On Academic Writing (and My Mother-in-Law)

Francis Badley charges academics with employing their own “academese” language, which he describes as “turgid, soggy, wooden.” Over the years, I have wondered whether I inherited a problematic academese way of writing, speaking, researching on the racism found within the “War on Terror.” Moreover, I have considered whether the academese sanitized my creativity and stole my freedom to speak back to Islamophobia through a traditionalist and spiritually ladened Islam. In the Sufi tradition, knowing the “nafs” (the self) is as a vital part of a Muslim’s spiritual growth. My article translates this principle to mean writing an autoethnography—writing to bear witness against my academic self and my use of “academese.” But my autoethnography also highlights the westernese in academese—a language that espouses a dominant Eurocentric aesthetic to scholarly discourses.