Af/Po/Hs 352 Power & Protest: Apartheid To
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AF/PO/HS 352 POWER & PROTEST: APARTHEID TO PRESENT IES Abroad Cape Town DESCRIPTION: Protest is a fundamentally embodied act: it draws its meaning and power from the body’s visibility (and often audibility) in a symbolic choice of space. This course begins, therefore, with a contextual grounding in the meaning of bodies and voices in a South African context. Simply put, a history of life possibilities being tied to minute embodied differences mean that South Africans see bodies very particularly: as powerful (and dangerous) living texts. This course will consider protest in South Africa as both a fundamental part of historical record, charting some of the major turning points, movements and state responses including Soweto, the Women’s March and Sharpeville, as well as a vital contemporary means of empowering active and engaged citizenship. Students will begin to understand protest not merely as a social act, but as a staged choreography of dissent, using performance theory to unpack how and why protest movements achieve their efficacy. We will consider various methods of South African protest, from the more traditional toyi toyi and range of protest songs to the creative use of space, as employed particularly recently by the Fallists and Reclaim the City activists. Throughout this course, students will be encouraged to visit places at the heart of past protest action and speak to activists. CREDITS: 3 CONTACT HOURS: 45 LANGUAGE OF PRESENTATION: English ADDITIONAL COST: None PREREQUISITES: None METHOD OF PRESENTATION: One lecture and one two-hour workshop per week REQUIRED WORK AND FORM OF ASSESSMENT: • Weekly pop quiz on reading content. 10 formative assessments - 20% • One 2500 word essay - 40% • One 20 minute presentation demonstrating research on a contemporary Capetonian protest - 40% Course Participation Students are required to attend one weekly lecture and one practical workshop weekly. Students who do not attend class presentations during the final three weeks when they are not presenting their own projects will be subject to a mark deduction for lack of group participation. LEARNING OUTCOMES: By the end of the course students will be able to: • Identify a range of key South African protests and connect socio-historical conditions with protest action • Conceptualize cultural sensibilities around embodied spectacle • Analyze and critique the efficacy of performative techniques in South African protest • Evaluate critical arguments around protest tactics, efficacy and representation • Synthesize their own research into an engaging group presentation CONTENT: Week Content Assignments Week 1: 1. Session 1: This introductory lecture Readings situates South African protest history Understanding Protest, against an oppressive socio-political • https://www.youtube.co Understanding history of colonial and Apartheid rule. m/watch?v=MOA66AOG5 South Africa It considers retrospective struggle 2M. narratives as perpetuated in popular culture and explores Lars Buur’s • Arendt, Hannah. 1958. argument that, despite popular ‘Power and the Space of narratives of stoic peaceful Appearance’ in The resistance, the most successful of Human Condition. protest tactics often included University of Chicago campaigns of civil disobedience and Press. Pp 199 – 206. the more militant actions of armed resistance wings such as Umkhonto • Buur, Lars. 2009. ‘The we Sizwe. The legacy of these Horror of the Mob: The historical contexts will be explored in Violence of Imagination relation to contemporary South in South Africa’ in African protest psychology and Critique of Anthropology. tactics Volume 29, Number 1. Pp 5-24. • Connerton, Paul. 1989. 2. Session 2 and 3: Workshop Selected excerpts from How Societies Discussion of lived Apartheid Remember. Cambridge realities. Screening of documentary University Press. clips e.g. The Film Archives. 2012. Apartheid in South Africa Laws, History: Documentary Film - Raw Footage (1957). Assigning of working groups, • ‘Introduction’. Pp 1 – 23 establishment of class expectations, and ‘Understanding the backgrounds and exercises laying of Right to Protest in South emotional and group trust Africa’. Pp 36 – 41. Both groundwork for semester’s in Duncan, Jane. 2016. excursions and talks. Protest Nation. University of Kwa-Zulu Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg. Deliverables Quiz Week 2: 3. Session 4: This lecture seeks to Readings situate when anthropologist Clifford South African sensibility Geertz would understand to be a • Foster, Susan Leigh. unique South African cultural ‘Choreographies of sensibility – a feeling for and Protest’ in Theatre understanding of life. Through case Journal. Volume 55, studies drawn from music, sport, art Number 3. October and, inevitably, politics it will suggest 2003. Available online: that, for reasons both practical and https://muse.jhu.edu/art historical, any South African icle/47705 sensibility manifests in an acute affinity for spectacles of embodied • Gray, Anne-Marie. 1999. anxiety. “Liberation songs sung by black South Africans during the 20th Century” in International Journal 4. Session 5 and 6: Workshop. Using of Music Education. our understanding of South Africa’s Volume 33, Issue 1. Geertzian sensibility and Susan Leigh Foster’s seminal work on • Jolaosho, Omotayo. choreographies of protest as a guide, 2015. ‘Political aesthetics we will explore the centrality of song and embodiment: Sung and movement in South African protest in post-apartheid protest. South Africa’ in Journal of Material Culture. Pp 1- 16. Sage Press. • Muyanga, Neo (FMR). 'Revolting Music: Songs of Protest in the Global South'. Available online: https://player.fm/series/ fine-minds/revolting- music-songs-of-protest- in-the-global-south-by- neo-muyanga • Pan African Space Station. 2015. Revolting Songs: Black Music and the Aesthetics of Protest with Neo Muyanga. Available online: https://www.mixcloud.co m/chimurenga/neo- muyanga-revolting- songs-2/. Deliverables • Quiz Week 3 5. Session 7: Where better to begin Readings than in the classroom itself? This Education week’s lecture considers youth • Heffernan, Anne and protests around education – long a Nieftagodien, Noor. flash point for some of the most 2016. Students Must devastating confrontations with the Rise: Youth Struggle in South African state. This lecture will South Africa Before and establish an understanding of the so- Beyond Soweto ’76. Wits called Bantu education policy and, University Press. inevitably, focus on the 1976 Soweto Uprising as a central tenant for understanding the stakes of South African education protests. 6. Session 8 & 9: Education reform has • Brockman, Brad. "Every long been set as a national priority; generation has its indeed, post-Apartheid, basic struggle": A brief history education was enshrined in section of Equal Education 29 as a fundamental constitutional (2008-15)” in Heffernan, right. This workshop will debate Anne and Nieftagodien, conditions and challenges, looking Noor. 2016. Students particularly to activist organisation Must Rise: Youth Equal Education. Various position Struggle in South Africa papers from their 2015 publication Before and Beyond Taking Equal Education into the Soweto ’76. Wits Classroom University Press. (https://equaleducation.org.za/wp- content/uploads/2016/08/EE-in-the- Deliverables classroom_EBook.pdf) will be distributed and debated. Quiz Week 4 7. Session 10: April 2015 saw the Readings performative and fiercely contested Education beginnings of the Fallism movements • Mpofu, Shepherd. 2017. of #RhodesMustFall and “Disruption as a #FeesMustFall. As students communicative strategy: undertaking higher education in The case of South Africa, it is both appropriate #FeesMustFall and and indeed necessary that you are #RhodesMustFall aware of, and responsive to, the students’ protests in ongoing campaigns of practical and South Africa” in Journal philosophical engagement that you of African Media Studies. will find yourselves in. This week’s Volume 9, Number 2. Pp lecture will carefully contextualize the 351 – 373. Intellect context and trajectory of the protests Publishing. so far. Though theoretical reading is prescribed for the week, students would do well to approach their • Naidoo, Leigh-Ann. semester abroad as a remarkable “Contemporary student opportunity for extended experiential politics in South Africa learning. The rise of the black-led student movements of #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall in 2015” 8. Session 11 & 12: Workshop. Q&A in Heffernan, Anne and with education activists OR, as Nieftagodien, Noor. appropriate, campus visits to analyze 2016. Students Must artwork and representation. Rise: Youth Struggle in South Africa Before and Beyond Soweto ’76. Wits University Press. Recommended for reference: • SERI. September 2017. Student Protests: A Legal and Practical Guide. Available online: http://www.seri- sa.org/images/Students _rights_guide_FINAL_for _web.pdf Deliverables Quiz Week 5 9. Session 13: We will trace the historic Readings roots of gender-based activism in Gender South Africa, considering the roles • ‘Riot Porn: Media played by major activist Coverage of Protests and organisations such as the Black Sash South Africa’ in Duncan, Movement and the ANC Women’s Jane. 2016. Protest League, as well as the significance of Nation. University of the 1956 Women’s March. Kwa-Zulu Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg. Pp 142 10. Session 14 & 15: Workshop. – 162. Contemporary and historical media analysis of gender representation, as Deliverables well as coverage of GBV and LGBTIQ