THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF RHODES MUST FALL: STUDENT ACTIVISM AND THE EXPERIENCE OF ALIENATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anye Nyamnjoh
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Student Activism ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Student Movement ◽  
Transformation Potential ◽  
University Of Cape Town ◽  
The University

Social movements often face the danger of becoming the very thing they are fighting against. This tension is evident within the student movement, Rhodes Must Fall, at the University of Cape Town. This dialectic is explored through the notion of 'alienation' as a concept of social philosophy. I argue that while the movement emerges from the experience of alienation, certain behaviours internal to the movement can also proceed to cause alienation. The lesson to be learnt from this contradiction is that we are all simultaneously oppressors and oppressed. From this emerges a positive understanding of alienation, as the experience of alienation is not only a negative one. One such positive lesson in this case is the alteration of our understandings of ourselves and others toward an all-inclusive liberation agenda. Failure to heed this could see the transformation potential of such movements like Rhodes Must Fall hijacked by hypocrisy.

scholarly journals Frantz Fanon and the #MustFall Movements in South Africa

2016 ◽  
pp. 22-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thierry M Luescher
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Student Movement ◽  
Frantz Fanon ◽  
University Of Cape Town ◽  
The University

What started in early 2015 as a series of protests at the University of Cape Town against the statue of Cecil John Rhodes expanded by the end of the year into a nationwide student movement under the label #FeesMustFall. This article analyzes the development and characteristics of the movement as a networked student movement along with its ideological inspiration in the work of Frantz Fanon. 

Double Thoughts

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Dean
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Paul De Man ◽  
Literature And Philosophy ◽  
De Man ◽  
University Of Cape Town ◽  
The University

Coetzee’s interest in destabilizing the boundaries of literature and philosophy is most evident in later fictions such as Elizabeth Costello. But as Andrew Dean argues in this chapter, this interest in moving across boundaries in fact originates much earlier, in Coetzee’s quarrel with the institutions and procedures of literary criticism. Coetzee used the occasion of his inaugural professorial lecture at the University of Cape Town (Truth and Autobiography) to criticize the assumption that literary criticism can reveal truths about literature to which literary texts are themselves blind. Influenced in part by such figures as Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, Coetzee posed a series of challenging questions about the desires at stake in the enterprise of literary criticism. Developing these thoughts, Dean explores the way in which Coetzee’s earlier fiction, including such texts as Foe (1986), is energized by its quarrelsome relationship with literary criticism and theory, especially postcolonial theory.

The Many Racial Effigies of Sara Baartman

2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kellen Hoxworth
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Racial Oppression ◽  
Black Paint ◽  
African Students ◽  
The Many ◽  
University Of Cape Town ◽  
The University

Six African students enact a somber, silent dance. They stage a series of striking images at the base of South African artist Willie Bester's sculptureSara Baartman, in the Chancellor Oppenheimer Library at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Their faces and bodies smeared with black paint, the students articulate their protest ofSara Baartmanin explicitly racial terms, aligning their critiques of economic, colonial, and racial oppression under the sign of blackness.

van Wyk Louw, Nicolaas Petrus (1906–1970)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heilna du Plooy
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
The Family ◽  
South African Literature ◽  
Literature History ◽  
Faculty Of Education ◽  
University Of Cape Town ◽  
The University

N. P. Van Wyk Louw is regarded as the most prominent poet of the group known as the Dertigers, a group of writers who began publishing mainly in the 1930s. These writers had a vision of Afrikaans literature which included an awareness of the need of thematic inclusiveness, a more critical view of history and a greater sense of professionality and technical complexity in their work. Van Wyk Louw is even today considered one of the greatest poets, essayists and thinkers in the Afrikaans language. Nicolaas Petrus van Wyk Louw was born in 1906 in the small town of Sutherland in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. He grew up in an Afrikaans-speaking community but attended an English-medium school in Sutherland as well as in Cape Town, where the family lived later on. He studied at the University of Cape Town (UCT), majoring in German and Philosophy. He became a lecturer at UCT, teaching in the Faculty of Education until 1948. In 1949 he became Professor of South African Literature, History and Culture at the Gemeentelijke Universiteit van Amsterdam. In 1960 he returned to South Africa to become head of the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johanneshurg. He filled this post until his death in 1970.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document