Blackhood as a category in contemporary discourses on Black Studies: An existentialist philosophical defence

Abstract

We are, at the close of the twentieth century, at a point in time when the dominance of the universe of European singularity is being encompassed or engulfed by the multiverse of our shared humanity. The colonizer, self-deified imperial Europe, is dead! (p. 52)Nearly 20 years since this proclamation of the death of the epistemic emperor, Europe and his Eurocentric universalism, and nearly 30 years since Appiahs' critique of African 'nativistic consciousness' in his In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (1992:47-72), in this putative era of the global village and multiversalism, African modes of self-knowledge and expression are still battling for space in the mainline academy, including in universities on the African continent. Equally, the idealised global culture and ethic is proving to be laced with an ever-increasing Western paranoid nationalism, border politics, antiblack racism and the tendency to treat Africans as a surplus people. 31.See James & Sterger (eds), Globalisation and culture (2010:xii-xv). 2.From the title of the book Colour Conscious: The Political Morality of Race (Appiah & Gutmann 1996). 3.Images of black deaths in the Mediterranean sea, anti-African immigration into Europe; Hage's (2003) study of racism in Australia; police killings of black people in the USA; persistence of socio-economic discrimination against black livelihood in post-apartheid South Africa and so on.Background: An era and academic milieu that clamour at post-racialist and globalist theoretical frameworks juxtaposed with evidence of growing anti-black dehumanizing racism, and the persistence of psycho-social alienation of black learners in multi-racial educational institutions.Aim: To engage in a critical philosophical-phenomenological and political review of the experience of being-black-in-the-world as a factor that justifies the establishment and maintenance of Black Studies programmes. The article seeks to contribute to the debate on the vagaries accompanying the institutionalisation of culturo-epistemic exclusive spaces for socially suppressed selfhoods in a postmodern academy.Setting: Racialised social environments as affecting Higher Education, with post-apartheid South Africa as a case.Methods: Existential Philosophy, Black Consciousness and Paulo Freire's philosophy of education. Results:The category of blackness as derived from a Fanonian existential phenomenology and Steve Biko's perspective, contrasted against Achille Mbembe's semiological-hermeneutic and cosmopolitan treatment of blackness, is an existential-ontological reality that should function as a cardinal category in educational planning, justifying specialised learning and knowledgeexchange spaces for the re-humanisation of black existence. Conclusion:The experience of black existential reality, conceived from blackhood as an external recognition and an internally self-negotiated consciousness within the social immanence of whiteness, justifies the institutionalisation of learning spaces and programmes that are aimed at nurturing a...

A reflective analysis of articles published in the journal of Transformation in Higher Education (2016–2020): Beyond transformation?

“…Decolonisation and decolonising became key to, or even equal to, transformation in higher education during and after the #mustfall protests in 2015-2016. Decolonisation and decolonising are explicit or implicit in titles, abstracts and keywords related to notions such as epistemic violence and Eurocentric hegemony (Heleta 2016), Africanisation (Horsthemke 2017), colonial and decolonial identity and subjectivity (Bazana & Mogatsi 2017;Becker 2017;Mabille 2019), black consciousness and black studies (Bazana & Mogatsi 2017;Lamola 2018), indigenisation and indigenous knowledge (Eybers 2019;Horsthemke 2017), decolonial curriculum (Nyoni 2019), postcolonialism (Gearon 2019;Nell 2020) and decolonial philosophy (Matolino 2020). This reflection is done through a decolonial lens.…”

Arguing for the inclusion of indigenous knowledge in the STEM curriculum: Possibilities and challenges

“…But, let me share a few examples of how the thoughts and ideas of some of these authors are being (re)invoked in the present. Steve Biko is being (re)invoked in arguments to advance black studies in South Africa (and elsewhere) based on the idea that blackness is an important and productive counter-narrative in a context where whiteness dominates (Lamola 2018). Fanon's life and works help us to make sense of the difference between decolonisation and Africanisation.…”

“…However, in South Africa (and elsewhere), there are privileges derived from being white, and white lived experience has become idealised (whiteness) in the modern world. Moreover, Lamola (2018:2) argues that 'whitely thinking' has become the mainstream epistemology of the modern world, which has resulted in the subjugation of black being and lived experience. This, as I have argued, is what the student protests of 2015 and 2016 laid bare in relation to South African universities.…”

“…By existentiality, he refers to the intra-subjective consciousness of the black person, and the external institutional impositions on the black person's self-consciousness. He (Lamola 2018) writes:…”

“…It is in this sense that this self-negotiated selfhood is blackhood. (p. 7) Lamola's (2018) blackhood resonates strongly with Pinar's method of currere, and the latter could contribute systematicity to the labour of the black person (student) in the process of engaging in Lamolo's self-understanding and self-negotiationblackhood becomes curriculum.…”