Unsettling the air-conditioned room: journal work as ethical labour

Abstract

The scholarship that gets published in academic journals reflects and replicates particular conversations, and privileges authors schooled in certain methodologies. The friendships and collaborations between scholars of African literature based in different regions of the world are evident in the ongoing work and membership of the ALA, and make the organisation and its gatherings distinctive. Yet in order for publishing patterns to shift, we need to build not only better communication channels between north and south, but perhaps more crucially between the different intellectual traditions represented by literary scholars at universities on the African continent itself. Such a re-orientation will arrest and trouble assumptions that what skews publishing patterns is solely that Africa-based scholars are in need of (northern) resources and developmental assistance. Unequal access to resources clearly does influence the publishing patterns of literary scholarship, but this is only part of the challenge we face. Instead I argue we need to articulate explicit and ethical frameworks for enabling dialogue, and for evaluating knowledge production from different parts of the world. This needs to happen at all levels of knowledge production, but crucially at editorial and peer review level.