scholarly journals Geopolitics of Power and Knowledge in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Decolonial Reflections on a Global Crisis

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 366-389
Author(s):  
Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
World Order ◽  
Global South ◽  
Global Crisis ◽  
Knee Jerk ◽  
The Third ◽  
Historical Archive ◽  
Living Together

This article offers a provisional decolonial reading of the crisis created by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The article performs five interrelated tasks. The first task addresses the question of knowledge and theorizing during exceptional moments. A decolonial case is made for seeking mitigations and solutions to COVID-19 based on the African knowledge and epistemologies from the Global South. Africa in particular and the Global South in general have the richest histories and experiences of epidemics and pandemics. This moment of the COVID-19 pandemic raises questions about the geopolitics of knowledge (which historical archive do we run to, who should learn from whom, and which epistemology is privileged?). The second task is to outline how the triple concepts of paradox, crisis, and crossroads (PCC) can help us to gain a better understanding of the issues cascading in this moment of the COVID-19 pandemic. The third task is a critique of lockdowns as knee-jerk reactions in Africa, since they are not sustainable, and they impinge on life, security, freedom, and economy in fragile African environments. The fourth task is to introduce 10 Ds of the decolonial turn —Deimperialization, De-Westernization, Depatriachization, Deracialization, Debourgeoisement, Decorporatization, Democratization, Deborderization, Decanonization, and Desecularization—which help in envisioning a post-COVID-19 decolonial world order. The final task is to propose decolonial love as the soul of the post-COVID-19 world order based on a new ethics for living together, economies of care, a politics of conviviality, and hospitality as opposed to enmity. Africa in particular and the Global South in general constitute the author’s locus of enunciation.

scholarly journals The colonial matrix of power: Image ontology and the question of blackness

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Itumeleng D. Mothoagae
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Black People ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global South ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

The question of blackness has always featured the intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality and class. Blackness as an ontological speciality has been engaged from both the social and epistemic locations of the damnés (in Fanonian terms). It has thus sought to respond to the performance of power within the world order that is structured within the colonial matrix of power, which has ontologically, epistemologically, spatially and existentially rendered blackness accessible to whiteness, while whiteness remains inaccessible to blackness. The article locates the question of blackness from the perspective of the Global South in the context of South Africa. Though there are elements of progress in terms of the conditions of certain Black people, it would be short-sighted to argue that such conditions in themselves indicate that the struggles of blackness are over. The essay seeks to address a critique by Anderson (1995) against Black theology in the context of the United States of America (US). The argument is that the question of blackness cannot and should not be provincialised. To understand how the colonial matrix of power is performed, it should start with the local and be linked with the global to engage critically the colonial matrix of power that is performed within a system of coloniality. Decoloniality is employed in this article as an analytical tool.Contribution: The article contributes to the discourse on blackness within Black theology scholarship. It aims to contribute to the continual debates on the excavating and levelling of the epistemological voices that have been suppressed through colonial epistemological universalisation of knowledge from the perspective of the damnés.

scholarly journals Decolonisation, Identity, Neo-Colonialism and Power

Phronimon ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bert Olivier
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
World Order ◽  
Related Question ◽  
The Third ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
The World ◽  
Hardt And Negri ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Manuel Castells

This paper explores the implications of “decolonisation,” first by focusing on the work of African thinker, Frantz Fanon’s work in this regard, particularly his insistence that decolonisation entails the creation of “new” people, before moving on to the related question of “identity.” Here the emphasis is on the work of Manuel Castells, specifically his examination of three kinds of identity-construction, the third of which he regards as being the most important category for understanding this process in the 21st century, namely “resistance identity.” It is argued that this casts the decolonisation debate in South Africa in an intelligible light. An interpretation of E.M. Forster’s paradigmatically “decolonising” novel, A Passage to India, is offered to unpack the meaning of the concept further, before switching the terrain to the question of the urgent need for a different kind of decolonisation, today, pertaining to the economic neo-colonisation of the world by neoliberal capitalism. The work of Hardt and Negri on the emerging world order under what they call “Empire” is indispensable in this regard, and their characterisation of the subject under neoliberal Empire in terms of the figures of the indebted, securitised, mediatised and represented, stresses the need for global decolonisation in the name of democracy. This part of the paper is concluded with a consideration of what decolonisation is really “all about,” namely power.

scholarly journals Decolonizing theology

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Ward
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Global South ◽  
Main Body ◽  
African Theology ◽  
The Third ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Theological Task

In this essay, the author aims to deal with two questions, namely (1) how decolonized is South African theology? And if there is a sense that South African theology needs to decolonized, then the second question is (2) how should this be done? The first is raised as an interrogative starting-point, and is therefore not conclusive, since the author is admittedly, not fully versed in South African theology. Thus, the main body of the work is concerned with the second question, and thus proposes a three-stage method for decolonizing theology in South Africa. The first involves ‘provincializing’ the Western context as a background for doing theology in the Global South. The second concerns the ‘translation’ of concepts into the differing contexts where theology is produced, and the third is related to the question of ‘affirmation’, in the sense of positively acknowledging culture as being reflective of the diversity of people groups. The author closes with some reflections on theological task today, specifically as this relates to mission, the definition of tradition, and its connection to the academy.

Spillovers to the Global South

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yilmaz Akyüz
Keyword(s):  
World Economy ◽  
Commodity Prices ◽  
Global South ◽  
Capital Inflows ◽  
Global Crisis ◽  
Advanced Economies ◽  
The World ◽  
Run Up ◽  
Global Growth ◽  
Very High

The crisis demolished the myth that EDEs were decoupled from advanced economies and BRICS were becoming new engines of global growth. From 2011 onwards, with the end of the twin booms in commodity prices and capital inflows, growth in EDEs has converged downward towards the depressed levels of advanced economies from the very high levels achieved in the run-up to the global crisis and the immediate aftermath. Loss of momentum is particularly visible in economies that failed to manage the earlier booms prudently. In examining the spillovers from policies in major advanced economies and China to EDEs, the chapter introduces the notion of commodity-finance nexus wherein these markets reinforce each other during both expansions and contractions. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of policies needed to put the world economy into decent shape and to avoid liquidity and debt crises in EDEs.

Good Governance

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henk Addink
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
National Level ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
Modern State ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The Third ◽  
Legal Perspective ◽  
Further Development

The pivotal aim of this book is to explain the creation, development, and impact of good governance from a conceptual, principal perspective and in the context of national administrative law. Three lines of reasoning have been worked out: developing the concept of good governance; specification of this concept by developing principles of good governance; and implementation of these principles of good governance on the national level. In this phase of further development of good governance, it is important to have a clear concept of good governance, presented in this book as the third cornerstone of a modern state, alongside the concepts of the rule of law and democracy. That is a rather new national administrative law perspective which is influenced by regional and international legal developments; thus, we can speak about good governance as a multilevel concept. But the question is: how is this concept of good governance further developed? Six principles of good governance (which in a narrower sense also qualify as principles of good administration) have been further specified in a systematic way, from a legal perspective. These are the principles of properness, transparency, participation, effectiveness, accountability, and human rights. Furthermore, the link has been made with integrity standards. The important developments of each of these principles are described on the national level in Europe, but also in countries outside Europe (such as Australia, Canada, and South Africa). This book gives a systematic comparison of the implementation of the principles of good governance between countries.

AI and the Global South

2020 ◽  
pp. 587-606
Author(s):  
Chinmayi Arun
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Third World ◽  
Global South ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
The Third ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
The Third World ◽  
Postcolonial History

This chapter details how AI affects, and will continue to affect, the Global South. The term “South” has a history connected with the “Third World” and has referred to countries that share postcolonial history and certain development goals. However, scholars have expanded and refined on it to include different kinds of marginal, disenfranchised populations such that the South is now a plural concept—there are Souths. The AI-related risks for Southern populations include concerns of discrimination, bias, oppression, exclusion, and bad design. These can be exacerbated in the context of vulnerable populations, especially those without access to human rights law or institutional remedies. The chapter then outlines these risks as well as the international human rights law that is applicable. It argues that a human rights–centric, inclusive, empowering context-driven approach is necessary.

scholarly journals The Conditions for after Work: Financialization and Informalization in Posttransition South Africa

PMLA ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 127 (4) ◽  
pp. 782-799 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Maria Makhulu
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Informal Settlements ◽  
Global South ◽  
First Century ◽  
Informal Employment ◽  
Shop Floor ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Informal Economies ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
Modes Of Life

This essay situates the problem of twenty-first-century work in the global South—specifically, in South Africa—to challenge northern theories of the crisis of work. Addressing the break between Fordism and post-Fordism peculiar to the postcolonial context, it argues that new regimes of work should be understood in relation both to longer histories of colonial resistance to proletarianization (to the racisms of the shop floor) and to colonial Fordisms, as well as to the way these two factors inform the current expansion of informal employment. What practices and forms of life emerge from the precarity of informal economies and informal settlements? How are precarious modes of life connected to and informed by the steady dematerialization of the economy through financialization?

scholarly journals A potential krimpsiekte vaccine

2007 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
C.J. Botha ◽  
J.E. Crafford ◽  
V.P. Butler ◽  
M.N. Stojanovic ◽  
L. Labuschagne
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Bovine Serum Albumin ◽  
Immunological Response ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Third ◽  
Protein Conjugate ◽  
Bovine Serum Albumin Conjugate ◽  
Small Stock ◽  
Antibody Titres ◽  
Glycoside Poisoning

Krimpsiekte, a chronic form of cardiac glycoside poisoning, is an important plant-induced intoxication of small stock in South Africa. It is caused by cumulative, neurotoxic bufadienolides, such as cotyledoside. A cotyledoside-bovine serum albumin conjugate was synthesized to immunize animals. The efficacy of the cotyledoside-conjugate in inducing an immunological response was ascertained in rabbits (n = 4) and sheep (n = 4) by determining cotyledoside antibody titres with an ELISA using cotyledoside-hen ovalbumin as antigen. The formation of anticotyledoside antibodies was induced in both rabbits and sheep following immunization with the cotyledoside-protein conjugate. Protection provided by the vaccine was demonstrated by challenging sheep (n = 4) with repeated, daily doses of cotyledoside (0.015 mg / kg) administered intravenously, commencing 45 days after the initial vaccination. One control animal died on Day 3 of the challenge period and the other was severely affected after administration of the third cotyledoside dose. The immunized ewes (n = 2) remained clinically unaffected and the challenge was suspended following six daily injections. Vaccination as a means of preventing krimpsiekte seems to be quite feasible and deserves further investigation.

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