Parrhesia, complexity, and epistemological vigilance: a critical perspective from english language teaching in higher education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30972/clt.309676Keywords:
parrhesia, epistemological vigilance, epistemologies of the South, educational discourse, historical situatednessAbstract
This essay offers a critical reading of contemporary educational discourse through four key notions: parrhesia, paideia, epistemological vigilance, and historical situatedness. It examines parrhesia both as an ethical practice of truth-telling and as an enunciative act shaped by institutional conditions; paideia as a formative horizon that combines care, responsibility, and openness; and the tension between a simplifying paradigm and the demands of complexity in educational settings. Drawing on situated experiences in the teaching of English as a foreign language in Argentine public universities, the essay illustrates how curricular standardization may overlook heterogeneous student trajectories and constrain teachers’ epistemic agency. In dialogue with the Epistemologies of the South, the text argues for practices that re-embed teaching and knowledge production in local and historical contexts, emphasizing the need to strengthen spaces for dialogue, collective work, and sustained epistemological vigilance.
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