Reviewer as Activist: Understanding Academic Review through Conocimiento

ABSTRACT

This article argues that academic manuscript review is a site for activism, using Anzaldúa’s theory of conocimiento as a framework to contextualize the reviewer’s role in this process. It demonstrates that conocimiento provides a structure for engaging in the manuscript-review process in a way that mediates among potentially conflicting worldviews. Conocimiento informs more justice-oriented reviewing and positions the anonymous reviewer as activist. This article explores each stage of conocimiento and anonymous review through multifaceted methods: storytelling, theory, and a synthesis of the two. It ends by presenting concrete, action-based takeaways for reviewers who want to approach reviewing justly and equitably.

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge our colleague, mentor, and friend Keith Grant-Davie, who encouraged us to write this piece. We also thank our reviewers, the editors, and the staff at Rhetoric Review who have made this article’s publication possible.

Notes

1. We would like to acknowledge RR reviewers Maureen Daly Goggine and Kellie Sharp-Hoskins for their guidance and service to the field. Thank you.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cana Uluak Itchuaqiyaq

Cana Uluak Itchuaqiyaq is a tribal member of the Noorvik Native Community. She is an incoming assistant professor of professional and technical writing at Virgina Tech and the managing editor of Technical Communication Quarterly. Cana Uluak’s research addresses how mainstream academic practice often perpetuates the marginalization of underrepresented scholars and communities and consequentially interferes with diversity and inclusion efforts. She is the winner of multiple national awards, including the CPTSC Bedford/St. Martin’s Diversity Scholarship, the CCCC Scholars for the Dream Award, the ATTW Graduate Research Award, and the American Indian Graduate Center Science Post Graduate Scholarship.

Rebecca Walton

Rebecca Walton is an Associate Professor of technical communication and rhetoric at Utah State University and the editor in chief of Technical Communication Quarterly. Her research interests include social justice in sites of work and qualitative methods for cross-cultural research. Her coauthored work has won multiple national awards, including the 2020 CCCC Best Article Reporting Qualitative or Quantitative Research in Technical or Scientific Communication, 2018 CCCC Best Article on Philosophy or Theory of Technical or Scientific Communication, the 2016 and 2017 Nell Ann Pickett Award, and the 2017 STC Distinguished Article Award.