Everybody knows the story of the emperor’s new clothes — where a vain emperor contracted two so-called ‘tailors’ to make him a new set of clothes, not knowing that they were con artists. By flattering the emperor about his handsome appearance in the supposedly new clothes, when in fact there was nothing, and assuring him […]
theory
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Does theory guarantee emancipatory action?
The triumph of neoliberalism globally, with the exception of a few pockets of resistance, signifies the weakness of theory, that is, of the claims that theory is endowed with the resources to transform the world through a kind of enlightenment followed by emancipatory action. What evidence is there, however, that neoliberal capitalism reigns supreme in […]
Posted inGeneral, Health
Theoretical psychology in Tokyo
Tokyo is a wonderful city. It is also beyond huge. I thought that Seoul in Korea was huge, with its 16 million inhabitants in the greater metropolitan area, but the equivalent metropolitan area of Tokyo packs approximately 40 million people (a UN report of 2014 put it at 38 million). From the viewing deck of […]
Posted inGeneral
A flexible model for research in the human sciences
It often happens that postgraduate students and I have conversations about the question, how to go about doing research in the humanities and social sciences (the “human sciences”). And I’m not only talking about methodology (which is not the same as method); methodology is closely intertwined with epistemological (knowledge-) and ontological (being-) questions, and cannot […]
Posted inGeneral
Fanon and the question of ‘white theory’
It is undeniable that Frantz Fanon identifies European, or “white” culture as racist to the core. It is equally undeniable that he affirmed the likelihood of the discourses of knowledge emanating from this culture being equally racist. It stands to reason that a culture, which regards itself as being superior to all others, given its […]
Posted inGeneral
Situating (university) research in an encompassing social theory
As far as I can tell, research at most South African universities – and I would even include overseas universities in this – is conducted in such a way that it is guided principally by individual researchers’ interests, and/or their interests in so far as they overlap or dovetail with those of other researchers under […]