And people who cannot afford electricity resort to burning biomass for warmth and cooking which has a detrimental effect on health
power
Posted inEquality, General, Lifestyle, Media, Tech
‘Aquaman’ and American superheroes
On the way back from a conference in Berlin just before Christmas 2019, I was catching up on movies on Qatar Airlines — a carrier with exceptional leg-space in economy class, so I could sit comfortably, at least — and I managed to select a number of excellent recent films, including Marc Webb’s Gifted (2017) […]
Posted inBusiness, General, Health, Media, News/Politics, Tech
So you think that Orwell’s ‘1984’ could only happen under a political dictatorship? Think again!
Many people — especially those who still read novels — will know George Orwell’s 1984, with its depiction of the brainwashing society of Big Brother, of Newspeak (the language designed to inhibit critical thinking), the Thought Police, and constant surveillance of every citizen, monitoring their behaviour (lest they should exhibit signs of discontent, or worse, […]
Posted inEquality, General, Health, Media, News/Politics
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 […]
Posted inGeneral, Media, News/Politics
On politicians without humour
In John Fowles’s novel, Daniel Martin (Triad Grafton, 1978), there is a wonderfully revealing passage as far as humourless politicians are concerned – the type that justifiably comprises the butt of comedians’ jokes. Dan and Jane (an old friend and one-time lover who accompanies him on a work-related trip to Egypt) are at a dinner-party […]
Posted inEquality, General, Media
The craving for power
The hankering after power is as old as human beings; no, older – it is as old as the first unicellular being that emerged from the primeval morass of evolution. After all, like all organisms since then, it would have tried its primitive best to survive, to stave off death. And isn’t that already an […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, General, News/Politics
Aesthetics of power and questioning what a ‘good’ university is
By Nompumelelo Zinhle Manzini It’s been two weeks of being at the University of Zululand (UniZulu) as a contract lecturer for the Philosophy Department. Perhaps these personal reflections are slightly premature but I think that they do bear some merit. I have only been on the main campus which is in Kwadlangezwa, which is in […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
A promising PhD-student’s take on the so-called ‘Zupta’- phenomenon
What follows here is a piece by one of my and Prof. Pieter Duvenage’s graduate students, Casper Lötter, who is a PhD-candidate in Social Philosophy at the University of the Free State – it first appeared in the Weekend Post on 5 November: ‘In a recent and valuable contribution, Raymond Suttner asks, “What is the […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence
Are we programmed for prejudice?
By Melanie Judge In offering a response to the question, “are we programmed for prejudice” I wish to make the case for why thinking about prejudice is incomplete without thinking about it alongside power. I will address this in two ways: Firstly, by problematizing dominant representations of the victims and perpetrators of prejudice, and how […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Lest we forget: What Marikana means to me
Your blood asks, how were the wealthy and the law interwoven? With what sulphurous iron fabric? How did the poor keep falling into the tribunals? How did the land become so bitter for poor children, harshly nourished on stone and grief? So it was, and so I leave it written. Their lives wrote it […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
A prodigious task facing the humanities: The creation of a new vocabulary
How does one articulate and make sense of the momentous changes that have taken place in the last three decades or so across the world, and that have not nearly run their course, if the existing vocabulary in the humanities is rapidly being unmasked as belonging to a different conceptual dispensation or “paradigm” – one […]
Posted inEnvironment, General
Why Africa should join the fossil fuel divestment movement
By Alex Lenferna Concern for poverty in Africa is coming from the most unexpected places lately: the boardrooms of fossil fuels companies. Multimillionaire fossil fuel execs, like Exxon’s Rex Tillerson and Peabody’s Charles Meintjes, are painting themselves as Africa’s saviours, claiming that fossil fuels are the answer to Africa’s poverty and development problems. The often […]