In this article, the author provides a brief response to Claire Kramsch's paper. While the author agrees in many ways with her arguments, he also wants to point to a potential contradiction between two positions: On the one hand, Kramsch suggests that in promoting foreign language learning language educators run the danger of essentialising the cultures those languages are supposed to represent; on the other hand, she warns that foreign languages may become the vehicles of Anglo-American thought. It seems to the author that the second argument runs the risk of falling into the trap that the first criticises. In conclusion, the author contends that language educators need to understand that the spaces and cultures students inhabit are to be found not so much in predefinitions of cultural or linguistic background, as in the transcultural flows with which students engage. By seeing language education as a practice in translingual activism, language educators open up an important space both to oppose the incursion of homogenous discourses and to look to multiple sources of cultural renewal.