Although Beyoncé’s visuals are spectacularly beautiful, we are allowed to criticise ‘Black is King’ as reducing Africa for the gaze of the capitalist West
capitalism
If the government is really pursuing this, South Africa is toast
The ANC’s stubborn commitment to an incremental transformation into a communist state will lead to national suicide
Just how pervasive are narcotics in our societies?
Narcocapitalism by Laurent de Sutter presents some disturbing truths about the anaethetised state in which we live, whether our drugs of choice are illegal or available on prescription
Ideology and enjoyment: A reading of the film ‘It Could Happen to You’
It Could Happen to You reveals an ideology that measures value exclusively in terms of money, despite its best intentions
Africa must lead the way out of the pandemic
The continent, which has survived crushing ordeals brought by colonialism and capitalism, has built up experience in dealing with viral outbreaks such as Ebola
Theoretical psychology: A direct attack on neoliberalism in Copenhagen
Copenhagen is a beautiful city. It is also a financial black hole for South Africans. With a currency that is constantly edging lower against international currencies because of an inept and corrupt ANC government which cannot manage the country’s economic relations in such a way that its toxic internal political conflicts do not impact negatively […]
When work becomes inhuman, and when competition ruins relationships
Some time ago I wrote a piece on Shoshana Zuboff‘s recently published The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, and already other signs are beginning to appear that this invidious phenomenon is spreading in the workplace too, as surveillance of workers to ensure optimal productivity. In a recent edition of TIME magazine (‘When humans become robots‘; July […]
A world in need of redemption
This morning my two sons and I were having a texting exchange on Skype, while all of us were on our computers and online for various reasons — I was working and chatting to them in-between reading a PhD-student’s latest chapter of his thesis, and at least one of them was working while chatting too. […]
The American fascist, the Canadian activist and the French poststructuralist
In the Preface to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s major work, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (University of Minnesota Press, 1983, p. xii) Michel Foucault — another formidable post-structuralist thinker — makes the following observation in his brilliant characterisation of the book, where he lists the hostile forces targeted by Deleuze and Guattari: Last but not […]
Does the ANC realise that their expropriation drive will make of South Africa an economic ‘basket case’?
By the day I am more and more astonished that the ANC — with a leader whom I used to regard as an intelligent man — is forging ahead with an expropriation policy that can have only one result: lowering the economic status of South Africa to rock bottom, where it can rub shoulders with […]
Inequality and violent protests in South Africa
In 2014 I wrote a piece for this site on the work of psychoanalyst, Paul Verhaeghe, specifically the book in which he writes about the link between inequality in a market-based society and health problems across a wide spectrum. In addition to stress and anxiety symptoms, Verhaeghe pointed to something confirmed by other researchers too, […]
How technological control undermines human desire
Contrary to what most people believe, the world is approaching the dystopian totalitarian society portrayed in George Orwell’s 1984, although ours does not, at first sight, appear to be totalitarian. And yet it is every bit as controlled, albeit in a much more subtle way. The Canadian thinker, Gilbert Germain, homes in on this state […]