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In this article I reflect on Turnbull’s reframing of foreign language education through a bilingual framework. I argue that in order for this important shift to be generative, foreign language education must shed the strong link between language and nation-state that has been at the core of foreign language epistemologies. That is, foreign language education must give up on being a mechanism of political states, focusing instead on speakers. Keeping with an epistemology that is both critical and poststructuralist, this article tries to uncover the modernist assumptions and categorizations about language learners, language and bilingualism, and language programs, which have been partially responsible for the failure of language education, in its many forms, to achieve its full potential. The article also tries to unmask, in a Foucauldian sense, the reasons for the maintenance of the categories that are at the core of language education programs, especially L1/L2, and native/second/new speaker. It argues that there is need for all language education programs to build multilingual subjectivities that are legitimate, without reference to the social construction of native speakers, or that of sanctioned named languages.
