Kitabı oku: «Les zones critiques d'une anthropologie du contemporain», sayfa 6
Performing Arts and the Making of Cities
My career in South Africa actually began before and during the epochal Soweto student uprising of 1976, which changed the face of urban South Africa. What impressed me at the time was of course the sufferings of the black South African majority, but equally the resistance, indeed the achievement of cultural performance practitioners in creating and cultivating a milieu of black urban performance against the odds and against the state. Foucault said, in a moment of Derridian paradox that if you want something to grow, then attempt to stamp it out. Yet it was not so much repression as malevolent neglect that enabled the performing and literary arts to flourish in black townships.
As a result of my field research, I was persona non grata in South Africa for fourteen years. Ultimately I was allowed back as a Fulbright Fellow in 1991, part of the first cohort of Fellows sent to South Africa since 1962. Then in 1993, as democratic elections loomed, I was offered a position in anthropology at the University of Cape Town. This seemed an unmissable chance to participate in the building of a new, inclusive system of university research and education. Or what we hoped would be. Higher education would be a battle ground of social reconstruction and the struggle for post-apartheid South Africa’s soul. And I wanted to fight on it. I thought I would do a tour of duty and return home, but that struggle has not ended and I am unable to retreat now that I am a prisoner of that war. Turning to the role of the performing arts in that war, what came to impress me most over the years, and occupied my teaching, was the productivity through which artists of all sorts create the lasting character of cities. Any city, but in South Africa’s case, a struggle against such heavy-handed odds.
Society as a contested Space
In South Africa, the particular forms that colonial capitalist expropriation and post-colonial economic development took and are taking undeniably make for a heady, sometimes poisonous stew. The political cooks have spoiled the broth, and well-intended policies have been undermined by incompetent and corrupt implementation rooted in patronage and cronyism. Within university departments of social sciences and humanities, there is a parallel impasse in social and economic theory and practice. The failure to repair the damage of colonialism and apartheid or prevent the widening of inequalities in social and economic resources has led to frustration not only among the marginalized population but among intellectuals as well. At present, academic argument has been reduced to blaming the financially and politically empowered, impractical calls for a populist socialism or sincere but impotent special pleading for numerous demographic categories beset by social predation and injustice. More controversially, formulating and more importantly implementing a strategy, whether politically viable or not, that can transform the victims of agrarian and industrial exploitation and suppressive social engineering into independent minded, self-reliant citizens of a constitutional liberal democracy is proving an intractable problem. Such a transformation self-evidently takes a very long and at some junctures, turbulent time.
For example, the majority of South Africans excluded from the middle classes do not identify the promises of freedom and democracy with participatory citizenship, personal autonomy, an open society, or self-determination. They identify them with material well-being, and a mythic return to the land. Which is why in some communities “democracy“ is blamed for social disorder and immorality. Demand for the fulfilment of “promises“, both made and never made, are responsible for the surge of support for the ironically-named Economic Freedom Fighters among marginalized black youth in the recent elections. The argument goes: if one is not economically secure, one is not free. Providing such security is believed to be the responsibility of the state, itself the victim of a parasitic, predatory new political elite. Concomitantly, it has so far not proved so far not possible to wean either political authorities or technocrats in the public sector away from patrimonial, client-based systems of resource mobilisation and distribution, and the resulting appropriation of public funds to serve personal networks of power and financial gain. Led by, and sometimes leading on, corrupt managers at para-statal enterprises, which constitute the greatest obstacle to economic reform and revitalisation, the private sector is also deeply implicated.
Many of those whose tasks are to protect and strengthen democratic rights, institutions, and the rule of law do their utmost, but stagger under the weight of ingrained corrupt practices, arrogant entitlement, deliberately restricted resources, patriarchal, anti-democratic values, and political factionalism and manipulation. With regard to weak social morality and endless peremptory demands enforced by ready mass violence, provoking retaliation by the police, the common citizenry require but actively resist the extensive governance the government and its fragile institutions are unable to provide or sustain. Could it be, perish the thought that as the Italian proverb goes, the people are getting the government they deserve?
As South Africa goes, so goes Anthropology
A siamese-twinning of experience and self-projection, of identity and strategy, of simulation and dissimulation among the human subjects of our research in post-apartheid South Africa has led to paradigmatic fragmentation and conflict within the discipline. The English-speaking social anthropologists are shocked that the post-apartheid condition harbours the old forms of authoritarianism among new black leaders as well as among the citizenry. In dispute with the new grand narratives of modernization as we were with the old, anthropologists are almost as out of favour with the bureaucracy now, and it with us, as we were before liberation. Meanwhile, the attempts of our Afrikaans-speaking colleagues to retain their responsive relationships to government, and to substitute the term “culture“ for what was called “race“ appear to have had some success.
Our own efforts at practice-oriented introspection alerted us to the consequences of these realities for methodology. Ethnography now had to be pursued in a field saturated with factional politics, suspicion, antagonism, manipulation, disingenuousness and the ambivalent reflections of our subjects upon our researches and researchers. Indeed, perhaps this had always been the case. Our subjects were neither what they’d been thought to be, nor whom they claimed or seemed, and our categories were not reflected in situations on the ground. No one spoke for the community, though there was no lack of spokespersons. Many non-spokespersons wouldn’t speak to us at all, and those who would, wanted to ask rather than answer questions: Who were we? Who paid and sent us? Who and what did the research serve? What were we getting out of it? What would they get out of it? Could we get them attention, resources, services, justice or jobs? How could they be sure we got the “right“ impression? What, if anything, were we good for (Coplan 1998)?
Behind the uncomfortable silences of subjects who felt better safe than sorry were larger, more worrying questions: Was it simply the insouciant caution of the black American poet Paul Dunbar to wit; “Why should the world be over wise/In counting all our cares and sighs“ (Dunbar 1895), or were they in practical terms justified in trying to manage rather than engage us? It is apparent that our research subjects or interlocutors (ethnographic co-authors?) at this point have us figured out at least as well as we have them. And they have their own purposes for us and our work that are more important to them than ours. Most of the new generation of colleagues admit of none of this. “The People“ must be framed as the sincere source of authentic experience, and we of moral insecurity and privileged hypocrisy. In response to all this, a politics of not only of opposition, but politics in general, has come to dominate an anthropology desperate to demonstrate its bona fides to predictably radicalized students, and why “advocacy scholarship“ has become the order of our day (Jean Copans 2019).
Presently at our formerly “white“, now non-racial universities, there is great fear among academics of marginalization and even direct attack, based on long-lasting perceptions of anthropology as a colonial discipline impervious to populist political transformation. Professor Copans has spoken and written authoritatively on this dilemma as it has played out within Francophone African Studies (2000, 2006, 2013). In South Africa the result has been a consolidation of theoretical and empirical hegemony by the insurgent left, so that other political perspectives or indeed any perspective that is not overtly politically oriented have been publicly silenced. The agenda is to campaign on behalf of the “have-nots“, while attacking the existential legitimacy of the “haves“, the category to which academics guiltily believe they belong. Karl Marx is, as ever, the godfather of this insurgent hegemony, and Franz Fanon its totemic embodiment. And of equal concern, indeed, is the absence of any persuasive or fully coherent theoretical counter-discourse. The Comaroffs have done their indefatigable best to provide an alternative conceptualization of post-colonial ethnological theory (Comaroff and Comaroff 2009, 2012), but it has not the same apocalyptic rejectionist energy or self-conviction.
Of course it is not only in South Africa that the universities have, for the present, politically limited academic freedom and free speech. But as my life has become a longue durée, I have ceased to either lament or complain about this, or about my own present irrelevance. I am grateful that my department still tolerates my ancestral presence, and my spirit has moved on. I continue to hope, however, that the confrontation of advocacy with social reality will lead in the longer durée of scholarship to a re-orientation toward how the people are actually living and what they think and do about it. These would be the surest guidelines along the currently fashionable boulevard to “de-colonization“, and not faux-nativist rejections of cultural appropriation and globalizing hybridity so deeply imbricated in African world-views.
The case of Anthropology and “#FeesMustFall“
Journals, books, documentaries, and the internet are replete with accounts of South Africa’s “Fees Must Fall“ movement (2015–2017). Yet the issues that led to this rebellion and the severe crisis it caused have not been resolved, gone away, or ceased to influence teaching, scholarship, or academic life. Indeed, the value of the ethnographic “backstory“ for finding some form of resolution and a workable way forward is clearly evident. What did participants think, feel, say, and do on the basis of violently competing narratives, behind the doors of journalistic representation? In the case of the South African student protests of 2015–2016 demanding free tertiary education and the unspecified or undefined, “de-colonisation“ of the curriculum, certain realities played an important part:
1 Unemployment is high at more than 27% overall, and 52% among black youth. Economic growth is stagnant, and public corruption, bureaucratic obstruction, consumer debt, and over-taxation sap the efforts to spark recovery.
2 Tertiary education appears as the most direct and secure route out of unemployment and poverty and into some level of the “middle class“. Questions arise in popular discourse as to the justice of limitations on access to this seemingly straightforward social good. Yet even the 17% of high school leavers who do find places at university are understandably fearful of not finding suitable positions upon graduation.
3 Government policy has greatly increased tertiary enrolment, but poor primary and secondary level preparation and lack of funds are still exclusionary for many. Drop-out rates for both academic and financial reasons are counter-productively high. Lowered academic standards are acceptable to government, but understandably resisted by academics and university management.
4 The government scholarship program (NSFAS) has been greatly expanded along with various forms of student lending, but these still do not operate adequately to address the enormous extent of the felt or genuine need. The new management of the expanded, unavoidably unwieldy NSFAS itself admits that bureaucratic problems still hamper the equitable and efficient provision of student financial grants (Sunday Times 30 June 2019, Daily Maverick 19 June 2019)?
5 The current generation of black students were born after the transition to non-racial democracy, yet economic progress remains uneven and radically mal-distributed. Economic inequality and social exclusion as political issues have fulfilled the need and provided a focus for a sense of participation in a political “struggle“ of some kind for the present generation.
6 For 2015, University Councils, starting at my own university, ignored warning signs and raised fees as they saw necessary—10.5%— “as usual“. Spontaneous protests ensued. The movement appears to have begun idealistically among university students in response to managerial blindness, and to address the problem of access to advanced education. Leadership was at first reasonably well-distributed among the student demographic. This initial leadership gained perhaps inordinate attention from the media, and also fell prey to manipulation and co-optation by the ruling party, which let to their de-legitimization among rank-and-file protestors.
7 University administrative leaders argued that it was not in their power to simply grant universal free education individually or on their own, but that national government would have to subsidize any such policy. Increasingly insurgent new leaders, this time backed by the EFF, perceiving the universities to be the soft underbelly of the “System“, then held universities hostage to government compliance with their demands, but government did not respond. Serious violence followed, and securitization in response, leading to running battles on campuses. Under our then Head, my own department became integrally involved in support of #feesmustfall, and adopted its radical positions, in some cases even encouraging civil disobedience. This was in part due to sensitivity to the perception of anthropology among students as a purveyor of colonial consciousness.
8 Political parties, student politics, and the surrounding popular politics of the society came to the fore after original leaders were forced out and even into hiding. Non-student participation and outside interference and funding by political interests undermined efforts at negotiation and conciliation. Negotiations stalled and were then abandoned. Violent protest including attacks on security and police, destruction of property and facilities and injury to persons increased. Universities responded with a security crackdown, arrests, disciplinary action, expulsions, and criminal charges. With exams looming, most protests were suspended. Where necessary, exams were postponed, but then conducted under high security. Many movement leaders have been charged for public violence and destruction of property and remain incarcerated to this day.
9 Nevertheless, ousted President Jacob Zuma promised to meet the movement’s demands as one of his last acts in office, and ultimately 57 billion rands (3.8 billion euro) were allocated to student financial assistance in the national budget.
These student protests affected my ability to conduct classes, administer the syllabus, and set exams. I was labelled an irredeemable colonialist, even by my colleagues, but I carried on until the end of 2016 and then permanently retired. Although my academic freedom and institutional rights were violated and procedural regulations flouted, I did not make any formal complaint. This was because the beleaguered administration had more important issues to address than mine, and because I considered myself a member of the University community and departmental family whom I would not abandon even if they, temporarily I hoped, abandoned me.
Since 2017, our radical head of department has departed to a more receptive institution, but the influence of #feesmustfall remains potent. Far-left populist politics remains the dominant, narrow discourse. This produces a univocal theoretical paradigm, heavily weighted toward a pedagogy of oppression, in which no one troubles any longer to use the term “neo-liberal“ as a pejorative synonym for capitalism, as “capitalism“ is considered pejorative enough in itself. Other perspectives, non-political subjects and empirical research issues are ignored. But this may not remain the case. As always in anthropology, “the people“ will ultimately have their say.
So I might conclude by noting the equal valence, indeed the inseparability of anthropology’s intellectual and social missions. We cannot know for certain that the ineradicable politicisation of our research field can be methodologically overcome. We cannot know what use will be made of our reportage, or the nature of its unintended consequences. We cannot be sure of finding or occupying the moral high ground, and if we could, that social agencies will take our direction. We cannot even be sure that that our treasured public intellectual role as “rebel angels“ (Gordon and Spiegel 1993:100) committed to exploring the interface between the people and the state as a relationship between a new coloniser and the eternally colonised, can be maintained. But we can be more sure that we have actually discovered and represented what social actors are doing on the ground and why. We can also be confident that this knowledge in itself, applied to teaching, speaking, and writing, constitutes a major form of applied or practical anthropology. We must persuade students that the intellectual values of anthropology are consistent with the meaningful and influential “voice of the people“. We must carry on with our attempts to influence public policy by “speaking truth to power“, but at the same time reclaim the intellectual issues of cultural diversity and social instrumentality as the signature of the common humanity historically championed by anthropology (Coplan 1998).
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