tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/fanon-17363/articlesFanon – The Conversation2018-12-03T11:49:39Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1077362018-12-03T11:49:39Z2018-12-03T11:49:39ZWhat Mandela and Fanon learned from Algeria’s revolution in the 1950s<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248440/original/file-20181203-194941-g0j6om.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Umkhonto weSizwe founder Nelson Mandela, receives military training at an Algerian FLN camp in Morocco, 1962.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">South African History Online</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s worthwhile to remember how South African statesman <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/">Nelson Mandela’s</a> thinking moved from violence to reconciliation as the solution to undoing apartheid. </p>
<p>On his journey to a different approach, Mandela visited Algeria – a place where the revolutionary thinker <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/fanon/index.htm">Frantz Fanon</a> also developed his ideas on armed struggle.</p>
<p>A grim revolutionary <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/11/a-chronology-of-the-algerian-war-of-independence/305277/">war</a> started in Algeria in 1954 between the indigenous Arab population, mainly represented by the <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/algeria/index.htm">Algerian National Liberation Front</a> (FLN), and the French on behalf of the white settlers. The casualties numbered around 300 000 with two million Algerians displaced and one million settlers returning to France.</p>
<p>The conflict came to an end in 1962 when French President Charles de Gaulle called out a referendum on whether Algeria should remain as part of France. The vote was overwhelmingly in <a href="https://www.joradp.dz/JO6283/1962/001/FP3.pdf">favour of independence</a>.</p>
<p>This revolution had a profound effect on both Mandela and Fanon’s thinking. It shaped a great deal of their respective understanding about colonisation, oppression and freedom.</p>
<h2>Mandela in Algeria</h2>
<p>Mandela was an ardent freedom fighter in the early days of South Africa’s liberation struggle – he <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">co-founded</a> the ANC’s military wing Umkhonto weSizwe in December 1961. He believed that violence was necessary in resisting the repressive and brutal apartheid regime. He was eventually <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/news/entry/nelson-mandela-sentenced-to-life-imprisonment-44-years-ago">imprisoned</a> for attempting to overthrow South Africa’s apartheid regime. Mandela and seven of his comrades were convicted of sabotage in 1964.</p>
<p>Mandela <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-fanon-continues-to-resonate-more-than-half-a-century-after-algerias-independence-43508">visited</a> troops of the FLN in Morocco earlier in 1961 during a tour of Africa designed to establish Umkhonto weSizwe as the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). Later that year he <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/transition.116.67#metadata_info_tab_contents">travelled</a> to Algeria to participate in joint exercises between the ANC and the FLN.</p>
<p>Algeria also came to be the first country Mandela <a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2013/12/07/Minister-Mandela-received-his-first-military-training-in-Algeria.html">visited</a> after he was released from prison in 1990. This was a symbolic gesture to acknowledge the inspiration he drew from the North African nation’s revolution and support for the struggle against apartheid.</p>
<p>The Algerian Revolution inspired Mandela. In his autobiography, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/long-walk-freedom-nelson-mandela-original-prison-manuscript"><em>Long Walk to Freedom</em></a>, he compares their situation as the closest to that of the ANC in South Africa. The rebels in Algeria also had to face a government representing a sizeable white community controlling most of the indigenous population who were not white.</p>
<h2>Fanon in Algeria</h2>
<p>The Algerian Revolution made a profound imprint on Fanon’s work, too. He hailed from the island of Martinique in the Caribbean, then studied psychiatry in France and ultimately ended up working in an Algerian hospital in the 1950s. </p>
<p>It was there that he became acutely aware of the damage oppression wages both on the colonised and the colonist. Fanon became a member of the FLN and was involved in the resistance against the French.</p>
<p>Fanon is considered by some as an advocate of violence because of the prominent role it plays in his work, which can be read from a certain angle as a kind of manifesto. But he did not glamorise violence. The point for him was rather that violence becomes a necessary response to oppression where the oppressor does not recognise the humanity of the oppressed.</p>
<p>There are only a few references to apartheid in Fanon’s famous work, <a href="http://abahlali.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Frantz-Fanon-The-Wretched-of-the-Earth-1965.pdf"><em>The Wretched of the Earth</em>,</a> but he saw the situation in South Africa as an exemplification of the struggle for decolonisation. Fanon’s ideas played an important role in South African political thinker Steve Biko’s work on the ideology of Black Consciousness.</p>
<h2>In conversation</h2>
<p>Mandela and Fanon never met. By the time that Mandela visited Algeria, Fanon was on his death bed in Washington DC; he had leukaemia, and would die at the age of just 36. Fanon’s ideas didn’t feature in Mandela’s thinking, but one could imagine a <a href="https://www.academia.edu/7132699/Mandela_and_Fanon_in_Algeria_The_necessity_and_limits_of_violence">conversation</a> between them. There would be some points of agreement, and some areas in which they’d differ.</p>
<p>There would be agreement between Mandela and Fanon on the role of violence as a necessary foil to oppressive regimes. This was Mandela’s train of thought during his visit to Algeria when he emphasised armed struggle. </p>
<p>Mandela’s thinking about the role of violence changed during his 27 years in jail. He realised that violence was necessary to counter and undo the institutions of apartheid. Violence has its place in purifying society of institutional oppression, racism and hate but it cannot continue indefinitely. Once apartheid was undone, Mandela reasoned, violence would only become a destructive force.</p>
<p>Mandela opted for reconciliation with the old oppressors, which had mixed results in retrospect.</p>
<p>What might Fanon say about Mandela’s eventual change of mind? He would probably praise the South African’s acknowledgement of the damage which oppression does to both the oppressor and the oppressed. Reconciliation – or what Fanon called mutual recognition – becomes a remedy, absolving both sides of culpability for the violence which they exercised.</p>
<p>Fanon might criticise Mandela regarding the decision to embrace neo-liberal capitalism, which has led economic injustice to persist on a massive scale. </p>
<p>There is one major achievement in Mandela’s compromise which Fanon would acknowledge: his decision to include oppressor and oppressed as part of the post-apartheid dispensation has brought about the promise of something like the new humanity that Fanon envisioned beyond decolonisation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107736/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Villet does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Algerian revolution had a profound effect on both Mandela and Fanon’s thinking about colonisation, oppression and freedom.Charles Villet, Postdoctoral associate, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1025942018-09-10T15:12:27Z2018-09-10T15:12:27ZFanon and the politics of truth and lying in a colonial society<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234788/original/file-20180904-45178-1ywaora.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=63%2C289%2C4624%2C4596&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Frantz Fanon lectured about fundamental resistance at the University of Tunis in 1959 and 1960.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frantz fanon pjw productions</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Psychiatric hospitals tend to create institutionalised patients, thus further alienating them from their communities. But what also became clear to philosopher <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/frantz-fanon">Frantz Fanon</a>, while working as a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2537519/">psychiatrist</a> at Blida-Joinville Hospital in Algeria between 1953 and 1956, was that patient integration was impossible in colonial societies.</p>
<p>By definition, colonies produce fragmented societies that are haunted by fear and suspicion. As such they remain divided and their culture, increasingly rigid.</p>
<p>Fanon’s short article “Confession in North Africa” was first delivered at the 1955 <a href="http://worldcat.org/identities/np-congres%20de%20psychiatrie%20et%20de%20neurologie%20de%20langue%20francaise/">Congrès de Psychiatrie et de Neurologie de Langue Française</a>. It was coauthored with his colleague and fellow director at Blida-Joinville Hospital, Raymond Lacaton. In the paper, they discussed ideas of confession, reciprocity and social reintegration. They also offered a critique of medical practices. </p>
<p>Like other psychiatrists working in Algerian hospitals, Fanon hadn’t only attended to patients at the hospital, but had also been called upon by the colonial authorities to assess the sanity of people accused of crimes. By definition, confessions entail a form of “reciprocal recognition” in that they are prepared for a court. Yet, they signal the taking of ownership of personal wrongdoing and guilt. </p>
<p>This idea of admitting one’s guilt — and paying one’s debt — is connected with reintegration into society. But the courts were finding that 80% of accused Algerians who had signed confessions after their arrest were retracting their statements. What the accused had agreed was true while at the police station was suddenly being denied. Clearly, something was going awry. </p>
<p>Fanon and Lacaton described a typical encounter:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Only the file remains. And the charges it contains, as we have seen, often weigh very heavily against the accused. He reenacted the crime, revealed the location of the weapon and several witnesses confirm having seen him strike (although sometimes even the witnesses retract their testimony). Then, when the time comes for the psychiatric evaluation, the expert finds himself in the presence of a lucid, coherent man proclaiming his innocence… The psychiatric expert is unable to uncover the truth of the criminal.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The question Fanon and Lacaton addressed was why the accused were unwilling to stand by their confession. </p>
<h2>Resistance to European rule</h2>
<p>Fanon and Lacaton argued that the accused used silence to signal their non acceptance of being defined as criminal by the colonial administration. </p>
<p>The courts dismissed these silences as further evidence of <a href="http://jffp.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/jffp/article/view/475">“North African syndrome”</a>. It was thus consistent with the theories of <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=jJ0aID8V3xgC&pg=PA221&lpg=PA221&dq=Boigey,+Porot+and+Aubin&source=bl&ots=idOwJi59kh&sig=H5YRHWx1oJoZ_SlIgnfosvsHytU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjSqd2Pl6HdAhXlB8AKHeb9ABMQ6AEwAHoECAIQAQ#v=onepage&q=Boigey%2C%20Porot%20and%20Aubin&f=false">colonial psychiatrists</a> such as Boigey, Porot and Aubin, that North Africans naturally lie.</p>
<p>Fanon dismissed the then-hegemonic Algiers School’s notion of North Africans as pathological liars. Therefore the role of the confession had to be investigated. By extension the validity of the court itself had to be called into question.</p>
<p>Fanon and Lacaton suggested, therefore, that confession represented a truth built on a kind of pseudo-reciprocity. They argued that the pseudo-truth of the initial confession can be understood as a result of submission to colonial rule, but that this was,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>not to be confused with acceptance.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The retraction in fact represented a real truth. It expressed the “total separation” between the two social groups — European and North African. Thus, “the refusal of the accused Muslim to authenticate the social contract” by confessing to a crime means that,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>an often profound submission in the face of power is not to be confused with the acceptance of that power. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>As Fanon put it in the first chapter of <a href="https://groveatlantic.com/book/the-wretched-of-the-earth/">The Wretched of the Earth</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the colonised subject is always presumed guilty (but) the colonised does not accept guilt. Dominated but not domesticated (and) made to feel inferior (the colonised) is not convinced of inferiority.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What the colonial law courts considered a failure of integration was in fact an elemental resistance to European rule.</p>
<p>Fanon undermined the theories of the Algiers School and the colonial project generally. <a href="https://networks.h-net.org/node/3177/reviews/6240/barrows-keller-colonial-madness-psychiatry-french-north-africa">The Algiers School</a>, founded by University of Lyon-trained Porot, held theories that black people are lazy and lack imagination, Arabs are criminally inclined and over-impulsive, North Africans have a propensity to lie, and so on. </p>
<p>Fanon dissolved these insidious stereotypes by placing the whole issue within a political frame.</p>
<h2>Politics of truth</h2>
<p>Another crucial issue arises from the short paper he wrote with Lacaton, namely, the politics of truth and lies in a colonial society. Fanon also succinctly articulated this in [The Wretched of the Earth]:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In answer to the living lie of the colonial situation, the colonised subject responds with an equal falsehood. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This notion of fundamental resistance reappears in a series of lectures that Fanon delivered at the University of Tunis in 1959 and 1960, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44452161?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">titled</a> “The Encounter of Psychiatry and Society”. During the lectures, Fanon responded to the question of the alleged laziness of the colonised as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The idleness of the colonised is a means of protection, a measure of self-defence above all physiological… Work was conceived as forced labour in the colonies and, even if there is no whip, the colonial situation itself is a whip. It is normal that the colonised refuses to do anything since work leads nowhere for them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In a chapter in [The Wretched of the Earth] called “Colonial War and Mental Disorders”, Fanon returned to the laziness of the colonised as a form of resistance, calling the zealous worker “pathological”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In a colonial regime if a fellah were a zealous worker or a black were to refuse a break from work, they would be quite simply considered pathological cases. The colonised indolence is a conscious way of sabotaging the colonial machine; on the biological level it is a remarkable system of self-preservation and, if nothing else, a positive curb on the occupier’s stranglehold over the entire country.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>This is an edited extract from Nigel C. Gibson and Roberto Beneduce’s book <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/frantz-fanon-psychiatry-and-politics/">Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics</a> (Wits University Press).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102594/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nigel Gibson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fanon found in Algeria that what the colonial law courts considered a failure of integration by mental patients was in fact an elemental resistance to European rule.Nigel Gibson, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Emerson CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/842332017-09-28T18:46:34Z2017-09-28T18:46:34ZThe power and politics of knowledge: what African universities need to do<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187558/original/file-20170926-32444-1xvykoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">African universities can work towards decolonisation while championing the UN's Agenda 2030.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The idea that knowledge is infused with power and politics may sound abstract, so let me offer an example from my own life to illustrate. I was invited to a dinner proceeding a conference in an African capital city. I had expected to meet all the other speakers. But it turned out to be only for the chosen few. I could not help wondering how we’d been selected. White faces outnumbered black ones, men outnumbered women – at a conference to discuss African universities’ future role.</p>
<p>It was an interesting example of the power and politics of knowledge. These are factors I believe should be addressed to ensure African universities and higher education can play a more powerful role in transforming our world and empowering women. </p>
<p>The UN says its <a href="https://www.un.org/pga/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2015/08/120815_outcome-document-of-Summit-for-adoption-of-the-post-2015-development-agenda.pdf">2030 Agenda</a>, which is made up of 17 sustainable development goals, is aimed at “transforming our world”. Quality education and lifelong learning, along with gender equality and empowerment of women, feature in many of the goals.</p>
<p>Universities and higher education, however, receive little attention in this document. So it may seem odd to focus on higher education in relation to Agenda 2030 and women. But I’ve chosen this perspective because higher education institutions in general and universities in particular are important for achieving Agenda 2030’s <a href="http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/">goals</a>.</p>
<p>Universities have two main objectives: to educate students and to produce knowledge. They play a major role in procuring the human and intellectual resources needed for fulfilling the various goals of Agenda 2030. </p>
<h2>Power and politics of knowledge</h2>
<p>There have been institutions of learning in Africa for more than 1000 years. But today the most common type of higher education has <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Higher-Education-and-Capacity-Building-in-Africa-The-geography-and-power/Adriansen-Madsen-Jensen/p/book/9781138838154">its roots</a> in colonial-era institutions.</p>
<p>Frantz Fanon, a Martinique-born Afro-French psychiatrist, philosopher and revolutionary, wrote about the <a href="http://abahlali.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Frantz-Fanon-The-Wretched-of-the-Earth-1965.pdf">colonisation of the mind</a> some 50 years ago. He argued that colonised people tended to adopt their colonisers’ perspective. Independence in Africa did not really change this tendency, Fanon wrote.</p>
<p>African intellectuals have argued for many years that the continent’s universities and school systems in general reproduce(d) their colonial legacy. This happens, for instance, through curriculum and language. Benin’s <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3819631.pdf?refreqid=excelsior:becbd9016dac119d3058387831d2af65">Paulin Hountondji</a> and Kenya’s <a href="http://www.ku.ac.ke/schools/graduate/images/stories/docs/presentation/mazrui.pdf">Ali Mazrui</a> are among those who have written about African scholars’ intellectual and epistemological dependency. Examples of this reliance can be seen in <a href="https://joevarock.com/2017/09/19/making-the-case-for-colonialism-in-ghanaian-social-studies-textbooks/">modern school books</a> in parts of the continent.</p>
<p>It’s not for me as a European to judge whether Africa’s universities are still suffering from what Kenyan intellectual Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o would call the colonisation of the mind. </p>
<p>However, I do know that knowledge production is never neutral. It is neither objective nor power free. African women’s <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/302956250_My_knowledge_your_knowledge_whose_knowledge_is_it_Reflections_from_a_researcher%27s_journey_through_universities_in_the_North_and_South">narratives</a> about their <a href="http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/20494">journeys in academia</a> show how the power and politics of knowledge are intrinsically linked to gender. Race and history must also be considered. This means issues of colonialism, imperialism and dominance are never far away.</p>
<p>The narratives I have studied show that it is not always simple to determine who exercises power over whom and when. Zimbabwean researcher Bevlyn Sithole sees dominance in action when researchers take ownership over communities’ knowledge. She <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/302956250_My_knowledge_your_knowledge_whose_knowledge_is_it_Reflections_from_a_researcher%27s_journey_through_universities_in_the_North_and_South">highlights</a> the importance of co-producing knowledge: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Co-production of knowledge between scientists and communities is a prerequisite for research aiming at a more sustainable development path. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Marrying Agenda 2030 and local knowledge</h2>
<p>This returns us to the question of Agenda 2030.</p>
<p>How can academics produce knowledge of local relevance and include the perspectives and cultures of the people in question? How can knowledge be built that promotes sustainable development and appreciates culture’s contribution to it, as called for in Agenda 2030’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals?</p>
<p>The debate about Africanisation of curriculum and knowledge production also relates to the discussion about universities’ role as local drivers of sustainable development.</p>
<p>The so-called global knowledge economy has placed <a href="https://norrag.wordpress.com/2016/06/20/can-african-universities-deliver-knowledge-for-transforming-our-world-without-decolonizing-the-academy/">increasing demands</a> on universities to internationalise and compete beyond national borders.</p>
<p>Can a university be locally relevant, focusing its teaching and research on local sustainable development needs and also be involved in global competition with an increasing emphasis on standardisation? Transnational capacity-building projects are one way universities try to address both local and global commitments. I have participated in capacity-building projects <a href="https://theconversation.com/global-academic-collaboration-a-new-form-of-colonisation-61382">myself</a>. </p>
<p>It has <a href="https://www.academia.edu/26799676/Higher_Education_and_Capacity_Building_in_Africa_the_Geography_and_Power_of_Knowledge_under_Changing_Conditions">been argued</a>, though, that capacity-building projects and other types transnational collaboration can lead to dependency. Agenda 2030 is likely to result in more such projects, because this is where funding can be found. </p>
<p>It is imperative to knowledge production that academics continue to collaborate. But it must happen in parallel with the decolonialisation of knowledge and methodology. The question is how it can be done.</p>
<p>The first step is to pay attention to the apparent universality of knowledge. I would warn against moving towards a complete Africanisation of curriculum and knowledge production. The dilemma is that this may entail an unproductive essentialisation of the “African”: for example, who the “African” is, where the “African” lives, and what the “African” can study. And what is “African” knowledge, and who can produce it? </p>
<p>Academic institutions and individual academics should try to contextualise knowledge and pay attention to the difference between universal knowledge and dominant knowledge. Yet we should also acknowledge that without ideas about universality, universal human experiences and human rights, Agenda 2030 would never be realised. </p>
<h2>Contextualising knowledge</h2>
<p>African education will not reach its transformative potential through the mindless transfer of knowledge, theories and methods from other parts of the world. This will reproduce dependency. </p>
<p>Instead, empowerment of women and sustainable development require that more contextualised knowledge be produced. The power and politics of knowledge must be analysed. It is necessary to differentiate between dominant knowledge and universal knowledge and, through this process, decolonise the African academy. </p>
<p><em>This is an edited version of an article that <a href="http://www.osisa.org/sites/default/files/publications/buwa-issue7_digitalpublication_singles_web.pdf">first appeared</a> in BUWA, a journal produced by the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84233/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hanne Kirstine Adriansen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Universities play a major role in procuring the human and intellectual resources needed for fulfilling the various goals of the UN’s Agenda 2030.Hanne Kirstine Adriansen, Associate Professor, School of Education, Aarhus UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/755992017-04-05T14:54:45Z2017-04-05T14:54:45ZWhy every generation of students must find, fulfil or betray its mission<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163641/original/image-20170403-21966-10yk9fp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Student protests in South Africa have centred around free tertiary education.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Sumaya Hisham</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a recent opinion piece in the Business Day newspaper, author and academic Jonny Steinberg <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/business-day/20170303/281767039009215">suggested</a> that a “generational estrangement deeper than we have acknowledged” had emerged between the Fees Must Fall generation – those who’ve led protests against high university tuition fees and higher education structures they say are unjust – and their “scorn for almost everyone over the age of 40”. </p>
<p>At times over the past two years it may have seemed that a generation had emerged on South Africa’s campuses that has disowned the past. But generational rebellion is an enduring feature of all societies. Indeed, it’s the dynamic through which societies renew themselves and move forward. </p>
<p>Reflecting on more than 40 years of teaching three generations of University of Witwatersrand (Wits) students – incidentally, Steinberg was among them – I couldn’t help observing how each generation developed a distinct self consciousness; a world view. Each generation was shaped by particular political icons and engaged in particular forms of political action.</p>
<h2>Repression and state violence</h2>
<p>The first generation, the Soweto generation, looked for theories of radical – even revolutionary – change. The central figure was <a href="http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/marx.HTML">Karl Marx</a>, whether students chose to reject him and go in a different direction or to adopt one or other of the intellectual currents that had their source in Marx. These included <a href="https://global.britannica.com/biography/Antonio-Gramsci">Antonio Gramsci</a>, <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/leon-trotsky-9510793">Leon Trotsky</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/23/ernesto-laclau">Ernest Laclau</a>, <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/vladimir-lenin-9379007">Vladimir Lenin</a> and so on.</p>
<p>In 1981 half of the students in my honours class in industrial sociology were held under the <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv01538/04lv01828/05lv01829/06lv01927.htm">Terrorism Act</a>. Some were detained for months without trial. It was the time of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/united-democratic-front-udf">United Democratic Front</a>; of trade union militancy and nationwide resistance to apartheid. </p>
<p>But it was also a time of repression, of state violence – even assassination. The assassination of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/david-joseph-webster">David Webster</a>, a colleague in the department of anthropology, was a dramatic illustration of those times.</p>
<p>The release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 and 1994’s new democratic government was an event that profoundly changed the classroom. This, the 1994 generation, was quite different from those who’d come before.</p>
<h2>Decolonisation of knowledge</h2>
<p>For many, the classroom was an opportunity to escape the poverty and political turmoil of the townships for a career in a transformed public sector or the private sector. But they were rebels too. I recall students occupying the administrative building and trashing the campus in support of their demands for the transformation of Wits. Indeed, one of the demands was for free education. </p>
<p>By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, around 2009, I sensed a new assertive spirit in the corridors of the humanities faculty at Wits. A new generation was in the making, a third generation. It was to culminate in the Fees Must Fall movement of 2015 and 2016. </p>
<p>In February 2016 I was in discussions with my new, black female Masters interns about what they wanted to research for their theses. They announced: “We are tired of white people studying blacks; we want to study whites.” This generation had found its voice and the language to express their feelings of discomfort and <a href="https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/globallabour/article/view/2839/2543">sense of racial injustice</a> in a world where knowledge production is still dominated by whites. </p>
<p>The decolonisation of knowledge was their aim. Post-colonial theory was their guide. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/26/arts/edward-w-said-literary-critic-advocate-for-palestinian-independence-dies-67.html">Edward Said</a> and <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/fanon/national-culture.htm">Frantz Fanon</a>, and African intellectuals such as <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/stephen-bantu-biko">Steve Biko</a> and <a href="http://www.ngugiwathiongo.com/">Ngugi Wa’ Thiongo</a> were now the key theorists. </p>
<p>What’s striking about this, the third generation, is the leading role played by black female students. Black feminism, the black body and sexuality become the dominant discourse of this generation. This third generation had found its voice. They were now comfortable in their skin and proud of their identity.</p>
<p>The teacher student relationship – what I call the chalk face – is a crucial interface between the generations. It’s here that academic generations are made. A central demand of the current generation of students is the need to recognise their dignity, their material needs, their distinct family and cultural backgrounds, and of course their language.</p>
<h2>Discovering a new mission</h2>
<p>But the generational rebellion that Steinberg refers to is not simply about the need for better communication. </p>
<p>It’s a demand that goes back many generations. Indeed it was <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/robert-sobukwe-inaugural-speech-april-1959">a demand</a> made by Pan African Congress founder <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/robert-mangaliso-sobukwe">Robert Sobukwe</a> when he was a tutor at Wits nearly 60 years ago. </p>
<p>It’s a demand to change the content of the curriculum so that South Africans, especially black men and women from all over Africa, can become the producers of knowledge. </p>
<p>To rebuild trust and mutual respect between the generations we need to make our classrooms places where our students are not only the consumers of knowledge produced elsewhere. This is the challenge for the graduating class of 2016. In the memorable words of Fanon:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Each generation must discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Your mission is to become the authors of the books the next generation of students read; the articles they cite and the theories that shape their thinking. </p>
<p><em>This is an edited extract of the author’s speech on the occasion of being awarded an <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/graduations/2017/a-life-servicing-many-generations-.html">honorary doctorate</a> from the University of the Witwatersrand.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75599/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edward Webster does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Generational rebellion is an enduring feature of all societies. Indeed, it is the dynamic through which societies renew themselves and move forward.Edward Webster, Professor Emeritus, Society, Work and Development Institute, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/423322015-05-28T04:07:17Z2015-05-28T04:07:17ZThe books that shaped the rise and fall of the British empire<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83144/original/image-20150527-4818-1bz971c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A new collection of essays explores the role of books in founding and dismantling The British empire.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When we talk about books, we generally think only of their inside - the words, ideas and themes that they contain. But what about the outside? Books are objects in the world. They undertake all kinds of work that exceeds just their words - they forge friendships, decorate our houses, store our momentoes and memories. </p>
<p>Books also have active political lives. They inspire social movements and bind people together. Books can stand as short-hand symbols for larger galaxies of ideas. </p>
<p>A new collection of essays <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Books-That-Shaped-British-Empire/dp/0822358271">Ten Books that Shaped the British Empire</a> explores the role of books in founding and dismantling The British empire. Written by scholars from South Africa, India, Barbados, New Zealand, Australia, the UK and the US, the volume comprises ten essays, each on a book that shaped British imperial life. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83138/original/image-20150527-4815-79noso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83138/original/image-20150527-4815-79noso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83138/original/image-20150527-4815-79noso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83138/original/image-20150527-4815-79noso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83138/original/image-20150527-4815-79noso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83138/original/image-20150527-4815-79noso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83138/original/image-20150527-4815-79noso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
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<h2>Block-busters and obscure texts</h2>
<p>The ten books include five famous block-busters and five now-obscure texts that in their day were influential. </p>
<p>The five block-busters are imperial or anti-imperial classics: Robert Baden Powell’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Scouting-Boys-Handbook-Instruction-Citizenship-ebook/dp/B000RKW5BA">Scouting for Boys (1908)</a>, Charlotte Bronte’s <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1260/1260-h/1260-h.htm">Jane Eyre (1847)</a>, Thomas Babington Macaulay’s five volume <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1468/1468-h/1468-h.htm">History of England (1848)</a>. The anti-colonial texts are Mohandas Gandhi’s <a href="http://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/hind_swaraj.pdf">Hind Swaraj (1909)</a> and <a href="http://www.ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/CLR_James_The_Black_Jacobins.pdf">The Black Jacobins (1938)</a> by CLR James, the famed Caribbean revolutionary thinker. </p>
<p>The lesser-known texts are</p>
<p>• Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Letter-Sydney-Principal-Town-Australasia/dp/B00A2XEV1E">A Letter from Sydney (1827)</a> , influential in the colonisation of New Zealand and Australia.</p>
<p>• Charles Pearson’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/National-character-forecast-Charles-Pearson/dp/B00AR9R8A4">National Life and Character (1893)</a>, an Australian book predicting the rise of Asia and the end of the ‘white man’.</p>
<p>• <a href="https://ia700404.us.archive.org/33/items/acenturyofwrong15175gut/15175-h/15175-h.htm">Century of Wrong (1899)</a>, the pamphlet setting out the Boer cause in the lead up to the Anglo-Boer War. </p>
<p>• <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=gE5zAAAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=">Totaram Sanadhya’s 1914 Fiji Mein Mere Ekkis Varsh</a> (My Twenty-one Years in Fiji) a Hindi pamphlet opposing indentured labour.</p>
<p>• Gakaara wa Wanjau’s 1960 <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=gdIJAQAAMAAJ&source=gbs_similarbooks">Mihiriga ya Agikuyu</a> (The Clans of the Gikuyu) written in a Mau Mau detention camp.</p>
<h2>How the 10 were chosen</h2>
<p>The volume is edited by a radical historian of empire, Antoinette Burton from the University of Illinois and myself, a scholar of print culture and book history from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.</p>
<p>In our introduction, we say that from the very beginning the book provoked fascination. “Oh wow! Which are the ten books?” was a common response.</p>
<p>While everyone had a different idea of which books should be included, our interlocutors accepted the premise that books could change empires. People envisaged a series of big books that founded empires (<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03086537308582372?journalCode=fich20">John Robert Seeley</a>, <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03086537308582372?journalCode=fich20">Charles Dilke</a>, <a href="http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/350925/FD-Lugard">Frederick Lugard</a> were common examples) and a set of equally significant books that ended up dismantling them <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/fanon/">Frantz Fanon</a>, <a href="http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/87703/Amilcar-Lopes-Cabral">Amilcar Cabral</a>, <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Che_Guevara.aspx">Che Guevara</a>).</p>
<h2>How the books shaped aspects of empire</h2>
<p>In some cases the influence was direct. In 1901, when Australian parliamentarians debated the <a href="http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibition/objectsthroughtime/immigration-restriction-act/">Immigration Restriction Bill</a> (a key part of the White Australia policy), the Australian prime minister held up a copy of Pearson’s book and read two passages from it. On the anti-imperial end of the spectrum, CLR James <a href="http://www.ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/CLR_James_The_Black_Jacobins.pdf">Black Jacobins</a> was widely taken as an allegory predicting the end of colonial rule in Africa. </p>
<p>Yet books equally have more diffuse and longer term effects – <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=gdIJAQAAMAAJ&source=gbs_similarbooks">Wanjau’s pamphlet</a> for example was less concerned with direct action against the British than with undertaking the long, slow work of preparing people for independence. </p>
<p>Books were deeply enmeshed with empire and were often used as symbols of British imperial authority, calling-cards of ‘civilization’. As one observer noted, “The English literary text … function[s] as a surrogate Englishman in his highest and most perfect state”. Books were held up as the ‘gift’ of empire and were used to portray colonialism as benign while masking its violent nature. </p>
<p>Books and documents were also instruments of ruling – the <a href="http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/multimedia.php?id=65-259-3">pass book</a> was used to control the movements of black people during apartheid in South Africa.</p>
<p>But books could equally be used by those opposing empire, a provocation to imperial power and a monumental statement of intent. James’ <a href="http://www.ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/CLR_James_The_Black_Jacobins.pdf">Black Jacobins</a>, an account of the late 18th-century slave revolt in Haiti initially appeared in a handsome 328-edition from Secker and Warburg.</p>
<h2>Some came from humble beginnings</h2>
<p>Yet, not all of the 10 books started out as books – many began life as pamphlets or newspaper articles, more humble forms which nonetheless exerted considerable influence. <strong>Century of Wrong</strong> became a calling card for the pro-Boer cause. <strong>Scouting for Boys</strong> appeared first as a newspaper series and then in small handbooks, a format that helped make scouting an international movement. </p>
<p>These texts travelled far and wide at times migrating through different media, appearing as newspaper serials and then rising up into books. Aiding their passage was the vast sprawling periodical and newspaper network that carpeted empire. <strong>Hind Swaraj</strong> began life in Gujarati in a two-part series in Gandhi’s Durban-based newspaper <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/media-and-journalism/history-indian-opinion-newspaper">Indian Opinion</a> before appearing as a booklet translated by Gandhi himself into English. </p>
<p>These streams of print culture made up the sinews and arteries of empire, linking its supporters while offering a mode of communication to its opponents. Access to this field of print culture was uneven and unequal, affected by capital, literacy, censorship. </p>
<p>Yet, much of this printed matter was not copyrighted – all periodicals for example legally reprinted material from each other. These carpets of print culture created a type of commons across empire, a zone of textual production not owned by one person. </p>
<p>Books in empire were dispersed across time and space – they were not bounded events. As instruments for and against empire, they formed part of the sprawling assemblage of the British empire, both extending its reach and limiting its legitimacy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42332/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Isabel Hofmeyr receives funding from National Research Foundation.</span></em></p>Books have active political lives. They inspire social movements and bind people together. Books can stand as short-hand symbols for larger galaxies of ideas.Isabel Hofmeyr, Professor of African Literature , University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.