Negotiating the Academy: Black Bodies
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www.hsrcpress.ac.za BAV_4thPages.indb 1 2019/03/28 18:02 Published by HSRC Press Private Bag X9182, Cape Town 8000, South Africa www.hsrcpress.ac.za First published 2019 ISBN (soft cover) 978-0-7969-2459-9 © 2019 Human Sciences Research Council This publication was made possible through a grant received from the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. This collective work has undergone a double-blind independent peer-review process overseen by the HSRC Press Editorial Board. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Human Sciences Research Council (the Council) or the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (the Institute) or indicate that either the Council or the Institute endorses the views of the authors. 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BAV_4thPages.indb 2 2019/03/28 18:02 Contents Foreword iv Acronyms and abbreviations v 1 Black in the academy: Reframing knowledge, the knower, and knowing 1 Grace Khunou, Hugo Canham, Katijah Khoza-Shangase and Edith Dinong Phaswana 2 Negotiating the academy: Black bodies ‘out of place’ 11 Peace Kiguwa 3 Writing to stay: Running shoes replaced with high heels 25 Grace Khunou 4 Intellectual and emotional toxicity: Where a cure does not appear to be imminent 42 Katijah Khoza-Shangase 5 Thinking while black 65 Grace A Musila 6 Black and foreign: Negotiating being different in South Africa’s academy 81 Kezia Batisai 7 The polemic body 103 Hugo Canham 8 Belonging: Whose word is it anyway? 118 René Koraan 9 Valuing/belonging and devaluing/unbelonging in the academy: An intersectional perspective 134 www.hsrcpress.ac.za Pragna Rugunanan 10 Don’t teach me nonsense 147 Colin Tinei Chasi 11 The limits of being and knowledge in the academy 157 Edith Dinong Phaswana 12 Sitting on one bum: The struggle of survival and belonging for a black African woman in the academy 178 Motlalepule Nathane 13 Belonging to oneself 195 Allison Geduld About the authors 214 Index 218 BAV_4thPages.indb 3 2019/03/28 18:02 Foreword Black Academics: The South African Experience is a bold announcement that black academics, particularly black women, will no longer endure their suffering in silence. Rather, they will speak and document their experiences to provide not only a record of what they have endured and continue to endure but also inspiration to those who will someday follow in their footsteps. People of African descent have often been denied legitimacy as historical subjects. The academy has positioned us as ‘people without history.’ One of the enduring legacies of this book, therefore, will be that it places the particular indignities that black academics have faced on the historical record. No longer will it be possible to say, ‘That never happened.’ Nor will it be possible in the future to dismiss acts of discrimination as rooted in the peculiarities of individuals. This volume definitively shows that what are so often dismissed as individual acts of discrimination are rooted in structural forces and can only be remedied, therefore, by revamping and reimagining what the university is and does. Make no mistake, however, this book is no ‘pity-party’ or celebration of victimhood. These chapters are about resilience, struggle, self-actualisation and survival. These are stories about how to endure the unimaginable indignity of having one’s intelligence, integrity and selfhood questioned at every turn. The voices documented here also provide strategies. They explain how to fight back – and, sometimes, win. They explain how to collaborate and make alliances. They explore what it means to make new definitions of community. And they resolutely announce that we black academics are here to stay. We are not going anywhere. We are determined to occupy these spaces and make them better for everyone – black, white, LGBTQ, rich, poor, male and female. The academy was not made for us, but we are remaking it to be www.hsrcpress.ac.za better than it has ever been. Professor Zine Magubane Sociology Department and African and African Diaspora Studies Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts iv BAV_4thPages.indb 4 2019/03/28 18:02 Acronyms and abbreviations AA affirmative action APK Auckland Park Campus of University of Johannesburg CIOMS Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences CV curriculum vitae DFC Doornfontein Campus of University of Johannesburg DHET Department of Higher Education and Training EE Act Employment Equity Act (No. 55 of 1998) HBU historically black university HEI higher education institution HESA Higher Education South Africa HIV and AIDS Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome HoD Head of Department HoS Head of School HPCSA Health Professions Council of South Africa HSRC Human Sciences Research Council HWI historically white institution HWU historically white university LGBTIQ lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer MerSETA Manufacturing, Engineering and Related Services Sector Education and Training Authority MA Master’s degree MRC Medical Research Council NGO non-governmental organisation www.hsrcpress.ac.za NCHE National Commission on Higher Education NWU North-West University RAU Rand Afrikaans University SADC Southern African Development Community SASCO South African Students Congress SRC Student Representative Council SWC Soweto Campus of University of Johannesburg TB tuberculosis UCT University of Cape Town UFS University of the Free State UJ University of Johannesburg UK United Kingdom v BAV_4thPages.indb 5 2019/03/28 18:02 Unisa University of South Africa US United States Wits University of the Witwatersrand www.hsrcpress.ac.za vi BAV_4thPages.indb 6 2019/03/28 18:02 Black in the academy: Reframing 1 knowledge, the knower, and knowing Grace Khunou, Hugo Canham, Katijah Khoza-Shangase and Edith Dinong Phaswana The question of what it means to be black continues to haunt humanity to this day (Manganyi 1973, 2016). Since colonial encounters, several scholars have grappled with the concept of blackness (see Fanon 1967; Lugones 2010; Maldonado-Torres 2007; Ngũgĩ 2009; Wynter 2003). Here, we define ‘black’ following Steve Biko’s (2004) definition, which is inclusive of all those below the human line – people of African, Indian and mixed descent (Fanon 1967; Grosfoguel 2016) – who come together in solidarity in recognition that white supremacy oppresses them, even though differentially. We recognise that the postcolonial state under black leadership continues to engineer and reproduce new categories of blackness that result in further bifurcations of ethnicity. As we shall see in the different chapters in this book, emerging categories of blackness in postapartheid South Africa are more complicated than ever. Frantz Fanon (1967) and others point out that the invention of blackness was basically about questioning the very humanity of black people. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (2009) took Fanon’s argument further by adding the concept of ‘dismemberment’ to explain the exclusion of black people from the category of the human race – or what Walter Mignolo categorised as ‘anthropos’ versus ‘humanitas’ (2009). Christina Sharpe’s (2016) In the Wake: On Blackness and Being has demonstrated that the creation of race was closely tied to economic greed, which was used to justify enslavement and colonial conquest. Sharpe’s theorisation of black violability, www.hsrcpress.ac.za black death, and black living is conceptualised from a place of deeply personal grief, demonstrating (like Puwar 2004) that it is not accidental that black people have deliberately been excluded from the consecrated space that universities have become. This exclusion positions black people as perpetual students, and white people as overlords who produce knowledge. To justify this exclusion, discourses of merit are deployed to bolster the argument that black people are not quite ready to occupy this space as creators of knowledge (Canham 2015). This continues to play out in the academy where the university, as a global power structure, continues to embrace neoliberal hegemonic policies. Over the past few decades, there has been burgeoning literature that seeks to demonstrate the pitfalls of neoliberalism in relation to public education (Baltodano 2012; Habib, Morrow & Bentley 2008; Janz 2015; Nussbaum 2010). Bruce Janz (2015: 275) in particular has critiqued the move 1 BAV_4thPages.indb 1 2019/03/28 18:02 BLACK ACADEMICS: THE SOUTH AFRICAN EXPERIENCE towards ‘a corporate model of knowledge-production which is based on instruments of accountability and competitive metrics.’ There is pressure for academics to fast- track the production of research outputs.