The English Ink

Publication Date: 02/06/2026

Publisher: South Journal (journal.knowsouth.com)

Abstract:

This research problematises the Anglo-American centrism of journalism historiography, arguing that the discipline’s reliance on English-language, metropolitan archives perpetuates the erasure of Global South journalism.

Methodologically, the output employs a critical historiographical approach to interrogate how the history of the press is constructed. By extending Gaye Tuchman’s sociological concept of ‘objectivity as strategic ritual’ to historians themselves, the essay demonstrates how the scholarly retreat to accessible, official archives functions as a defensive mechanism that compounds historical silences. To unpack this, the article brings together Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s mechanics of historical production and Ann Laura Stoler’s theories of archival ‘epistemic anxieties’.

Through this conceptual intervention, the output advances two primary claims. First, it argues that contemporary attempts to diversify media history via ‘subaltern flows’ frequently act as a new strategic ritual—a form of ‘South-washing’ that addresses modern global accountability without correcting foundational epistemic violence at the archival source.

Second, it theorises ‘fact subjugation’ as a fifth historical silence unique to the digital condition, wherein archival noise and scale act as modern mechanisms of erasure. Ultimately, by advocating for reading along the archival grain, the essay seeks to redefine the historiographical object of study. It proposes that journalism histories should be analysed not merely as the global expansion of a Western professional trade, but as parallel, localised formations of ‘civic intelligence’ through which subaltern communities write themselves into political existence.

https://journal.knowsouth.com/essays/the-english-ink

Source: Manual