English and Global Education: Writing Apotropaic Texts to Deflect the Sorcery of Colonial|Modern|Development

Irrespective of the scholarship that exposes the violent impact of English on education systems in colonial, settler colonial, and (post)colonial contexts, it continues to take center stage in educational policy changes in academic institutions around the world. It is promoted by school and university curricula, global funding organizations, and political leaders as a language that provides unimaginable opportunities for everyone and, particularly for historically disadvantaged communities. Consequently, English has become the/a language of colonial|modern|development[1] enabling the continuation of its civilizing mission through discourses of progress. As a Sri Lankan expatriate academic and a former English language teacher, in this paper, I explore how English is embodied as desires and traumas in (post)colonial subjects (le sujet). My research in Sri Lanka with English teachers show how their experiences about/around English that give credence to its manifestation as truth-power can inevitably lead to the reproduction of harm in/through education. Therefore, drawing on ethnographic and archival research, I tell stories (as apotropaic texts) imagining curricular orientations that would deflect the sorcery of colonial|modern|development in English. In this paper, rather than supporting the view that English is imperialistic, neocolonial, and a threat to linguistic diversity, or merely promoting discourses that glorify it as a panacea for sociopolitical and economic problems, I invite educators to sit with the sticky tensions that emerge from one’s attunement to English as the embodiment of desires and traumas.