Structuralism, colonialism and development: understanding the interpellation of the black subject in South Africa
Date
2017-03
Authors
Dabas, Anandini
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Abstract
Today a large percentage of the black elite in South Africa have identified with the ideology of the white coloniser and in doing so is reproducing the effects of colonialization albeit in a free and fair democratic country. Structuralist and post-structuralist discourse both provide the conceptual tools that enable the articulation of the subject under the colonial and developmental symbolic. Colonialism is conceived as an overdetermined and asymmetric differential relation and takes forward the understanding of both coloniser and colonised and the structure of their historical trajectories as political subjects. Development as a discourse is undertaken for the Americanisation of the global landscape has rendered the economic as the principal determination of society. Furthermore, the development of the subject is affected by nodal points in history, for example, the effect of liberalism, Marxism and democracy. These dominant discourses intertwine and reveal four principal identifications and experiences of the black colonised subject. The presentation of the four identifications of the black colonised subject is undertaken chronologically from 1962 to present. These identifications include the elementary position of the black subject suffering from subjective destitution; the black colonised subject identifying with the white coloniser but being further pushed into the Real and Steve Biko’s positivised black subject. Fourth and lastly, today at a conscious level a very significant number of black citizens have succeeded in moving beyond the elementary colonial definition of who they are as blacks and have enthusiastically embraced the identity the Constitution offers them. But it would be a mistake to think that this signals the eclipse of colonial forms of identification. On the one hand, there are blacks who because of the way they behave towards other blacks, must at some level believe they are white. Consciously, they are empirical black agents who define themselves in non-racial universalist terms but without realising it, they themselves desire to be white and identify with whiteness. On the other hand, the majority of blacks are being treated as they were under colonial conditions, but this time by their black counterparts. The Economic Freedom Fighters push forth an agenda that emancipates the black subject from colonisation via a program of economic liberation.
Description
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Faculty of Humanities, University of Witwatersrand, March 2017
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Citation
Dabas, Anandini (2017) Structuralism, colonialism and development: understanding the interpellation of the black subject in South Africa, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, https://hdl.handle.net/10539/26762