The pandemic is hastening neoliberal universities’ moves towards platform pedagogy, where lecturers become participants in the “just-in-time” gig economy and students become “clients”
universities
Posted inNews/Politics
A pandemonium of Nzimande’s making
The higher education sector should be the most innovative in a crisis, but the minister failed dismally
Posted inEquality, General
Why capitalism cannot afford to support the human sciences
Ever wondered why capitalism does not (in fact, cannot afford to) tolerate and support the human sciences – in other words, the humanities and social sciences? There is a reason for this. The short answer is that they cultivate critical thinking and practice, which capitalism, in its current attempt to consolidate its global power, naturally […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Protests herald the emergence of new democratic subjectivities
We are in Valletta, Malta, at a conference at present, and I have just done a presentation on the reasons for the widespread nihilism in the world today. What struck me was the fact that a number of the other delegates who came to me afterwards to talk to me about my presentation expressed their […]
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, News/Politics
Violence is a necessary process of decolonisation
By Zinhle Manzini On February 25 it was reported that two buildings and a car were burnt at the North West University Mafikeng campus, yet this incident is not the only occurrence of violence that has disrupted some of South Africa’s universities. One would recall that a bus was also set alight a week ago […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
Student protests as ‘acting out’
The recent, and still continuing university student protests across the country call for a more fundamental theoretical approach. Although one could always address them at the level of “common sense” or everyday discourse (which is what I have done here before), it is perhaps time to elaborate on the fruits yielded by a psychoanalytical perspective […]
Posted inGeneral, Media, Tech
The ‘stupidifation’ of our societies and failure of universities
It may come as quite a shock to learn that, contrary to what we are constantly told through the media, we actually live in the age of the systematic “stupidification” and infantilisation of society. What, I can hear most readers say with exasperation and indignation — we live in the age of information, of “knowledge […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Bravo students: ‘The doors of learning and culture shall be opened’
The ongoing student protests across the country confirm, unambiguously, the failure of the neoliberal system in South Africa, which requires a hefty increase in student fees every year, given the fact that universities are now part of the invidious neoliberal economic system, instead of being state-funded public institutions. And don’t tell me that it is […]
Posted inGender violence
Yes means yes, lessons from affirmed consent
Freshmen (first-year university students) across the US are in the middle of what is known as “the red zone” — a period of time in which an especially high number of incidences of sexual violence are reported on college campuses. It is during this period that US universities typically engage in numerous awareness campaigns that […]
Posted inEquality, General
Luister, you can keep your Oxford scholarship
By Mark John Burke Three years ago, I sat around a dinner table as one of 10 national finalists for five very prestigious scholarships to Oxford. Across from me sat a professor who insisted: “We need to do away with Afrikaans completely. It is the language of the oppressor. We need to start with universities.” […]
Posted inGeneral
You say I’m not African – but that’s where I’m from?
… And my parents were also born and raised in South Africa? Those were the questions running through my mind during an encounter with a senior member of the English Department, Julia*, at a university here in Auckland where I was studying in 2014. We were pleasantly discussing possible PhD courses I could look at […]
Posted inEquality
The academic transformation we seek is not obvious
By Unathi Beku I have been silently observing the debate surrounding the transformation that students in public higher education seek in South Africa. At the forefront of this debate has been the removal of colonial (European) edifices that serve as metaphors for institutional racism and Western knowledge production patterns. Students are calling for more representative […]