Shane Moran - Alternation Journal

envisaged equity of opportunity for appropriation grounded in reciprocal contract emics and legitimacy
obligation is undermined by the persisting reality of possession by inisappropsiat ey Durrant returned to Natal after studying English at Cambridge
Those working within vital centres of episteinic power and contlict like the S
ounced the critical task of addressing
African university-where the social identities of acade~nics are fi~rcefully i
with the metonymic forces of political representation-are in a position to re
conception of academics at variance with the ideal offacililatoi-s ofcritical think
autonoiny. Students can have a lcss benign view of the social function and ir
how tho~~gltt can be made free, not only from goveniment tyranny. but also
from the more subtle ancl pervasive Ly~annies of con-cmercial society (Durrant
tilose employed to shape them into better citi~ens. Universities are not them English literary studies was 'to humanise our knowledge and to make our
dcinocrntic ;tr~lcturcs, and the vision of ihe popular involvernent of the into centres of living thought for the whole community' (Durrant
iviiiii~l ihe iiirive~qity is not the same thing as cienloci-atic participation and control ull-ant (1948) drew attention to the historical context of the production,
institution. Rather universities exercise authority over their student constituent aching of literature, and appealed for a inore democratic post-war
back this up ~vitli coercive power; authority is defended by nther social a~ici po
iiistitutioni ihai are committed lo the protection of property, arid which
necessarily sliaril the same enlightenedprinciples as the university
Appiah fails to register [hat the autonomy ofthe academic colninitted to so
j~istice is constrained by being located withill an ameliorationist social institut
functions to both coutitcract illzdreproduce thc inequity of existing property relati
hcadeinic fieedoni is part of a broader historicisable ideology of individualism
both legitinmkes and challe~~ges social inequalities. Thc clegree to which Appi
argunient prc-emptively positions potential dissenters as anti-democratic pr
glinipse of the Janus fjce of the new world order that moralises capitalism in tert
progress and freedom. 'This effectively excludes a vital political and pedago
qnestion: whether, !vithin the parameters of capitalism, the cont~
humanities towards producing autonoinous, critically thinking individ
beyond current conditions and create new opportunities is best achieved by
consent through Rousseauistic sentiments of sociability, or by encouraging the ra
nt in which a revised education system could combat the proble~ns of
foster critical attitudes in students. Responding to the state's
ial capitalism, Durrant (1955) appealed for the preservation of the
of literatme in a hostile ideological environment'.
Beyond the university in the 1950s, South African radical i~itellectuals saw tlie
lation of the aim of pedagogy as the Inere transmission of culture as a reactionary
t to rob education of its potency and force. Recognising that teachers have
held a hybrid position as quasi-civil servants and that they are paid by the very
s of the goveniinent they may seek to challenge, claiins were made for the
ic potential of pedagogy. In a vibrant and now largely forgotten
d activists beyond the university interrogated the link between
htentnent and the political task of transfonning, the country by political struggle.
imitations and potential ofpolitical pedagogy were delineated in the context of the
iple of non-collaboration with the racist state where participation in government
ed to collaborating with the oppressors3. Arguing against erecting
ctic of the boycott into a principle, Walter Sisulu (1957) proposed that
interrogation of civil society (see Muller & Cloete 199 1). pation ill these institutions may at times be the most effective inethod of exposing
The possibility that factors of location and context, sites of institutio and struggling for more effective representation. A varied discourse of
and discursive privilege, are enacting oppressive episteruic relations haunts s sought to address the oppressed masses with the call to challenge
work in the shadow of 'Bantu Education'. In response South AErican intellectuals, isting centres of legitimacy, and transform institutions from an alien social power.
academics within English literature departments, have produced their own traditio
lutionary enthusiasm was accompa~iied by sober warnings against overestirnati~ig
reflectio~l 011 politicalpedagogy.
olitical effect of pronouncelnents by pedagogues in a context marked by a
stricted and distorted public sphere.
By the early eighties, and then writing from outside South Afi-ica, Du~rant
'
'At least one person was shot dead and anothcr stabbed on Tuesday this week, when po
and 300 private security guards movc'd in to ciemolisli a burgeoning informal settlement on t
outskirts ofRandfontein's Mohlakeng township. in terms of acourt order granted last mon
See Ndebele (1973), Kirkwood (1 976) Sole (1 977) Vaughan ( 1984). Attwell (I 984) Visser
South Afiica~i National Civic Organisation (Sanco) condemned the "brutality and
. De Kock (1992). and Johnson (1996) for critiques of tlie South African English liberal
handedness" of the action and accused thc [ANC] conncil of dislring out "worse treatriien
apartheid-cra courrcillors' (Mirii ct C;lirrriiion October 10 to 16. 1997). Which cautions aga
ee E.L. Maurice (1952) and the response of A.K. Jordaan. See Also Tom Lodge's (1984:
precipitate triumpllalism of sucli claims as: 'Today when apartheid is^--still incredibly-a tl accounts of the 1955 school boycotts and role of teachers in the PAC's Poqo during the
oftlie past' (1,ouvcl 1997: 12 1).
.andMyslop(l991).