Concept
Crip translingualism: Boundary negotiations in (im)mobility

Suresh Canagarajah
Pennsylvania State University
Abstract

Forms of immobility both limit unqualified human agency and enable diverse channels of mobility. In this sense, mobility and immobility work together. Certain philosophical movements such as Southern theories and disability studies treat constraints, sedentariness, and boundaries as needing to be respected and accommodated in any inquiry. This article draws from these schools to theorize disruptions and constraints as resources in the circulation of languages, texts, and meanings. To index this generative role of constraints in communication, I adopt the term “crip” from theorizations in disability studies. “Crip” invokes the paradoxical reality that while being crippled poses disruptions in mobility, this rupture also generates new knowledge and possibilities into the flow of life (McRuer, 2006). This article explains how crip translingualism would treat ruptures, constraints, and boundaries as resourceful for meaning making. This is a corrective to certain previous theorizations that have treated translingualism as based on unrestricted flows and fluidities, influenced by dominant orientations to mobility. I illustrate from a classroom literacy interaction where the ruptures posed by the heritage languages of multilingual students motivated everyone to adopt creative strategies to expand the meaning of “meaning,” redefine literacy as negotiated, and develop ethical dispositions to collaborate in communicating across language boundaries. I argue that the incomprehensions and vulnerabilities created by language diversity actually motivate everyone to develop strategies to creatively read and write. In this manner, constraints don’t stifle the text or students, but mobilize new flows of meanings and interactions.

Keywords:
Publication history

Date received: 2 October 2023

Date accepted: 7 March 2024

Published online: 7 June 2024

Table of contents

Mobility is not new, as the movement of people and things has always been there from the beginning of life. In fact, human geographers will argue that mobility is ontological – that is, nature, land, and the universe are always characterized by movement (Soja, 2011; Massey, 2005). However, a strand of European academic discourse has theorized that mobility has become prominent and definitive of modern life since the 16th century movements of enlightenment, capitalism and colonization (see Faist, 2013). This mobility was spawned by the need for raw materials and new markets that sent European ships scurrying to the global South. It also produced technologies that helped people communicate and travel far and wide with ease. It is not surprising that certain social scientists consider European modernity as the starting point of this new normal, marking a radical shift from a purported sedentary feudal life (Zelinksy, 1971). This narrative focused on sea faring merchant groups which broke away from the more restrictive feudal formation in Europe to form a new capitalist middle class. Thus the industrial revolution is said to facilitate new forms of geographical and social mobility. This discourse on mobility is spurred by recent technological advances that shape communication and travel that are claimed to facilitate a space/time compression, making mobility more intensive, expansive, and convenient (Urry, 2000). Such developments have motivated scholars to pronounce “We are all migrants now” (Nail, 2015) or “We are all diasporists now” (Glazer, 1997), treating mobility as the new normal.

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