The aim of the article is to report on research findings that could contribute to the development of decolonised academic material. Africanisation of curricula implies that education and training as well as praxis be informed by the reality of the South African context, the viewpoints of the people of South Africa and their descriptions of what is needed to build a just society. This is relevant to a variety of service professions. This article was presented from a trans-disciplinary framework, and (...) the term ‘professional carers’, including the social service and theology professions, was used. The discussion explored how academia can approach the development of curricula that will inform praxis and which is relevant to the African context. The terms ‘Africanisation’, ‘decolonisation’ and ‘contextualisation’ were linked, whereafter a developmental approach to the development of the content and presentation of academic material was proposed. The article is concluded with recommended strategic options for the development of Africanised curricula. (shrink)

Although the demarginalisation of youths is an international concern, South African youths are viewed by various scholars and policy documents as a particularly vulnerable and marginalised group. It becomes essential to understand what characterises their marginalisation in order to find innovative ways to work towards their demarginalisation. In this article we reflect on current faith-based concerns and compare this with the specific characteristics of the marginalisation of young people. In an effort to contribute to the development of a strategy towards (...) demarginalisation, we will explore the key features of the Circle of Courage in terms of the principles of belonging, mastery, independence and generosity. We will further propose the inclusion of Ubuntu principles in the practical application of the Circle of Courage for churches and faith-based organisations in demarginalising youth in the South African context. (shrink)

The modern world is becoming increasingly digitalised and this is affecting the way in which humans not only live but also learn. In South Africa, the majority of students entering universities are from disadvantaged backgrounds and come from schools and communities in which they were not exposed to the same technologically rich environments as perhaps that of their fellow students. The digital literacy level at which all students enter university is thus different; yet on entering their first year of study, (...) students from disadvantaged backgrounds are required to perform at the same level as those from advantaged backgrounds. This paper examines the role that pre?existing levels of digital literacy, critical thinking skills, socio?economic status and English proficiency play on the academic performance of first?year students studying an Information Technology course. (shrink)

South Africa's transition to democracy coincided and interlinked with massive global shifts, including the fall of communism and the rise of western capitalist triumphalism. Late capitalism operates through paradoxical global-local dynamics, both universalising identities and expanding local particularities. The erstwhile hegemonic identity of apartheid, 'the Afrikaner', was a product of Afrikaner nationalism. Like other identities, it was spatially organised, with Afrikaner nationalism projecting its imagined community onto a national territory. The study traces the neo-nationalist spatial permutations of 'the Afrikaner', following (...) Massey's understanding of space as political, produced through interrelations ranging from the global to micro intimacies, potentially a sphere for heterogeneous co-existence, and continuously created. Research is presented that shows a neo-nationalist revival of ethnic privileges in a defensive version of Hall's 'return to the local'. Although Afrikaner nationalism's territorial claims to a nation state were defeated, neo-nationalist remnants reclaim a purchase on white Afrikaans identities, albeit in shrunken territories. This phenomenon is, here, called Afrikaner enclave nationalism. Drawing on a global revamping of race as a category of social subjugation, a strategy is deployed that is here called 'inward migration'. These dynamics produce a privatised micro-apartheid in sites ranging from homes, to commercial and religious enterprises, to suburbs. Virtual white spaces in the form of Afrikaans media products serve as extensions of these whitened locales. The lynchpin holding it all together is the heteronormative, middle-class family, with consumption the primary mode of the generation of its white comfort zones. (shrink)

In South Africa, race has been subverted by the fall of official apartheid. Specifically, the “invisibilization” of black others is overturned and white-black relationality problematized, thereby deeply troubling whiteness. However, the logic of race continues to reverberate through social relations against a global backdrop in which this category proves remarkably adaptable as purveyor of inequality. The end of official apartheid is not the end of the power effects of the apartheid discourse. The postapartheid field is a site of contestation over (...) previously normalized hierarchies, including over gender and class. Applying a discourse analysis to texts generated in research interviews with respondents who self-identified as women, white, Afrikaans-speaking, and middle class, this study finds attempts at re-securing race. First, the strategy of “elision and misattribution” seeks to recuperate apartheid's racial binaries to bolster present-day whiteness. Second, “intersectional shifting” of social markers aims at ameliorating the secondary status of femininity through the wielding of whiteness and middle classness. These strategies are complicated by affective practices. Particularly the social emotion shame holds transformative potential, but with a caveat. Shame brings self into relation with the other and the social and can usher white subjects into an expanded conception of being human, but only if acknowledged. (shrink)

The quincentenary of the Protestant Reformations creates a challenge. With reference to Protestant churches in South Africa, the ambiguity inherent in this challenge is considered in the first part of the essay. In the second part, Martin Luther’s famous discovery is investigated in light of his earlier theology leading up to 31 October 1517. It is argued that Luther’s earlier theology is characterised by a hermeneutic rediscovery. In the third part, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology is brought into conversation with Luther. It (...) is asked how Bonhoeffer received Luther’s theology – more specifically, how he re-appropriated the hermeneutic inherent in Luther’s earlier theology. In the final part, it is asked what the theological hermeneutic inherent in Luther’s earlier theology – re-appropriated by Bonhoeffer – can mean for South African churches commemorating the Protestant Reformations. (shrink)

Ministers of religion have a unique occupation with designated job demands and incongruous resources at their disposal. Literature indicates that stressors within the work environment are significant predictors of work-nonwork interference. Ministers play a key role within society and provide support for individuals on multiple levels. However, limited studies are found in South Africa focussing on ministers' job characteristics related to work-nonwork interference, and how ministers cope. The main objective of this study was to investigate job demands and job resources (...) as significant predictors of work-nonwork interference amongst ministers of religion, and to identify which coping strategies are most significant for ministers in dealing with work-nonwork interference. A cross-sectional survey design was used amongst ministers working in the three sister churches. Various instruments were administered to measure job characteristics, work-nonwork interference and coping strategies empirically. Statistical analyses included descriptive statistics, product-moment correlations and multiple regression analyses. Results indicated that for ministers different job demands and job resources significantly predicted work-parent, work-home and work-religion/spirituality interference. Results indicated turning to religion as the only significant coping strategy used by ministers to deal with work-parent interference and work-religion interference. Ministers of religion are continually exposed to increasing job demands and a lack of job resources, and therefore experience work-nonwork interference. Nevertheless, the ministers apparently cope by using the strategy best related to their profession, turning to religion/spirituality. Turning to religion/spirituality seems to be the most effective in dealing with work-nonwork interference. (shrink)

In this article, Christi van der Westhuizen's sociopolitical contribution in her publication, Sitting Pretty: White Afrikaans Women in Postapartheid South Africa, is reviewed. In light of the official end of apartheid in 1994, South Africans are attempting to define a new identity. Van der Westhuizen's publication focusses on how the identity of white Afrikaans women, as both the oppressor and the oppressed, influences and contributes to the endeavour of a search for new identity. In deconstructing and re-imagining new (...) identity, Van der Westhuizen deconstructs the 'supporting scaffolding' of Afrikaner identity and examines the impact of white patriarchal hegemony that silences the voice of women, sexual minorities and black consciousness. The review concludes with the emphasis on the transformative role of shame, that is, the willingness to expose the false sense of goodness that we had of ourselves, as pointed out by Van der Westhuizen. In this regard, the recognition of the intersectionality of people's experiences becomes a key aspect of the endeavour of a search for new identity. (shrink)

Critical Concepts for the Creative Humanities is the first book to outline and define the specific and evolving field of the creative humanities and provides the field's nascent bibliography.

A systematic study of testimony rooted in contemporary continental philosophy and drawing on literary case studies. From analytic epistemology to gender theory, testimony is a major topic in philosophy today. Yet, one distinctive approach to testimony has not been fully appreciated: the recent history of contemporary continental philosophy offers a rich source for another approach to testimony. In this book, Gert-Jan van der Heiden argues that a continental philosophy of testimony can be developed that is guided by those forms of (...) bearing witness that attest to limit experiences of human existence, in which the human is rendered mute, speechless, or robbed of a common understanding. In the first part, Van der Heiden explores this sense of testimony in a reading of several literary texts, ranging from Plato’s literary inventions to those of Kierkegaard, Melville, Soucy, and Mortier. In the second part, based on the orientation offered by the literary experiments, Van der Heiden offers a more systematic account of testimony in which he distinguishes and analyzes four basic elements of testimony. In the third part, he shows what this analysis implies for the question of the truth and the truthfulness of testimony. In his discussion with philosophers such as Heidegger, Derrida, Lyotard, Agamben, Foucault, Ricoeur, and Badiou, Van der Heiden also provides an overview of how the problem of testimony emerges in a number of thinkers pivotal to twentieth- and twenty-first-century thought. “The Voice of Misery is a special book. Van der Heiden has presented an argument that is poised to challenge discourse in analytic philosophy, reshape approaches in continental philosophy, and give new orientation to interdisciplinary research in continental philosophy and literary theory. The book will find a large readership across the discipline of philosophy and in several areas of the humanities.” — Theodore George, author of Tragedies of Spirit: Tracing Finitude in Hegel’s Phenomenology. (shrink)

L'empirisme transcendantal élaboré par Gilles Deleuze n'est pas le fruit du hasard : il résulte de lectures critiques et d'un véritable remaniement de concepts, notamment dans ses monographies des années cinquante et soixante. Or on lit généralement les œuvres de maturité de Deleuze sans trop s'attarder sur ces premiers écrits. De même, la question de la subjectivité dans son œuvre est souvent laissée au second plan, et l'on constate dans la littérature secondaire des opinions diamétralement opposées quant au statut du (...) sujet chez Deleuze. Le présent ouvrage reconstruit la notion deleuzienne de subjectivité à partir des premières monographies que le philosophe a consacrées à Hume, Kant, Nietzsche et Bergson. Il confronte les œuvres de ces auteurs aux monographies de Deleuze, et réarticule les concepts de la période de 'Différence et répétition' (singularités, habitudes, champ transcendantal, etc.) autour des questions sur la genèse et le statut de la subjectivité."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Fundamentele filosofische studie over hermeneutiek, opgevat als het stem geven aan degene die niet (meer) zelf kan spreken, met beschouwingen over het betreffende gedachtegoed van enkele vooraanstaande denkers zoals Plato en Heidegger.