The world recently became even more complex. In days gone by, personal disgruntlement and consequent “disloyalty” on the part of diplomatic staff in possession of “sensitive” material (and therefore capable of, if not likely, to divulge this to adversaries), sometimes threatened relations between countries — that much has not changed. What has changed, however — […]
Bert Olivier
As an undergraduate student, Bert Olivier discovered Philosophy more or less by accident, but has never regretted it. Because Bert knew very little, Philosophy turned out to be right up his alley, as it were, because of Socrates's teaching, that the only thing we know with certainty, is how little we know. Armed with this 'docta ignorantia', Bert set out to teach students the value of questioning, and even found out that one could write cogently about it, which he did during the 1980s and '90s on a variety of subjects, including an opposition to apartheid. In addition to Philosophy, he has been teaching and writing on his other great loves, namely, nature, culture, the arts, architecture and literature. In the face of the many irrational actions on the part of people, and wanting to understand these, later on he branched out into Psychoanalysis and Social Theory as well, and because Philosophy cultivates in one a strong sense of justice, he has more recently been harnessing what little knowledge he has in intellectual opposition to the injustices brought about by the dominant economic system today, to wit, neoliberal capitalism. His motto is taken from Immanuel Kant's work: 'Sapere aude!' ('Dare to think for yourself!') In 2012 Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University conferred a Distinguished Professorship on him. Bert is attached to the University of the Free State as Honorary Professor of Philosophy.
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The language of globalisation
Japan is … well, different. Which does not say much, if one considers that the minutiae of experience make every day (even in familiar places) different from one day to the next. But the differences in Japan are palpable, albeit reminiscent of China, which I visited last year, in some ways. But only up to […]
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Symptoms of the ‘post-political’
I recently attended two international conferences — one in Brisbane, Australia, on Stem (Science, technology, engineering and mathematics) in education, and the other in Osaka, Japan, called ACE, or the Asian Conference on Education in the Age of Globalisation. What interested me about these conferences was their focus on (mainly, but not only, tertiary) education, […]
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The seductions of technology (2)
To grasp what Jean Baudrillard in his book Seduction (1990) understands by “seduction” where technology is concerned, one has to take note, first, of the way he displaces seduction: instead of employing it in a “lifeworld” sense, he transforms it into a metaphor which encompasses, not merely a psychological trait of lifeworld-communication, but the entire […]
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West Side Story: Beauty and social change
I recently rediscovered, in DVD format, one of my favourite films of all time — a musical, as it happens, which won no less than 10 Academy Awards way back in 1961, including that for Best Picture. The movie in question is West Side Story, a 20th century version of the immortal story of Shakespeare’s […]
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Zizek on ‘living in end times’
I have just started reading the prolific philosopher-psychoanalytic theorist Slavoj Zizek’s latest book (as far as I know), temptingly titled Living in the End Times (Verso, 2010), and already I am excited. On the cover, Zizek is described (by New Republic) as “The most dangerous philosopher in the West”, and with good reason. Unlike those […]
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The seductions of technology (1)
It has always been the case that technology is seductive — at least in the sense of persuading, without much effort, humans to yield to its power. And here power does not so much entail power over people, but also, especially, empowerment of people. In this sense technology is not simply a set of tools, […]
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The threat to democracy
The other day a colleague asked me to present a proposal for him at a meeting because I supposedly was an “expert at democracy”. I demurred in the face of this description, but afterwards thought that I should have pointed out to him that the notion of an “expert in democracy” is a contradiction in […]
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Identity: A complex thing
In the first of their trilogy of books — Empire, Multitude and Commonwealth — Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri make a distinction between two kinds of racism: “modern racism” and “postmodern racism”. The first, they point out, is recognisable by an essentialism of biological properties, specifically the pigmentation of one’s skin, which is supposed to […]
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Art: Elaborating on history or erasing it?
This essay (longer than my usual post length) first appeared in the catalogue for the Re-Sponse “retrospective” art exhibition that recently opened at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum (NMMAM) in Port Elizabeth, as a joint project between the Art Museum and the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University’s School of Music, Art and Design. I have […]
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What’s the connection between music and love?
“If music be the food of love, play on!” With these opening words of Twelfth Night, Shakespeare captured an essential bond between two things without which no human being should have to do, but — at least in the case of the latter — many people regrettably often have to do without. Nietzsche once observed […]
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Why is the (hi)story of Spartacus so fascinating?
The short answer to the question, why the story of Spartacus has fascinated people for centuries, is that it is a story of the endless quest for freedom on the part of humankind. Why endless, one may object — has history not “ended’, normatively speaking, when liberal, capitalist democracy appeared to triumph conclusively at the […]