Exploring the Role and Politics of Affect in Relation to a/the Call for Decolonization: A #Feesmustfall perspective

Abstract

This study explored the role of affect in the #FeesMustFall movement, analysing how emotions such as alienation, frustration, and anger shape students’ calls for decolonization in South African higher education. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s theory of affective economies and Margaret Wetherell’s affective-discursive approach, this research examined how emotions circulate within the student body, transforming individual grievances into a collective social and political resistance. Using a thematic discourse analysis of public interviews and textual data, this study identified the socio-cultural and emotional dimensions linked to the demands associated with decolonization, highlighting how exclusion and institutional alienation unite students against having to endure colonial and apartheid legacies. In framing these emotions through language as the foundation of power, this study looked at this circulation of emotions and discourse as mandatory to expressing the structural and affective alienation that takes places in our modern day universities. Findings reveal that anger and frustration serve as unifying forces, intensifying the collective identity and demands of the FeesMustFall movement. This study uncovered and unpacked the collective effects of financial as well as curriculum-based pains that affects students of a certain demographic, excluding them from an education promised to enrich their lives. The impact of failed promises that ultimately lead to emotions such as anger were often dismissed or deemed irrational by institutions. These institutions aimed to use these emotions as strategic and political weapons against students, which eventually lead students to confront authority figures. This study underscored the critical importance of addressing affective experiences in any meaningful transformation of higher education, suggesting that students emotions are not only personal responses but also are deeply political acts that drive change and challenge institutional power structures. Much like their fore fathers, students were seeking restorative justice in their lifetime, not just for their generation but also for many generations to come.