Shane Moran - Alternation Journal

,4cclrle11lic Exchanges
liberation str~~ggle~. But it is also important to recall that, whatever their decl
principles, liberal South African universities opposed in principle to the evol
policy ofapartheid did practise segregation on their own initiative before either 194
the Extension of University Education Act of 1959. I11 an era of transformation the
of educational institutions in prornoting inequality and privilege remains obscu
behind declarations of critical rectitude and exhortatoly encomia claiming that, as
rare often "othered" by populist democratic discourse' (Malan 1995:22f)--the
ed subalte~n continues to speak.
If the university is well-positioned historically to promote the principles of
ated transition (inclusion, conciliation, consensus, and stability)-and so
u~nental to the project of nation building that requires a wide range of syinbolic and
ursive interventions integral to the forination of a new national consensus-it is
true that the university reproduces the tensions, conflicts and injustices of society
an institution traditionally fourided on principles ol'tlcmocracy, universalisln
and non-racialism. the uiiivcrsity has a duty and ;I moral obligation to
contribulc tonation-building (Kliotseng 1994:S).
e process of reflecting on these phenoniena. The university is one of the circuits
reby wealth and privilege are distributed that is able to both register and subs~ilne
ssures of the polity beneath the prospect of national unity. As well as providilig a
um for the production of model-ilising klite, corporatist-style elite pacting and
Whcn the 'principles' of the university function within the integuments o
oppressive socio-economic system, pronouncements by academics extollil
virtues of citizenship and democracy call conceal unequal relations behind a ju
form ol'equality. Aftitmations of electorialisrn and constitutionalism emanatin
universities employing abstract collective postulates (general will, people,
culture, community, etc.) are designed to serve as principles of unity and equa
they can equally function to fix arbitrary arid unequal relations between
conceived as agents. It is notable that the reformist rhetoric of rcpresentationalisin
constitutionalism of progressive university mission stateinents has not challen
existing property relations but rather promoted a redistribution of 'opportunity'
key to equity7. Valedictol.ian professions of marginality aside---'acadeinics in pos
1 stratification, the institution is as likely to display a 'duty andmoral obligation' to
nd work to ensure its own existence.
The image of the university as the point of intersection of social
~gations-a type of autonomous but responsible moral legislature mediating
tween the executive and civil society-obscures the position of institutions within a
law that depends on a sanctioning power backed up by consent and violence'.
versities refer to themselves as 'communities', as civil societies in miniature,
slve power relations within the institution that do mirror the civil war of society
ge, along with the material interests of the academic knowledge class (centred on
ecurity), are minimised. There can be no simple exchange of political imperatives
cademic imperatives despite recent highly political calls for the depoliticisation of
university:
collected in Moss and Obeiy (1989) provide an overvielv ol'thc struggle in tlre late 1980s.
ill the next rniilenilium will ... bc i-uaykecl ... by a new awareness ol'ihe creativc and comlli
Most I-IRUs became sites ofstruggle during the 1980s (and a tkw long before
the 1980s). but thispolitical project ITILIS~ give way Lo the ncadenlic project of
the 1990s if these universities are to be reconstituted as ~mivrvsrties in postapartheid
South Africa(Switzcl- 19985).
African ferninisms
entification of the university as a site of struggle, South African feminislns hold
promise of critically interrogating the social function of the university and the
attention to the factors that
and set themselves the task of uncovering the complex
s that structure the university. South African academics have scrutinised
ional practices within the often nepotistic and sexist
y where in 1990 men constituted 73% of academic staff.
urban-LVestville involvcd tlrc
ecurity fir~rr accurately named
lorcs the dynamics of student