Abstract
South Africa is a land on a sweeping scale – landscapes, populations, and devastations – but also of amazingly disconcerting, dislocating enclaves. Re-imagining the Social in South Africa, which emerged out of a seminar funded (in some part) by the National Research Foundation and Rhodes University, held in 2007 (presumably at Rhodes), illustrates both of these features. While holding out a sweeping potential horizon of interest, the collection is simultaneously constrained by some local particularities.
The book packages itself very ambitiously:
This subversive volume seeks to revive the tradition of intellectual argument that marked apartheid’s final years. Using critical theoretical perspectives, the contributors offer explanations for why post-apartheid discourses are narrowly focused and imagine different conversations around contemporary South African life. Reimagining the Social in South Africa aims to revitalise thinking on the twenty-first century South Africa by positioning the humanities, especially its critical spirit, at the very centre of the national conversation. (back page)
The challenges as seen by the authors (or more particularly the editors) appear to be two-fold: how racial redress might be played through and how the combined impacts of neoliberalism and globalization, which are often seen as hijacking a more optimistic trajectory for the country, are to be handled in the reconfigured post-apartheid society. After some general comments I will discuss the volume in terms of the agenda it sets for itself, the intellectual resources it draws on and the cogency of its arguments.
There are some standard difficulties with this volume which can be quickly despatched. While quality of ideas is more important than demographic representativeness, nevertheless it is problematic that the contributors are all male (except for one of the non-contributing editors) and all white (apart from one Indian and one Coloured) – and all South African (apart from one American). Not surprisingly, too, ‘local knowledge’ (which could have been added in by the editors) is required to understand many points which might have been better explained for an external readership, e.g. in Chapter 9, reference to troubles at UKZN or the undefined acronyms.
Sometimes this lack of explicating local context extends to ‘South African particularism’. Some of this arises from South Africa’s late insertion into the more recent configurations of universities, being protected for some decades by enforced isolation and trade bans which (at least partially) extended to academic matters. Another instance of this lag enflaming local sensibilities which might not be so internationally widespread is the horror expressed at the substitution of Spanish and Chinese language teaching for German, since there is a market for Spanish and Chinese translators: such pressures and choices are part of everyday life in the universities of many countries. As with all universities, in the longer run at least, student demand largely drives the extent to which different disciplines are able to prosper, and the blunt knife of student non-demand has affected natural science departments as well as some humanities. While there are good grounds for keeping intellectually important departments open, the trade-off can be large numbers of students in more popular subjects suffering from severely under-resourced learning.
Chipkin points to the limitations imposed by the Human Science Research Council’s research agenda being largely driven by the ‘development state’, but it is unlikely anywhere in the world that a state research agency would investigate the country’s power structure: a job usually allocated to another state-supported institution – universities.
The editorial introduction deploys the locally-familiar trope of two-stage development: that after the liveliness of (often Marxist inspired) debate in the pre-democracy period critical social theory in South Africa has fallen silent – at least partially in homage to the tribulations and challenges faced by the new government and in part because of the intellectually dulling effect of neo-liberalism. There is much truth in this, although there has still been continuing critique, e.g. the writings of Patrick Bond and, from outside, John Pilger, and even the Human Science Research Council’s annual Reviews contribute criticism. Moreover, a difficulty I have is the conception that social theory need only be critique whereas there is a need to also examine the theoretical aspects of constructive possibilities (documented in the South African literature) of exciting reform work in partnership with elements of the ‘powers that be’. For example, South Africa is to be noted for its at least partial resistance to globalization, and this resistance needs to be factored into thinking about the country.
Another unexamined prejudice is the attack on quantified sociology as inherently conservative: someone ought to have told this to Marx as he laboured with the statistics produced by UK inspectorates!
The first of the contributions is a bland but competent review of the roles of the social sciences and humanities, but by an American author who (therefore?) failed to understand what might be termed the ‘Afrikaner intellectual formation’ which was solidly built up during the broadly prosperous post-war years – this formation put together the humanities and social sciences into the Continental conception of the ‘human sciences’, albeit with a privileging of theology and a deflection away from the (rather problematic!) real world into benign, detached and settled discourses well-supported by the state through payment for publication in approved publishing outlets. (A classic example of this deflection was a South African adaptation of a standard American sociology text which failed to have an entry for poverty!) On the other hand, under the new dispensation there has been a valuable migration of scholars to more locally applicable fields, such as poverty studies, which had been studiously ignored by some portions of the intellectual establishment in previous decades, and this area of study has produced some world standard cutting-edge knowledge. Perhaps the continuing particularity of the South African intellectual scene is exhibited, for instance, when one reads (on p. 102) that a significantly abridged version [of the chapter] appeared in 2007 in Phroninium (Journal of the South African Society for Greek Philosophy and the Humanities). Having such a luxuriantly-named journal still surviving in a small, not economically well-off country is certainly a sign of the continued survival of Western civilization.
In terms of the agenda of issues considered, the focus seems largely on citizenship and political rights. Many issues which one might have thought would appear receive attention only as passing cameos: poverty, HIV/Aids, population pressures, the environment, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, etc. or, for that matter, South Africa’s continuing responsibilities in relation to the remainder of Southern Africa – pummelled first as ‘front-line states’ for harbouring ANC forces and then economically ‘punished’ as a resurgent South Africa swept away their economies.
In the introduction we are told that all the essays (with the exception of the first) draw on critical theory (by which I understand they mean Frankfurt-style critical theory). If so, many of the essays wear their learning lightly. In addition to this platform of (unexplicated) ideas, the reliance on overseas ideas is interesting: these include Fanon, Said, the French-based trio Lazarus/Badiou/wamBa-dia-wamba, Chatterjee, with academics who have more South African connections also receiving a little attention (Burawoy, Connell, Momdani). Some of the essays are less immediately relevant to the South African context and concerned with wider social theory debates – the connection between the works of Said and Marx is a more esoteric question than others posed in the symposium, but it is valuable as an investigation of a more fundamental issue of social theory than is tacked in the remainder of the volume.
In addition, what other theoretical resources should be called on? Another resource might be the theories emanating from the various social movements of the 1960s: issues of gender, environment, life-style, etc., e.g. participation. (Many young Black scholars are fascinated by some of these alternative ideas – their methodological problem, then, becoming how to study something whose time has yet to come.) I would have expected indigenous approaches to have been at least touched on: Ubuntu is one branding that has received local attention. Another approach might have been to locate South Africa amidst the tranche of (mainly East European) countries which swiftly democratized circa 1990 – and/or the partially overlapping group of large fast-growing and partially industrialized nations (Brazil, India and China are now often bracketed with South Africa for comparison purposes) – and to have woven these wider experiences and ideas into the discourse.
At some points the volume delves quite extensively into illustrative material. Pillay’s essay is well grounded in the historiography of South African analyses, especially of apartheid, and works its way through the historical debates – with the apparent view of uncovering problematics in the prevailing analyses so that post-apartheid can be better understood. Pithouse records present troubles of shack dwellers. But in both cases there is too much focus on the exigencies of the transformation or the contemporary situation rather than understanding it or laying the foundation of ideas for transforming it.
A final point concerns the extent of integration a reader might expect of a collection such as this with the possibilities for cumulative achievement from their collective efforts as a group of collaborators using their conference as the platform for dialogue. Unfortunately there is no sign that an active intellectual exchange took place. So the volume remains a set of separate essays.
My conclusion is that this volume represents an honourable attempt to assist in the development of social theory in South Africa. Much further work is required to build a more incisive agenda of concerns and a more comprehensive approach towards these. This volume has perhaps been very considerably hobbled by the long shadows of the South African historical situation in ways that the participants may not have been able to grasp (and perhaps would be horrified if they did). The South African state has irritated tolerated criticism, its sustained pursuit is entirely in the hands of South African intellectuals.