Suffering, individual liberty and collective freedom: interpreting self-immolation as resistance and liberatory praxis through a Buddhist-Marxist lens Essay submitted in response to the following topic: Critically discuss Berlin’s critique of Marxism as restricting the liberty of the individual. POL5048S Global Political Thought, Political Studies Department, University of Cape Town “Through an additional act of boldness, … Continue reading When these fires are extinguished
Essays
Starring down the barrel of the gun
Samurai Champloo and the discourses of modernity, civilisation and Western power in Japan Essay submitted in response to the following: Both Russia and Japan were “old” national societies with significantly entrenched social relations and symbolic-cultural traditions when confronted by an expanding global capitalism. Critically discuss the key issues of debate on how to respond to … Continue reading Starring down the barrel of the gun
Writing on Water: The Haitian Revolution and Universal History
Appropriation of metaphors, disciplinarity and universalism in ‘rescuing’ the idea universal history from its service to white domination The self-liberation of the African slaves of Saint-Domingue gained for them, by force, the recognition of European and American whites – if only in the form of fear. Among those with egalitarian sympathies, it gained them respect … Continue reading Writing on Water: The Haitian Revolution and Universal History
Inclusive Exclusion: the Source and Residence Conflict in International Taxation
Source and residence-based taxation in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and United Nations Model Tax Convention for the avoidance of double taxation Critique insists upon analyzing the systemic relations that exist between all the sites of cultural production and consumption. A politically effective critique of literary education would be better served now by discarding the problematic … Continue reading Inclusive Exclusion: the Source and Residence Conflict in International Taxation
After the Earthquake: Seed Imperialism and Disaster Capitalism
Food security and displacement in the age of Monsanto and climate change Submitted as an essay in response to: Sarah Ives’ book, Steeped in Heritage, is not just about rooibos tea but also about how people claim belonging in relation to uncertain political, economic, and ecological futures. By exploring the ironies and surprises that surround … Continue reading After the Earthquake: Seed Imperialism and Disaster Capitalism
Revisiting Ujamaa and the Debate on African Socialism
The limits of intercultural translation and modern scientific thought in building ecologies of knowledge for epistemological reconstruction Submitted in response to the essay question: Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ book, Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide, is built on three founding principles. (i) What are these principles/ ideas, (ii) related to these principles, what are … Continue reading Revisiting Ujamaa and the Debate on African Socialism
African Philosophy and the Black Radical Tradition
A case study of the Azanian Liberation Tradition as a theory of liberation and practice of resistance Long essay submitted in partial fulfilment of requirements for Module 1 SOC5059F: Theorising Justice from the South Sociology Department, University of Cape Town Abstract African philosophy has necessarily come to be defined in relation to the consciousness of … Continue reading African Philosophy and the Black Radical Tradition
The Khoisan Revivalist Movement and the Decolonial Turn
Authenticity, naming and cultural identities in Khoisan historiography for epistemic justice Submitted in response to the essay question: Critically discuss the various discourses on the ‘precolonial’ within southern Africa, with KhoiSan Historiography as a case study. What are the implications for epistemological transformation in southern Africa? AXL5202F Problematising the Study of Africa, Centre for African … Continue reading The Khoisan Revivalist Movement and the Decolonial Turn
Imperial Ahistorical History and the Conundrum of Postcolonial Studies: the challenges of modernity and the nation state in African History
This piece is from a school assignment, submitted in response to the essay topic: [I]nsofar as the academic discourse of history – that is, ‘history’ produced in the institutional site of the university – is concerned, Europe remains the sovereign theoretical subject of all histories, including the ones we call ‘Indian’, ‘Chinese’, ‘Kenyan’, and so. … Continue reading Imperial Ahistorical History and the Conundrum of Postcolonial Studies: the challenges of modernity and the nation state in African History
Simon Rakei 