In Ubuntu: Curating the Archive (edited by Leonhard Praeg and Siphokazi Magadla), Ama Biney notes in the chapter “The Historical Discourse on Humanism: Interrogating the Paradoxes” that Aimé Cesaire notably made the case that Hitler’s crime was mainly that “he applied to Europe colonialist procedures, which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs […]
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Posted inNews/Politics
Mad dog lawmakers and Englishmen go out in the midday sun
The infantalisation of society continues apace. Instead of instilling a modicum of common sense and self-responsibility, most governments find it far less onerous to just swaddle their citizens in cotton wool and park them in front of the TV. This week the South African government tabled draft legislation to make it illegal for school tuck […]
Posted inGeneral, Media
Capitalism: Why we live in a ‘schizo society’
What a pleasure it is to be in Istanbul — probably the most sensuous city in the world — for a conference on one of the most innovative and profound thinkers of the 20th century, if not in the history of philosophy, Gilles Deleuze (whose extensive collaborative work with Felix Guattari makes it imperative to […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The difficulty with De Kock
By Clare Ballard By not releasing apartheid’s most notorious assassin, De Kock, we have released all those who benefitted from his actions … — Tshepo Madlingozi On Thursday, Justice Minister Michael Masutha conveyed his decision to refuse former death squad commander Eugene de Kock’s application for parole to the public. His decision, although unsurprising, is […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality
How to save capitalism from the capitalists
It is always a bit surprising to hear an economist described as a “rock star” in the media, but Thomas Piketty has been collecting this accolade in spades since the publication of his runaway bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. It surely says something interesting about our times that this 700-page tome packed with dense […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, News/Politics
A case for rethinking Africa’s development
Development is an indispensable aspect of socio-economic progress and civilisation — development should be thought of far more than just economic growth. As Thandika Mkandawire has put it, the search for development has become so consuming that it, more or less, assumes the form of an ideology to which post-colonial African leaders subscribed to under […]
Posted inEquality, Health, Media
Auschwitz should put us off our food
While a crudely assembled advert that ran in the Mail & Guardian featuring pictures of a pork factory farm and concentration camp prisoners side by side was naïve, the reaction from Caryn Gootkin in her piece, “I’m a Jew, not a pig” is misplaced. Quite rightly, we’re shocked by pictures of the camp inmates, and […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Young South Africans still slipping through the cracks
To commemorate the brave stance taken by the youth of 1976, the month of June is dedicated as youth month to celebrate young people in the country — with June 16 used to commemorate the youth of 1976. This year’s celebrations were particularly notable, as South Africa celebrates its 20th year of democracy. The month […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
How to challenge your whiteness…
I am a white South African man, and when I wrote about the problems of white masculinity I faced a barrage of abusive tweets, threats and even a phone call to one of my work colleagues to complain about my writing. Ironically, all of this proved the argument I was making. More importantly: it proved […]
Posted inEquality, Media
The dangerous sentimentality of Alice Mann’s ‘Domestic Bliss’
A photographic series by a white employer on her domestic worker was always going to be problematic, but I didn’t know how problematic until I was presented with Alice Mann’s Domestic Bliss. In her artist statement she says: “This series of portraits depicts black, female domestic workers in the homes of their white employers in […]
Posted inEquality
What does a ‘non-racial’ SA look like?
The University of California Humanities Research Institute’s Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory in conjunction with the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research’s (Wiser) Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism kicked off yesterday at the University of the Witwatersrand. The theme is “Archives of the Non-Racial“. It began with a conversation between Ahmed Kathrada and […]
Posted inEnvironment, Tech
Human extinction? It’s not just science fiction
At a recent science fiction conference (thematically called “East/West SF”), arranged under the auspices of the “Brain Korea” project by Professor Ilgu Kim of Hannam University, Daejeon, Korea (about an hour by high-speed train from Seoul), a number of excellent papers were presented, none more so than the one by American Peter Paik, titled: “Science […]