Political agency in South African shack settlements
- Authors: Pithouse, Richard, 1970-
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: Conference paper
- Identifier: vital:6194 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008580
- Description: (From the introduction) In 2004 Mike Davis asked whether or not what he called 'the informal proletariat' could attain historical agency. The question posed by Davis sparked a largely speculative discussion in the radical edge of the metropolitan academy that often paid scant regard to the many careful studies dealing with the political agency of shack dwellers. The debate about the political capacities of the urban poor stretches back to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, whose views on the matter are well known, and Mikhail Bakunin who sustained their objectification but inverted its logic to conclude that “in them and only in them [the lumpen-proletariat ], and not in the bourgeois strata of workers, are there crystallized the entire intelligence and power of the coming Social Revolution”. In Africa the rational discussion of this question begins with Frantz Fanon who,dying of leukaemia and dictating his words from a mattress on the floor of a flat in Tunis in 1961, insisted that “Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched every time we have to do with the colonial problem.” One of the many ways in which he stretched the Marxism in the air at the time was to take the view that the lumpen-proletariat, as a sociological category, had no fixed political meaning. People who had been 'circling the cities' hoping, he said, 'to be let in', had sometimes offered their services to colonial oppression and had sometimes joined the revolution against colonialism. Moreover he argued that in the colonial context the urban poor, living outside of the “world of compartments”, did not only become a “gangrene eating into the heart of colonial domination” as an unintended consequence of a desire to survive, of a “biological decision to invade the enemy citadels”, but that some amongst these people would assume explicit political agency and that it is: “in the people of the shanty towns and in the lumpen-proletariat that the insurrection will find its urban spearhead.” In reaching this conclusion, and in insisting on this particular stretching of the dominant currents of the Marxism of the time, Fanon was sustaining a fidelity both to the actually existing politics that he had witnessed in various African countries as well as to his founding ethical axiom - to recognise “the open door of every consciousness.”
- Full Text:
- Authors: Pithouse, Richard, 1970-
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: Conference paper
- Identifier: vital:6194 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008580
- Description: (From the introduction) In 2004 Mike Davis asked whether or not what he called 'the informal proletariat' could attain historical agency. The question posed by Davis sparked a largely speculative discussion in the radical edge of the metropolitan academy that often paid scant regard to the many careful studies dealing with the political agency of shack dwellers. The debate about the political capacities of the urban poor stretches back to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, whose views on the matter are well known, and Mikhail Bakunin who sustained their objectification but inverted its logic to conclude that “in them and only in them [the lumpen-proletariat ], and not in the bourgeois strata of workers, are there crystallized the entire intelligence and power of the coming Social Revolution”. In Africa the rational discussion of this question begins with Frantz Fanon who,dying of leukaemia and dictating his words from a mattress on the floor of a flat in Tunis in 1961, insisted that “Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched every time we have to do with the colonial problem.” One of the many ways in which he stretched the Marxism in the air at the time was to take the view that the lumpen-proletariat, as a sociological category, had no fixed political meaning. People who had been 'circling the cities' hoping, he said, 'to be let in', had sometimes offered their services to colonial oppression and had sometimes joined the revolution against colonialism. Moreover he argued that in the colonial context the urban poor, living outside of the “world of compartments”, did not only become a “gangrene eating into the heart of colonial domination” as an unintended consequence of a desire to survive, of a “biological decision to invade the enemy citadels”, but that some amongst these people would assume explicit political agency and that it is: “in the people of the shanty towns and in the lumpen-proletariat that the insurrection will find its urban spearhead.” In reaching this conclusion, and in insisting on this particular stretching of the dominant currents of the Marxism of the time, Fanon was sustaining a fidelity both to the actually existing politics that he had witnessed in various African countries as well as to his founding ethical axiom - to recognise “the open door of every consciousness.”
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Thought amidst waste : conjunctural notes on the Democratic Project in South Africa
- Authors: Pithouse, Richard, 1970-
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: Conference paper
- Identifier: vital:6195 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008581
- Description: (from the introduction} In a recent essay Achille Mbembe argues that the rendering of human beings as waste by the interface of racism and capitalism in South Africa means that “for the democratic project to have any future at all, it should necessarily take the form of a conscious attempt to retrieve life and 'the human' from a history of waste”. He adds that “the concepts of 'the human', or of 'humanism', inherited from the West will not suffice. We will have to take seriously the anthropological embeddedness of such terms in long histories of "the human" as waste.”
- Full Text:
- Authors: Pithouse, Richard, 1970-
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: Conference paper
- Identifier: vital:6195 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008581
- Description: (from the introduction} In a recent essay Achille Mbembe argues that the rendering of human beings as waste by the interface of racism and capitalism in South Africa means that “for the democratic project to have any future at all, it should necessarily take the form of a conscious attempt to retrieve life and 'the human' from a history of waste”. He adds that “the concepts of 'the human', or of 'humanism', inherited from the West will not suffice. We will have to take seriously the anthropological embeddedness of such terms in long histories of "the human" as waste.”
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Media consumption and everyday life
- Authors: Strelitz, Larry N
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , Conference paper
- Identifier: vital:6324 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008550
- Description: I see this inaugural lecture as an opportunity to trace my journey into the field of media studies, showing how significant youthful experiences with the media set me off on my particular research trajectory. In this address I will use the umbrella term ‘mass media’ to cover both the traditional news media as well as forms of popular culture such as soap operas, popular music and so on. Sometimes we use the terms ‘popular culture’ and ‘mass media’ interchangeably as they both constitute the cultural life of ordinary people.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Strelitz, Larry N
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , Conference paper
- Identifier: vital:6324 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008550
- Description: I see this inaugural lecture as an opportunity to trace my journey into the field of media studies, showing how significant youthful experiences with the media set me off on my particular research trajectory. In this address I will use the umbrella term ‘mass media’ to cover both the traditional news media as well as forms of popular culture such as soap operas, popular music and so on. Sometimes we use the terms ‘popular culture’ and ‘mass media’ interchangeably as they both constitute the cultural life of ordinary people.
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An appraisal of the applicability of development journalism in the context of public service broadcasting
- Authors: Banda, Fackson
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Conference paper
- Identifier: vital:6322 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008548
- Description: The concept of ‘development journalism’ has, over time, become possessed by demons of all sorts of confusion. If we want to wrest any useful principles from the concept, it is important that we exorcise the demons it has come to be associated with, not least the demon of the postcolonial state’s blatant interference in the practice of journalism. This ‘demonisation’ of the concept is partly suggested by Shah’s observation that ‘development journalism’, central to many discussions of mass communication and development in the Third World, needs to be reconceptualised because deliberations about its validity and usefulness have been bogged down in arguments structured by Western notions of press freedom. The debate has diverted attention from important questions about how journalism can contribute to participatory democracy, security, peace, and other humanistic values (Shah 1996: 143). In this paper, therefore, I will, firstly, discuss the conceptual basis of development journalism. I will rely heavily on development communication theorising, which informs most of the discussions about development journalism. I want to demonstrate the historical ‘moments’ through which the concept has passed and, by so doing, point out the more redeemable features of the concept. Secondly, I will discuss the relevance of the development journalism paradigm to public service broadcasting. In conclusion, I will draw out some principles of development journalism and demonstrate how these can be implemented within the context of public service broadcasting.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Banda, Fackson
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Conference paper
- Identifier: vital:6322 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008548
- Description: The concept of ‘development journalism’ has, over time, become possessed by demons of all sorts of confusion. If we want to wrest any useful principles from the concept, it is important that we exorcise the demons it has come to be associated with, not least the demon of the postcolonial state’s blatant interference in the practice of journalism. This ‘demonisation’ of the concept is partly suggested by Shah’s observation that ‘development journalism’, central to many discussions of mass communication and development in the Third World, needs to be reconceptualised because deliberations about its validity and usefulness have been bogged down in arguments structured by Western notions of press freedom. The debate has diverted attention from important questions about how journalism can contribute to participatory democracy, security, peace, and other humanistic values (Shah 1996: 143). In this paper, therefore, I will, firstly, discuss the conceptual basis of development journalism. I will rely heavily on development communication theorising, which informs most of the discussions about development journalism. I want to demonstrate the historical ‘moments’ through which the concept has passed and, by so doing, point out the more redeemable features of the concept. Secondly, I will discuss the relevance of the development journalism paradigm to public service broadcasting. In conclusion, I will draw out some principles of development journalism and demonstrate how these can be implemented within the context of public service broadcasting.
- Full Text:
Media and cyber-democracy in Africa: an introduction
- Authors: Banda, Fackson
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Conference paper
- Identifier: vital:6323 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008549
- Description: The paper provides a sketch of the discourse of media and ‘cyber-democracy’ in and out of Africa. Firstly, it discusses the characteristic features of new media technology. Secondly, it attempts a ‘theorising’ of cyber-democracy, within the context of general democratic theory. Thirdly, it sets out a vision of cyber-democracy for Africa. In delineating this vision, it highlights six features characteristic of the democratic potential of new media technology and gives examples of how Africa has appropriated them. Finally, it outlines a ‘new media’ research agenda for Africa.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Banda, Fackson
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Conference paper
- Identifier: vital:6323 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008549
- Description: The paper provides a sketch of the discourse of media and ‘cyber-democracy’ in and out of Africa. Firstly, it discusses the characteristic features of new media technology. Secondly, it attempts a ‘theorising’ of cyber-democracy, within the context of general democratic theory. Thirdly, it sets out a vision of cyber-democracy for Africa. In delineating this vision, it highlights six features characteristic of the democratic potential of new media technology and gives examples of how Africa has appropriated them. Finally, it outlines a ‘new media’ research agenda for Africa.
- Full Text:
Media in the service of citizens
- Authors: Banda, Fackson
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Conference paper
- Identifier: vital:6321 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008547
- Description: This lecture looks at the role of the media in promoting an enhanced citizenship, locating the debate within the discourse of development and freedom. It identifies threats to what can be characterised as a 'media-citizens compact', such as media over-commercialisation. It concludes that public-service media are cardinal to the enjoyment of citizenship rights and freedoms.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Banda, Fackson
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Conference paper
- Identifier: vital:6321 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008547
- Description: This lecture looks at the role of the media in promoting an enhanced citizenship, locating the debate within the discourse of development and freedom. It identifies threats to what can be characterised as a 'media-citizens compact', such as media over-commercialisation. It concludes that public-service media are cardinal to the enjoyment of citizenship rights and freedoms.
- Full Text:
Power play and the changing face of English
- Authors: De Klerk, Vivian A
- Date: 1992
- Language: English
- Type: Conference paper
- Identifier: vital:6126 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011599
- Full Text:
- Authors: De Klerk, Vivian A
- Date: 1992
- Language: English
- Type: Conference paper
- Identifier: vital:6126 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011599
- Full Text:
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