly publication is tangible today with local scholars being heavily pressured to publish in both indexed local and international journals. While this intellectual endeavour is commendable for knowledge generation and dissemination, the very notion of knowledge is still strongly influenced by the Euro-and Western-centric orientation. This article problematizes the perpetuation of such knowledge especially in local academic publishing (i.e. Indonesia), and invites local scholars to mull over the possibility for thinking and acting otherwise, for seeking a radical alternative out of the existing alternatives, and for considering other ways of knowing and of being – that is to say, to embrace pluriversalim of knowledge through a space of “worlds and knowledges otherwise” (Escobar, 2007). In so doing, we can cultivate among local scholars another way of thinking – non-Euro-and non-Western-modes of thinking. The article will first examine the long- held scientific tradition in local academic writing and publishing practices. Then it discusses the lingering processes of intellectual hegemony in these practices. Finally, it offers another radical thought for creating a space of worlds and knowledges otherwise. Keywords scholarly publication, Euro-and Western-centric orientation, pluriversalim of knowledge, non-Euro-and Western-modes of thinking, worlds and knowledges otherwise Correspondence E-mail: setiono.sugiharto@atmajaya.ac.id Review Embracing Pluriversalism in Knowledge Production and Dissemination: Towards the Ethical Imperative to Listen to Worlds and Knowledges Otherwise Setiono Sugiharto Doctoral Program in Applied English Linguistics, Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia Under License of Creative Commons Attributioni-Non Commercial 4.0 International.DOI: https://doi.org/10.25077/ar.11.4.547-556.2024 I. INTRODUCTION In his book on A Geopolitics of Academic Writing, Canagarajah (2002) asserts that “the hegemony of Western academic journals is so complete that the superiority ascribed to them has been somewhat internalized by periphery scholars themselves” (p.19). This assertion rings true if we observe the gate-keeping publishing practices here in Indonesia. In these practices the established Western literate discourse conventions characterized by such infamous facets as impersonality, detachment, scientific and rational thinking indomitably prevail. It is important to note that these literate conventions have become a prime indicator for censoring manuscripts submitted to local journals. Too often, the rejection and acceptance of manuscripts are determined by this powerful indicator. For example, it is well established that local journals require authors to produce ideas and knowledge based on the criteria of objectivity which can be proven empirically and universally. Thus, accept the manuscript if it conforms to the standard conventions but reject it if does not (see for example Kubota 2020; Sugiharto, 2023). What we are facing here is the perpetuation of the spirit of scientism through the imposition of scientific discourse and scientific knowledge. This spirit of scientism and scientific knowledge can be traced their origin from the scientific rationality reminiscent of the Western modernity emanating from the Age of European Enlightenment or the Age of Reason (see Sousa Santos, 2018; de Sousa Santos & Meneses, 2020). There are, however, the dark side of its prevalence in the global academic practices. The peril of such notion of scientism has been astutely observed by Mogobe Ramose (2020) Setiono Sugiharto / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 11 No. 4 (2024) 548 as follow: Centuries of this dogmatism and scientism… continue to serve objectively the ideology of exclusion, oppression, and exploitation of the alienated “wretched of the earth” (p. 60). [quotes are in original]. The ideology exclusion and oppression is alive and kicking in gate-keeping practices like journal publication in both global and local context, which is further exacerbated by the domination of Eurocentric and exclusionary academic theory (Deumert & Makoni, 2023). Speaking from the context of Western’s epistemological domination Kubota (2020) further elucidates this ideology well when she avers that “The Eurocentrism of knowledge often excludes research focused on non-Euro-American issues produced in non- Euro-American locations or utilizing alternative orientations, especially when it is produced by non-Euro-American scholars of color” (p. 719). Decolonial perspectives of knowledge construction and production view the imposition of such an ideology as “an act of self-imposed colonization” (Min 2014, p. 196). What ensues from this practice of self-imposed colonialization is internal colonialism in practice. As Jospeh (2008) has remarked “When members of the “peripheral” population are themselves the ones opting for…the center language or promoting it for their countrymen, this merely means that they have been co-opted into linguicism themselves; they are internal colonialists” (p. 360). Countering this internal colonialism, we local scholars need to have a radical perspective of what constitutes ways of knowing and being in knowledge production and dissemination. This means we need to embrace pluriversal perspectives of knowledge through a space of “worlds and knowledges otherwise” (Escobar, 2007). In other words, what we need is another way of thinking – non-Euro-and non-Western-modes of thinking. In this article, I will first examine the long-held scientific tradition in local academic writing and publishing practices. Then I will discuss the process of intellectual hegemony in these practices. Finally, I conclude by offering another radical thought for creating a space of worlds and knowledges otherwise. II. THE PRESERVATION OF SCIENTIFIC-EMPIRICAL TRADITION AS ACT OF SELF- IMPOSED COLONIALIZATION An archetypical norm that has been feverishly emulated in knowledge production and dissemination through local publishing practices has been an established mode of Euro-and Western centric thinking, or simply “Eurocentered mode of thinking” as Esobar (2007) dubs it. Consider, for example, the author guidelines taken by the Scopus- indexed local journals in applied linguistics and language teaching below, which require authors to organize their writing based on the Introduction, Method, Result and Discussio (IMRD) mode: Authors must strictly follow the submission guidelines of the journal. To submissions that do not adhere to the guidelines provided, they will be REJECTED. The sources cited are primary sources in the forms of reputable journal articles (strongly recommended), books, and research reports, including .theses and dissertations. Citations from journal should be at least 80% of the total references cited. The first and second journal warn the authors to strictly conform to the guidelines which oblige them to organize their research by following the IMRD method. Failure to do so will result in the outright rejection of the submitted manuscripts by the journal administrators. The second journal, however, expects more than just imposing this convention; it compels authors to cite “at least 80% of the total references cited” from “reputable journal articles.” Reputable journal here has been construed as the ones that is registered in the international indexations such as SCOPUS and SSCI. Not complying with such a citation practice will risk of being denied entry to the journal. As there have been few internationally indexed journals in applied linguistics and language teaching in Indonesia, authors who wish their articles to get published in the second journal mentioned above need to seek “reputable journal articles” published in the Centre, which exerts considerable control over the global academic publishing industries (see Canagarajah, 2002). The author guidelines indirectly exhort local authors to rely on the perspectives and knowledge imported from the outside of the local territories, Setiono Sugiharto / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 11 No. 4 (2024) 549 especially from the Centre which holds control over knowledge construction and production. The journal’s requirements for this citation practice also helps validate other Western centred knowledge at the expanse of the vibrantly circulating local knowledge. In essence, what these local journals enact in their guidelines further perpetuate self- imposed colonialization in knowledge making and production. There is also a growing perception that phenomena especially related to social issues and quandaries are supposed to be best represented by clinging to entirely to a scientific-empirical orthodoxy. As alluded to before, this orthodoxy emanates from the modern science which is founded upon two key premises: systematic observation and controlled experimentation and the distinction between scientific knowledge and non-scientific knowledge or simply ways of knowing (Sousa Santos, 2018). In local gate-keeping practices it is not uncommon to witness the stigmatization of other modes of thought patterns and knowledge. The privilege in such diverse fields of humanities such as language education, language teaching, literacy studies, and cultural studies, amongst others, is still given to rationality, logic, and orthodoxy in research practice. It thus comes as no surprise that most journals in these fields always compels researchers to conform to a rigid and formulaic pattern of research model, the prominent of which is the Swales’ (1990) CARS model. The notions of objectivity and universality in academia –which owes its allegiance to modernist philosophical outlook – has been ardently preserved and inculcated among local scholars especially the novice scholars. In the non- Anglophone country like Indonesia, for instance, academic publishing in humanities (accredited and non-accredited) tend to encourage scholars to adopt the orientation of scientism as a model of research reporting. This model has become an important criterion for censoring articles submitted to the journals Also, it is no surprise that local scholars who wish to apply a grant in research especially in humanities need to abide by this dominant model to win the grant. The preservation of scientism to knowledge production and dissemination in academia is perilous. To begin with, it can shape the mindset that only the scientific paradigm is the only accepted paradigm in research reporting in disciplinary fields, and therefore closes off the possibilities of other research traditions not belonging to this established paradigm. Those scholars hailing from the qualitative research tradition, for instance, tend to be disparaged as they are considered ‘unscientific’ in their inquiry. As qualitative-oriented researchers often include their biases, passion, and emotion in writing their research, their works tend to be relegated as not conforming to objectivity or “truth”. It has become a dictum that scientism “must be free of passion”, and that passion…must be supressed and excluded from scientific discourse because it tends to becloud objectivity” (Ramose, 2020, p. 59). Moreover, inexperienced scholars who are still at their initial stage in research can easily be captivated by an oversimplistic belief that objectivity and universality the ultimate goal of a research product, but they are never made aware of the subtle research processes a researcher must go through and of the interwoven unexpected variables that mask the intricate research process. In addition, it eludes the distinctiveness of socio-political and cultural contexts where the research is conducted. As the scientific orientation presumes detachment and standardization of discourse and repudiates diversity in thinking, a researcher is not allowed to enact their locus of enunciation to explore their individual resources by making use their ecologies of knowledges. To the extent that the assumption of universality in the construction of discourse is conceived as valid in every context reflects the sustenance of “the power of Eurocentered modernity – as a particular local history”…and “has produced particular global design” (Escobar, 2007, p. 183) [italics in original]. Such a reality also testifies to the gripping control of the colonial matrix of power (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018) in knowledge construction and production. Moreover, a blind obedience to the orthodoxy that has prevailed in research tradition in local gate-keeping practices often relegates and silences the researcher’s agency and denies their complex subjectivities, values, ideology and their discursive traditions, all of which serve as an important intermediary in the process of knowledge generation. The purity for maintaining impersonality and objectivity from the contamination of personal subjectivities s described by Ramose (2020) as “an arbitrary fragmentation of the oneness of the human being” (p. 59). This fragmentation is eventually Setiono Sugiharto / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 11 No. 4 (2024) 550 pointed to the hegemonic nature of English, along with the constellation of power of Eurocentric knowledge in academic publishing (see Politzer- Ahles, Holliday, Girolamo, Spychalska, Berkson, 2016; Curry & Lillis, 2018; Shorten 201; Lee & Jenks , 2018, and Kubota, 2020, 2022). However, the irony here is that this hegemony takes place within the peripheral context (i.e. Indonesia) where the ecologies of knowledge is not amendable with the idea of scientism. Following Canagarajah’s (2002) classification of the processes of intellectual hegemony, I subsume the processes under for categories: (1) inequality, (2) exploitation, (3) assimilation, and (4) control. As for the case of inequality, the flow of knowlege is made unilateral, emanating from the center as the one who holds a firm grip in publishing industry, to the periphery as the consumer and passive recipient of knowledge. Knowledge constructed in the periphery and disseminated in local journals will not gain international recognition, as it is “relegated to the status of “local knowledge” or “folk wisdom”” (Rajagopalan, 2005). 239, quotation marks in original). Quite ironically, the Indonesian government helps sustain this inequality by regulating that Indonesian academics must publish in internationally-indexed journals, most notably those indexed in SCOPUS, the Science Citation Index (SCI) and the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), as the prerequisites for higher academic promotion. Although locally- English written journals are accepted for the promotion, they are valued less than those published in the centre journals. This because knowledges generated by the latter journals are considered prestigious, modern, generalizable, and as such applicable to other contexts. Meanwhile, local journals written in Indonesian is less valued that those local journals written in English, and will be denied acceptance if used as the sole requirement for obtaining professorship. As such, the government perpetuates intellectual dependency on the centre communities. The one-sided imposition of knowledge unsurprisingly leads to ideological domination. Exploitation of knowledge is another process that helps sustain the hegemony of the center. This takes the form of borrowing or taking knowledge resources from the periphery either through the available written records such as unpublished manuscripts, local journals and other intellectual aimed at the “purification of orders” (Escobar, 2007). Probably lured by the professed infallibility of the prevailing scientific research tradition, local scholars are wooed in oversimplifying its usefulness for all disciplinary fields, simply accepting and using it obediently without critically interrogating the philosophical underpinnings underlying it. The fact that the scientism remains sturdy in research and academic practice and enjoys paradigmatic status in the humanities also attests to its axiomatic status. Obviously, the exultation of scientific tradition in research may, to a great extent, be out of sync with the nature of social studies such as education, literacy and cultural studies, which in a stark contrast, appreciates and respects researcher’s subjectivities, biases, values and ideologies that mediate the research process. What this research paradigm attempts to produce is the “idealized representations of texts produced mostly by white monolingual English-users occupying a socially dominant position” (García, et.al. 2021, p. 209). Finally, instead of abiding reductively to formulaic conventions imposed by the empiricist orientation, local scholars and researchers in humanities need to exercise their latitude to shape their academic writing innovatively and creatively by voicing their inner feelings and thoughts. This can bring about discovery in search for alternative discourses in academic writing practice, rather than simply reproduce the existing dominant mode. Even if we insist that scientific orientation be employed (and indeed it is highly prevalent in use hitherto) as a favoured research architype in humanities, it fails to fully capture the complexities of the human subjects we intend to explore, thus downplaying the import of other research traditions as a legitimate field of inquiry. III THE PROCESSES OF INTELLECTUAL HEGEMONY IN LOCAL ACADEMIC PUBLISHING The preservation and sustenance of the scientific tradition in local academic publishing discussed above augurs badly for the epistemological stances and positionings of local scholars in knowledge production and dissemination, because these efforts perpetuate the ideology of exclusion in the local context to further its grip in the process of intellectual hegemony, so to speak. The plethora of literature related to global academic publishing has Setiono Sugiharto / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 11 No. 4 (2024) 551 works, or through direct observation or theorization of the lifes of periphery communities. Grosfoguel (2020) develops the idea of “epistemic extractivism” to explain such explotation of knowledge. As He explains “Epistemic extrativism extracts ideas... from Indigenous communities, removing them from the contexts in which they were produced to depolitize them and give them a new meaning based on Western-centric ideas (Grosfogues, 2020, p. 208). Consider, for example, the case of the Jakarta Field Station of the Max Planck for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, which, in association with the University of Delaware, deployed centre linguists to document Indonesia’s indigenous languages in the form of computerized databases and to theorize these languages. These databases were sent every week to the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig as well as to the University of Delaware (personal communication with Uri Tadmor, The Jakarta Post, May 13, 2008). They are now available not only to world linguists, but also to anyone concerned with the Indonesian local languages. While, on the one hand, it is good that centre scholars help bring Indonesian local languages to a global readership through publication, it is, on the other hand, the above-mentioned centre scholars who are able to construct, reproduce, and disseminate this local knowledge to the international fora via their published works. Thus, they borrow locally generated data, take and store it in their own date-bases, and eventually “build their own knowledge in mainstream journals and take credit for intellectual contribution” (Canagarajah, 2002, p. 244). This is a massive exploitation carried out at the institutional level. Though in the publication centre scholars (very often as the first author) co- author with local scholars, it is still centre scholars that is seen as having the authoritative voice over the knowledge being disseminated. Rarely do they let local scholars speak for themselves using their own voices. Another form of exploitation takes place at a more individual level. This is often done by traveling researchers who make use of local informants’ oral knowledge by observing and theorizing their everyday experiences through their fieldwork (Canagarajah, 2002). Travelling Max Planck- based scholars (see my personal communication with David Gill, The Jakarta Post, August 1, 2012) were also passionate about collecting data through their fieldwork through travelling to many provinces in Indonesia. They profited their interactions with the local people, observing and theorizing the ways the use their native languages. Another similar case is Amber Engelson, who did her Ph.D. research by travelling to Yogjakarta and interacting with the people there. Involving some local informants as her research subjects, she managed to assemble information about the roles of local religious identities, religious expressions, and rhetorical tradition in academic discourse, and eventually published her research in an academic journal in the centre (see Engelson, 2014). Thus, data obtained from the periphery can contribute to the strengthening of the centre’s knowledge bases, providing its scholars easy access to construct knowledge, produce academic paper, and claim originality to what they have theorized. Another process of intellectual hegemony is assimilation. In this process periphery scholars, while researching in their specific locations, need to align their locally-developed perspectives and findings into the established or authoritative voices of the centre in order to gain entrance into the mainstream journals. This is a process whereby the assimilation of knowledge takes place. It is also frequently the case that during the blind- reviewing process local researchers are advised by journal reviewers to read and include references of those centre scholars which have been published beforehand. Citing references from these centre scholars can prove that local researchers keep abreast of the state of the art developed in the centre community, which in the end can boost their scholarship. Thus, if Indonesian scholars who are interested in writing about, say Malay-Indonesian linguistics, and wish to get their research published in the English-mainstream journals, they need to refer those authoritative works written by centre scholars in the same field from the University in the centre as important references to strengthen their findings. Not to include their works will give the impression that local researchers fail to keep abreast of the state of the art in linguistics, and that their writings lack supporting authoritative voices. A case in point is Bambang Kaswanti’s effort to write in centre publication. The editor required that he find and cite sources from centre scholars in order to strengthen his argument about the concept of marriage seen from a Javanese perspective Setiono Sugiharto / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 11 No. 4 (2024) 552 (personal communication, January 11, 2019). Despite being Javanese in ethnicity, Kaswanti, who has knowledge about Javanese culture, still needs to resort to references written by centre scholar to back up his opinion (see also Sugiharto, 2021). Bibliographical conventions, as Canagarajah (2002) contends, “can function as a filter on the thought of periphery scholars” (p. 252). Control is the last process of intellectual hegemony. Through its publishing industry, the centre can regulate the academic conventions to their interest and ideology. Flouting these conventions can only result in the academic ostracism, as has been the case of Ena Lee and Dana Ferris described above. The persistent use of the IMRD elements of research article in most international publishing reflects a tight control over the production and dissemination of knowledge. Although other modes of research reporting such as narrative inquiry, autoethnography, case histories – all written in a “story telling” style –are beginning to be acknowledged in applied linguistics journals, most of these journals still impose the IMRD as the generic template of research reporting. Quite interestingly, most, if not all, locally published journals in Indonesia follow this generic mode of reporting, as has been stated in their “Submission Guidelines” pages. Yet, this control is small in coverage compared to today’s on-going intellectual hegemony process where a tight control over the construction, production, and dissemination of knowledge can be felt globally through the use bibliometric indicators. With the monopoly of academic publication by the center, the value and legitimacy of knowledge status are determined one-sidedly by virtue of its knowledge tradition. As it is the center that is regarded as the epicenter of globalization of knowledge, knowledge emanating from this place is more valued and revered, and considered more superior than that stemming from other places or sources. Consequently, it is the center that has a strong grip in exerting a massive control over knowledge at the global level. Thus, it comes as no surprise that the center can recently successfully cajole global communities to have their practices of knowledge construction and production registered in their databases such as Science Citation Index (SCI), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) –owned by Thomson Reuters, as well as Scopus –run by Elsevier, the ambition of which is to marshal a massive amount of academic output worldwide (Nygaard & Bellanova, 2018). IV. EMBRACING PLURIVERSAL THINKING, LISTENING TO WORLDS AND KNOWLEDGES OTHERWISE As a starting point of departure to embrace the idea of pluriversalim in thinking and acting, it would be useful to ponder over the following assertion: Proposed ideas for praxis-oriented scholarly work include, but are certainly not limited to, decolonizing our minds, paying attention to and intentionally making a commitment to transformation, actively engaging with public scholarship for knowledge m o b i l i z a t i o n , legitimizing and encouraging multilingual scholarship, changing institutional expectations and practices, and actively connecting with communities (Kubota, 2022 p. 4). Proposed ideas of praxis-oriented scholarly work adumbrated by Kubota here differs considerably from what has been patently privileged in journal publication in particular and in academic writing practice in general in that they are situated in a broader ideological, cultural and socio-political context of epistemological practices. Mind decolonialization, commitment to transformation, knowledge mobilization, legitimation of multilingual voices, alteration of institutional expectation, and community involvement imply ethical imperatives to listen to, acknowledge, value, appreciate and create other ways of knowing, thinking, behaving, acting, without which we will still succumb to self-imposed coloniality. Kubota’s proposal echoes Escobar’s (2016) contention that sees thinking from worlds and knowledges otherwise as “efforts at thinking beyond the academy, with the pueblos-territorio (peoples-territory) and the intellectual activists linked to them” (p. 29). From the perspective knowledge making and production, praxis-oriented work values plurivesal sources of knowledge, apart from scientific knowledge. Thus, in a stark contrast to an established academic practice which promotes the glorification of scientific knowledge and detachment of reason from emotion, feeling, passion, biases and subjectivities, praxis-centred Setiono Sugiharto / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 11 No. 4 (2024) 553 academic practice, subscribes to the view of what de- Sousa-Santos (2018) calls “artisanal knowledges”, or “non-scientific knowledges.” These knowledges are “practical, empirical, vernacular, and popular knowledges, knowledges that in spite of their many differences have one feature in common: they were not produced separately, as a knowledge practice separated from other social practices (p. 132). For Rajagopalan (2005), they are “local knowledge,” as opposed to “professional knowledge.” The former refers to knowledge produced by lay people, and the latter is knowledge generated by experts. It is the latter knowledge that is often privileged in the scholarly journal publication. One intriguing instance of the elevation of vernacular and popular knowledges can be seen in Alwasilah’s (2000) proposal for the renaissance of Sundanese culture whose goal is to reinvigorate Sundanese culture. Many of his thoughts on the revitalization of the language were published in his book Pokokny Sunda: Interpretasi untuk Aksi (Nothing but Sundanese: Interpretation for Action). This proposal emerged since he was appointed chairman of the organizing committee of the International Conference on Sundanese Culture, pioneered by renowned poet Ajip Rosidi in Bandung in 2001. Alwasilah encouraged local scholars to use their indigenous languages and knowledges in academic writing practices so that they can preserve and elevate their ancestral knowledges in international fora. Another example comes from Oostendorp’s (2023) story of academic publishing where she brings humour in her writing and uses it “not only as a topic of investigation but also as a methodology and a form of knowing” (p. 229). For Oostedorp, bringing common-sense knowledge in the form of humour in scholarly work has a significant bearing for disrupting abyssal thinking. In preserving her indigenous voice in writing by not translating and analysing her humour (i.e. parody), Oostedorp (2023) puts the idea of “epistemic disobedience” in practice (p. 231). Employing these non-translation and non-analysis strategies, she can not only feel connected and engaged with her community but can also decolonize the established methodology. The elevation of the ecology of knowledges such as these clearly reflect the pluriversal politics (Esobar, 2020) of knowledge enacted from the periphery. Both scholars in the different peripheral communities enact the “multiple reals/possibles” (Esobar, 2020) in their respective localities, thereby disrupting the circulation of hegemonic knowledge in the non-western territories. This enactment of multiple reals/possibles also can help dismantle “globalocentric thinking” in knowledge making and production, eventually enabling local scholars “to consider the power of place based and of local becoming in new forms…and of healing multiple locals through communal economics and logics connecting with each other into diffuse, constitutive and sustaining forms of translocal meshed-worked power” (Escobar, 2020, p. 88). It precisely the healing of multiple locals that we need to proclaim in our effort to curb the colonial mentality in local publishing practices. Thus, mulling over the relevance of the pluriverse politics to our local situation, and embracing the tenets of pluriversalim (see Escobar for detailed explanation) can indeed provide “a space for healing” (Deumert & Makoni, 2023). On a final note, the implication of the examples of the above- mentioned scholars speaking from their worlds and knowledges otherwise cannot be overlooked. They exemplify one important lesson for us to contemplate and then to act: one has the full authority for legitimating and validating one’s suppressed ecology of knowledges in light of one’s locus of enunciation or one’s geo-political and body-political location (Figueiredo & Martinez, 2021; Sugiharto, 2022). V. CONCLUSION The article has showcased the present reality of the lingering imperial forces of hegemonic knowledge (i.e. ways of knowing, thinking, and acting) which is feverishly preserved and cultivated among academia in local scholarly practices. This form of “colonial mentality,” defined by Phyak (2021) as “the psychology of inferiority constructed by oppressive…and unequal sociopolitical structures” (p. 228), closes off the possibility for (re) imagining radical thoughts and actions otherwise from radical alternatives and perspectives. This mentality continues to be inculcated into local scholars in local epistemology, despite the fact that local conditions allow scholars to construct knowledges from their loci of enunciation. With this in mind, we therefore need a radical epistemological orientation which embraces a more inclusive, ethical, and egalitarian Setiono Sugiharto / Jurnal Arbitrer - Vol. 11 No. 4 (2024) 554 knowledge-making practices. Crucially, contesting the hegemonic Eurocentric knowledge in academic publishing requires a delinking and decolonizing such knowledge from the worlds and knowledges otherwise. Decolonial and delinking discourse have shown a rejection of western mode of knowledge production (Deumert & Makoni, 2023). In other words, knowledges should be constructed and produced everywhere without being constricted by its supposed epicentre. Such is a pluriverse perspective, and the pluriverse knows no centre (Ramose, 2020). Embracing pluriversalism in knowledge making of course presupposes a political struggle (de Sousa Santos, 2018; Pennycook, 2023). To enact this struggle, Kumaravadivelu (2020) proposes “fundamental epistemological rupture” where “the subaltern community has to unfreeze and activate its latent agentive capacity, and strive to derive a set of concerted, coordinated, and collective actions based not on the logic of coloniality but on a grammar of decoloniality (pp. 80-81). This strategic tactic can raise heightened awareness among scholars, journal editors and administrator for the import for transforming “absent subject into present subject as a primary condition for identifying and validating knowledges capable of reinventing social emancipation and liberation (de Sousa Santos & Meneses, 2020, p. xx). This strategy is the project of the “sociology of absences” (de Sousa Santos, 2018). Finally, as the scientific rationality and Euro- Western centred thinking preserved in the local academic publishing practice is a form of “abyssal thinking” (de Sousa Santos, 2014, 2018), then the act of political struggle needs to be directed at reclaiming and reviving “silenced knowledge or knowledges that are produced as non-existent” (de Sousa Santos & Meneses, p. xix). In doing so, we can “transform the landscape… into a vast field of living, rich, and innovative social experience” (de Sousa Santos & Meneses, p. xx). This strategy is the assigned task of the “sociology of emergences” (de Sousa Santos, 2018). In sum, the sociology of absences and the sociology of emergences, and decolonial discourses can serve as useful frameworks, or rather “as tools for scholarship and academic and political activism” (Deumert & Makoni, 2023) for future decolonizing projects in the pursuit for emancipatory knowledge making practices in our local contexts and for entering another doorway to worlds and knowledges otherwise. Such a political activism can be enacted by means of promoting and elevating one’s ecology of knowledges in local journal publication, and of reclaiming local research tradition as a radical alternative of the established tradition. There ought to be a political will for decolonizing and liberating our minds from the imposition of hegemonic Euro-Western -centred knowledge. REFERENCES Alwasilah, A.C. Pokoknya Sunda: Interpretasi untuk Aksi. Bandung: Kiblat. Canagarajah, A. S. (2002). 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