Michael Neocosmos: Thinking Political Emancipation and the Social Sciences in Africa: some critical reflections

Department of Politics & International Studies Seminar Series

Speaker: Professor Michael Neocosmos

Topic: Thinking Political Emancipation and the Social Sciences in Africa:

some critical reflections

Date:  Friday, 16 May 2014

Time: 1-2

Venue: New Seminar Room, Department of Politics & International Studies Seminar Series

The paper is online at:

http://www.ru.ac.za/politicalinternationalstudies/seminarsevents/archive/

Seminar: Chika Mba on 'Fanon's Cultural Humanism and the Challenge of Global Justice'

The weekly Critical Studies Seminar Series, which is held jointly by the departments of Sociology and Political Studies, is presenting the following seminar: 

Topic: Fanon's Cultural Humanism and the Challenge of Global Justice 

Presenter: Chika Mba (African Humanities Programme Post-Doctoral Fellow attached to the Department of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities at Rhodes University)

Venue: Politics Seminar Room
Date & Time: Friday May 24th from 1 pm to 2:30 pm

Critical Studies Seminar: Monahan on the Ontology of Race: Race, Being, and the Politics of Purity

The weekly Critical Studies Seminar Series, which is held jointly by the departments of Sociology and Political Studies, is presenting the following

seminar:

Topic: Monahan on the Ontology of Race: Race, Being, and the Politics of Purity

Presenter: Clevis Headley (Associate Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University).

Venue: Politics Seminar Room

Date & Time: Friday April May 10th from 1 pm to 2:30 pm

Critical Studies Seminar: Richard Pithouse - Conjunctural remarks on the political significance of 'the local'

The weekly Critical Studies Seminar Series, which is held jointly by the departments of Sociology and Political Studies, is presenting the following seminar:

Topic: Conjunctural remarks on the political significance of 'the local'
Presenter: Richard Pithouse
Venue: Politics Seminar Room
Date & Time: Friday April 26th from 1 pm to 2:30 pm

Class in Soweto Seminar & Book Launch with Peter Alexander 19 April 2013

Social Movements and Leftist Governments in Latin America

by Gary Prevost, Critical Studies Seminar Series

The last decade in Latin America has witnessed two important simultaneous and interrelated developments: the rise in prominence of social movements, and the election of a number of left and center-left governments. The social movements have ranged from the broad, community organized “piqueteros” of Argentina that brought down three governments in the space of one month in 2001 to the indigenous-based movements of Ecuador and Bolivia that have been instrumental in toppling five governments in the two countries within the last decade, the Landless Movement in Brazil (MST), Afro-Colombians resisting displacement in a region coveted by investors, the Cocalaros and the mobilizations against water privatizations and gas pipeline investments in Bolivia, to the Zapatistas in Mexico, who burst on the scene to challenge the formation of NAFTA and the marginalization of the mostly indigenous peasants in Chiapas. The social movements of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia are complemented across the region by a myriad of organizations that engage on a range of issues from land rights to women’s rights to environmental concerns.

Fanon’s 'Black Skin, White Masks' inspires paper on colouredness

by Anna-Karien Otto, Rhodes University

Politics Masters student, Danielle Bowler, wrote a paper exploring contested constructions of colouredness, after being incensed by a column written by Nomakula “Kuli” Roberts in a Sunday paper.

In a way, this was similar to what Frantz Fanon had referred to when he said he wrote Black Skin, White Masks after “the fire had cooled”.

The Capacities of the People Versus a Predominant, Militarist, Ethno-Nationalist Elite: Democratisation in South Africa c. 1973-1997

UDF Poster

by Ken Good

In January 1983, Allan Boesak called for the formation of a front to oppose specific apartheid constitutional changes, and after a series of regional conferences, the United Democratic Front was launched in Cape Town in August. Boesak says that fifteen hundred people were present, representing 500 organisations and all sectors of society. The listing of the Front’s eventual affiliates included trade unions, youth and student movements, women’s and religious groups, civic associations, political parties and a range of support and professional groups. Within the next few years, the Front embraced almost 1,000 affiliated groups. Because of the UDF’s capacity to provide national political and ideological coordination to these affiliates, radical political action ‘assumed an increasingly organised form’, says Swilling, ‘enhancing its power and effectiveness.’ As previously with the BCM, the arrival of the UDF was not welcomed by the ANC.

Nigel Gibson to present at the Critical Studies Seminar on the 8th of June

Nigel Gibson, a noted Fanon scholar and recent recipient of the Frantz Fanon Prize for lifetime achievement by the Caribbean Philosophy Association who has two new books out this year (Living Fanon and Fanonian Practices in South Africa), will present a paper on The New North African Syndrome at the Critical Studies Seminar at 3 p.m. on Wednesday the 8th of June. The paper is online here and we will use this seminar as our weekly meeting for the Frantz Fanon Reading Group. His recent popular piece on Tahrir Square is online here.