Fanonian “Radical Empathy” for a Politics of Ethics: Toward a Sociolinguistics of Potentiality

ABSTRACT

This contribution takes up the Dialogue's question of the politics of ethics in sociolinguistics from a Fanonian perspective. Taking Sweden as an illustrative case of Euro‐Northern de/recolonization, it argues that ostensibly emancipatory discourses of liberal humanist inclusion can remain bound to colonial and racializing formations of speakership, legitimacy, and belonging. Such discourses risk conserving the colonial status quo by leaving intact the liberal‐humanist figure of the Human that Wynter names as MAN. Against this, the contribution turns to Fanonian radical empathy as the basis for a sociolinguistics of potentiality: one oriented toward the refiguration of the human, a new politics of community, and otherwise futures grounded in love, hope, and care.