The fourth and fifth generations of African scholars: A South African case study (original) (raw)
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Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 2009
What sort of expectations of transformation of higher education have been aroused by liberation movements? Has the new South Africa fulfilled such expectations? This paper explores the promises and processes that have enveloped South African universities in recent decades. It focuses on the underlying assumptions shaping academic disciplines in the humanities, the debates contesting them and the socialpolitical-economic movements encompassing them. It traces the impact of marxism, africanism, postmodernism and neoliberalism on the production of knowledge. It concludes that South African universities are caught up in a complex field forces where they are subject to conflicting pressures. The result is a state of contradictory transformations -one stemming from the politics of liberation and the other from the demands of the global market.
African Studies at a Crossroads: Producing Theory across the Disciplines in South Africa
African studies in South Africa is currently at a crossroadsof making choices in the process of establishing itself institutionally and reconstituting itself as a discursive and epistemological field, including an interrogation of its histories and a decolonisation of its scholarly legacies. But being at a crossroads does not imply being at a loss; on the contrary, for African studies it means realising its potential of being a hub of critical thinking and a catalyst in the transformation of the humanities and the social sciences in the country and, possibly, internationally. Proceeding from this assumption, I will ask: what are the conditions of possibility for the emergence of African studies in South Africa as a space of transdisciplinary debate, one that is driven by a commitment to socially relevant issues and within which critical standpoints to be voiced by public intellectuals can crystallise? Some approaches critical for the development of such a field are present in South African scholarship, butas it often happens in hierarchical academic structuresthey are scattered across different disciplines or areas of expertise. Further, one of the main problems of African studies scholarship internationallylying at the core of power inequalities of scholarship in Africa and the Westis the artificial split between "theory" and "(empirical) material" and the question of who is expected to produce what. This article starts with a discussion of the recent debates provoked by a restructuring of African studies and related disciplines at the University of Cape Town. To understand the resonance of these debates, beyond the context of one university and country, they will be placed, firstly, in the international context of African studies and, secondly, in the national context of debating the function and place of the humanities and the social sciences in South Africa. Both contexts highlight the importance of producing critical theory (instead of applying theory produced in the West). Hence, the following three subsections of this article will examine works by South African scholars that, produced within various disciplines (history, sociology and cultural studies), interrelate the insights of these disciplines and, in so doing, initiate new theoretical approaches. Using its crossroads position, African studies in South Africa can become a "laboratory" in which new critical approaches can be interrelated and debated. Opened up to dialogue with African studies in Africa and worldwide, it can become a theoretically invigorating space, nationally and internationally.
The future of African Studies: what we can do to keep Africa at the heart of our research
Journal of African Cultural Studies
Over the past two decades, Africa has returned to academic agendas outside of the continent. At the same time, the field of African Studies has come under increasing criticism for its marginalisation of African voices, interests, and agendas. This article explores how the complex transformations of the academy have contributed to a growing division of labour. Increasingly, African scholarship is associated with the production of empirical fact and socioeconomic impact rather than theory, with ostensibly local rather than international publication, and with other forms of disadvantage that undermine respectful exchange and engagement. This discourages our engagement with Africa as a place of intellectual production in its own right. By arguing that scholars can and should make a difference to their field, both individually and collectively, the article suggests ways of understanding and engaging with these inequalities.
The History of the Southern African Association for Institutional Research
Institutional Research in South African Higher Education - Intersecting Contexts and Practices, 2016
History is important because it teaches us about the past. And by learning about the past you come to understand the present, so that you may make educated decisions about the future. Richelle Mead This quotation, by fantasy author Richelle Mead, encapsulates a common understanding of the role of history and its importance. It is likely to resonate strongly with many individuals and organisations who are seeking to understand their history. In an article in the Harvard Business Review, Seaman & Smith (2012:1) draw attention to a contrasting view, foregrounding the importance of the future, which asserts that, "There is no need to dwell on the past; what matters is the future." Writing in their capacity as business historians, they note that executives often put this view forward. This assertion by business executives appears to be dismissive of history and its role, with more value placed on the future. Seaman & Smith (2012:1) see the value of history in its capacity to help leaders inspire people towards working collectively and argue that leaders who are impatient with history are missing the important truth that a "sophisticated understanding of the past is one of the most powerful tools we have for shaping the future". These views of the history of businesses or enterprises can also be applied to organisations in other sectors like the Southern African Association for Institutional Research (SAAIR). According to its constitution, its purpose is to advance institutional research, thereby contributing to the improved operation of higher education institutions in Southern Africa (SAAIR 1994:1). As part of achieving this mandate the SAAIR would need to reflect continually on its history to shape its future. Within the South African context, higher education legislation and policy documents have referred strongly to the country's past history in articulating the need for the transformation of the Higher Education sector following the demise of the oppressive Apartheid system of government (Badat 2010). These include, among others, the Higher Education Act 101
2012
At the dusk of the twentieth and the dawn of the twenty-first centuries transnational mobility is increasingly becoming an important space through which many of our human activities are defined. Virtually all aspects of our modern world–our jobs, culture, educational systems, ideologies, identities and even our relationships with one another are highly negotiated and inadvertently transformed by the profound forces of mobility. Through indepth interviews conducted with transnational academics of African origin in the Faculty of Humanities, Development and Social Sciences (FHDSS) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) this paper posits to critically provide an understanding on the role that transnational mobility has played in challenging the current thinking of foreign African academics pertaining to the issue of African scholarship. Given that UKZN is branded the ‘Premier University of African Scholarship’ the paper demonstrates how foreign African migrants are taking advantage ...
2022
This thesis explores the inherent complexities and contradictions embedded in the radical turn in South African historiography with regards to the decolonisation of the discipline of history in South African universities under apartheid from 1960 to 1991. By choosing to deconstruct radical history in a white liberal university, the study seeks to further demonstrate the limits of intellectual decolonisation and its underlying assumptions in the academic field during apartheid. It interrogates radical history as a form of academic resistance and leads a reflection on the political role of the intellectual in the context of the anti-apartheid struggle, asking more broadly: to what extent can radical academic history be considered "de/colonised knowledge"? Building on the links between ideology and curriculum, this study aimed to measure the coloniality of history using history examination questions as tools to investigate the methodological, theoretical and ideological assumptions of historians. Theoretically, the study relied on the role of the historian as a recontextualising agent of disciplinary knowledge taught and examined within a historically white higher education institution to study its concomitant underlying historiographical silences at the time. Methodologically, it deployed quantitative and qualitative research methods, using interviews and semi-structured questionnaires with a targeted cohort of authentic interlocutors to triangulate the discursive analysis of institutionalised "de/colonised" historical knowledge. This interdisciplinary study was thus inscribed in a critical deconstructionist approach to knowledge which contributed to a finer conceptual and empirical understanding of the coloniality of history as a discipline and its reproduction in the South African higher education context. The study hopes (1) to contribute to understanding the nuanced intersections between the history of intellectual colonisation and decolonisation and how these tensions impacted on history education in the apartheid university, (2) to provide an original interdisciplinary mixed method of analysis of institutionalised "de/colonised knowledge", and (3) to contribute new critical insights into blind spots in South African radical historiography in higher education during the period 1960 to 1991, which could shed light on the various understandings of the imperative for decolonisation today in the discipline.