JWTC Blog

Literature and the Ordinary

2011-10-03T03:06:00.000-07:00

Charismatic Financialism

2010-07-22T14:25:00.000-07:00

In the opening session of this year’s JWTC, Arjun Appadurai presented a paper which theorizes a way in which we might be able to uncover the “ghost in the machine” that animates the ubiquitous presence of technical market devices (from credit scores to complex options-pricing algorithms) as well as to identify a particular “speculative ethic” which infuses the subjectivity of economic actors

Afropolis Metabolis

2010-07-22T13:40:00.000-07:00

Sharad Chari at JWTCAfter Arjun Appadurai's reflections on the Geists and ghosts driving big finance, this afternoon's session revolved around the assets of the urban poor. Sharad Chari argues that subalternity can itself be an asset: when people "refuse to be ruined, while surrounded by processes of ruination," for example residents in Durban's South acting up against the toxic industries that

Identity and Property in Precarious Times

2010-07-22T00:01:00.001-07:00

John and Jean Comaroff with Eric Worby, JWTCJean and John Comaroff’s session on ‘Identity and Property in Precarious Times’ took a different look at themes that had also preoccupied the first day of the workshop. How do we study the forms of subjectivity associated with economic action at the present time, and what does doing so teach us about the larger trends that are shaping the future? Arjun

Of cities of cash and gold

2010-07-21T04:27:00.001-07:00

Arjun Appadurai presenting at JWTC In the first public lecture of the 2010 edition of the JWTC, entitled “Slum Cosmopolitanism: The Cultural Tactics of Mumbai’s Urban Poor,” Arjun Appadurai gave us a taste of how one can fly from elevated discussions on Weberian thought, down to the vernacular; a move without which any enterprise aimed at theorising can prove not only vain but also irrelevant.

Open letter to the London Review of Books

2010-07-20T08:13:00.000-07:00

Posted by Professor Achille Mbembe19th July 2010To the Editor,With its stress on its own 'depth and scholarship and good writing' and its 'unmatched international reputation', the LRB has a responsibility to maintain high standards if it is to retain its enviable position of having the 'largest circulation of any literary magazine in Europe'.We find it baffling therefore that you continue to

Nationalism, a Janus-faced animal: the potential for xenophobia

2010-07-16T16:42:00.000-07:00

These have been heady times as millions of South Africans celebrate the successful hosting of the World Cup. Being the first African country to host this global event does indeed seem worthy of celebrating. This extremely costly event has produced an extraordinary sense of global citizenship and national pride and belonging. Yet, not all observers are optimistic and euphoric. Dale McKinley (Cape

South Africa as a contemporary frontier society

2010-05-14T04:58:00.000-07:00

Beyond the common knowledge of South Africa’s violent history and the anti-apartheid struggle, one of my first intimate encounters with South Africa was my reading of J.J. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians a few years ago. The image of this dusty frontier town stranded at the edge of nowhere and left to fend for itself in the dying days of the Empire against an imaginary barbarian army

Sawyer seminar - institutionalizing and internalizing divisions

2010-05-13T03:00:00.000-07:00

The Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) was awarded a Sawyer Seminar by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to host a series of events during 2010 and 2011. The Seminar is to be used to develop fresh perspectives on the quandaries and puzzles of the present democratic moment in South Africa from the vantage point of the relationship between race, property and poverty

Sawyer seminar - on 'race' relations

2010-05-13T02:45:00.000-07:00

Sawyer seminar - On Fences

2010-05-10T00:16:00.000-07:00

Sawyer seminar - In a Moment of Danger

2010-04-21T23:30:00.000-07:00

Sawyer seminar - Racial Frontiers

2010-04-12T00:03:00.000-07:00

Beyond the biennial: Bamako at 15 years

2010-03-26T06:25:00.000-07:00

Photographer: Sammy Baloji. Title: Gécamines, from the series, Memory, 2006. Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo. Permission to reproduce gratefully acknowledged.The Rencontres de Bamako, or African photography biennial, which ran from the 7th of November to the 7th of December 2009, in Mali’s capital city, provokes fervent conversation among visiting artists and spectators. Now in its

Speed and Position: The Post-Event City

2010-01-12T07:04:00.000-08:00

You can’t take the rush out of a gold rush town and get it to stroll or sit down. The rush is its nervous system fueled by large and singular events. Johannesburg likes to think of itself more as drag strip racing than random family outings in sensible cars. So the 2010 World Cup is the turbo kicking into Johannesburg’s already accelerated history. The Heisenberg Principal of Uncertainty – more

End of Aids denial era a chance to move forward

2009-12-26T05:57:00.000-08:00

Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, photo credits: Mail and GuardianMuch has been written in the press recently about the death of South Africa’s former health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. Some of these reports pull no punches in highlighting the devastating role of the former health minister in buttressing former President Mbeki’s AIDS denialism. A recent Harvard University study found that the

Re-Negotiating the Terms of Contemporary African Art: a reply to Professor Achille Mbembe

2009-12-08T11:47:00.000-08:00

In his stimulating discussion “African contemporary art: Negotiating the terms of recognition,” posted to the JWTC Blog on September 8, Professor Mbembe is especially critical of the pernicious influence that Western-funded ‘development’ projects have had on the arts of the African continent. Although acutely aware of the equally baneful influence of the commercialization and privatization of all

Is there anything to be learned from District 9?

2009-11-10T00:55:00.000-08:00

I have read and re-read Ato Quayson’s eloquent critique of District 9 several times and I can only agree whole-heartedly with his assessment of the representation of Nigerians in the film and what it tells us about the enduring stereotyping of Africa and Africans in general in Western thought. However, being Arab and Muslim, I’ve become quite accustomed, it is sad to say, to

Unthinkable Nigeriana: The Social Imaginary of District 9

2009-10-16T04:00:00.001-07:00

This piece was first published on www.zelezapost.com as a contribution to an e-Symposium on District 9. Those interested in reading further contributions to this debate are invited to visit www.zelezapost.com I: On Growing Up with Nigeria The first part of my title is borrowed from a piece I wrote after my first ever visit to Nigeria in 1993. My six-week trip happened to coincide with the

The ghost in the art work

2009-09-10T05:05:00.000-07:00

I write a poem, then I place it in a drawer. There it stays for months before I visit it again. If I found that it resembled me then, I consider that I have not done much. If I felt as if someone else had written it, when it strikes me as an Other’s poetry, I tell myself, that I have accomplished something.Mahmoud Darwich, Palestine as a metaphor, 1997.Like most expats these days, I often end up

African contemporary art: Negotiating the terms of recognition

2009-09-08T01:05:00.000-07:00

Africa Remix poster Africa Remix was an international success. The Johannesburg Art Fair is becoming a fixture in the international art circuit. Major academic interventions such as Sarah Nuttall’s Beautiful/Ugly are redefining the boundaries of African aesthetics. William Kentridge, Penny Siopis and countless individual African artists are making a name of their own in the world market

Contemporary Art: Kill and Go

2009-09-01T04:59:00.000-07:00

Visitor at Johannesburg Art Fair 2009. Image by Cobi LabuscagneIn the late 80’s I was nosing around a gallery in Dallas which at that time was making a play against more established Houston as the art capital of the South West USA. Several Dallas galleries had tied into Cologne – then the hot bed of commercially recognized Avant-Garde - presumably trying to transcend JR Ewing stereotypes and

From revolution to rights in South Africa?

2009-09-01T04:32:00.000-07:00

Public Debate at JWTCAzapo's Mosibudi Mangena has recently questioned whether the current service delivery protests are a sign of political consciousness or depoliticisation (Cape Times, 27th July, 2009). For Mangena, post-apartheid state promises of free water, electricity and housing can only lead to citizens becoming passive and dependent clients of a paternalistic state. Mangena argues that

“Teachable moments” - David Theo Goldberg on the Militarization of Society

2009-08-19T02:50:00.000-07:00

David Theo Goldberg Political figures in America, including President Barack Obama, lined up to call the fierce disputes of meaning and significance that surrounded the recent arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. a “teachable moment” for the nation. But quite what was to be taught—to whom and how; if anything—remains unclear. Most Americans, for example, did not need to be taught why ‘

At stake in the South

2009-08-12T01:29:00.000-07:00

Isabel HofmeyrDuring their studio session, “Cultures of the Political”, Sarah Nuttall and Isabel Hofmeyr offered us two modes for understanding cultural forms of the political in the Southern Hemisphere. Nuttall’s could be identified as ‘the national contemporary’ and Hofmeyer’s ‘the historical international’. Nuttall concerns herself with contemporary, urban South African youth culture and the

Affective Geographies: a conversation on thinking and feeling (from) the south

2009-08-04T02:13:00.000-07:00

Liz Gunner introducing Sarah Nuttall In an essay in the recent collection Load Shedding, Sarah Nutall writes: “The days and nights of mid-August slid slowly by. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were living out the long end of something, or the end of a long something. Was it just me?”. In the essay, Nutall’s concern with feeling out the contemporary political moment, with

Variations on Waste

2009-07-27T04:35:00.000-07:00

Achille Mbembe and Eric Worby Achille Mbembe has argued that there is a distinct social category of waste people. He cites successive social managements of supernumerary people to support his claim that this category is ubiquitous: the great confinement and siftings in the period of primitive accumulation, the Napoleonic conscription of the petite bourgeoisie to staff the

The political possibility of exceeding a politics of representation.

2009-07-17T00:06:00.000-07:00

Ariella AzoulayIn the impossibility (or possibility) of this time I will not try to respond to the lecture “The Civil Contract of Photography” by Ariella Azoulay. Rather than present an argument, I prefer only to post some ideas to put into question the relationship between the politics of representation and the possibility of the political. A distinction should be made between the political

Heynes on Geschiere

2009-07-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

Gamadoela's restaurant Thursday morning the JWTC welcomed Peter Gescheire, whose earlier work on The Modernity of Witchcraft, is familiar to many of those gathered for the workshop. More recently, Gescheire has turned his attention to issues of migration and “belonging.” His presentation, which drew on his recent book, Perils of Belonging, which is focused on the

Rallying Cries and the (Mis)use of Terms

2009-07-16T23:58:00.000-07:00

Shalini Randeria Shalini Randeria, in her talk on “Juridification in the Shadow of the World Bank,” unsettles the boundaries between theory and practice, academia and activism. Often, as academics, we become—contrary to the best of our efforts—overly reliant on monolithic terms and concepts. Neoliberalism, for example, becomes in many academic circles, an unexamined entity

The Temporality of the Political

2009-07-15T01:58:00.000-07:00

Adi Ophir Perhaps the task of defining something like "the political" is complicated by the fact that such an effort is itself entirely political. In today's seminar at the JWTC, Tel Aviv University-based philosopher Adi Ophir led us into a conversation which attempted just this. While various ontological and philosophical debates emerged in the discussion, I would like to draw out the theme

Openings – encounters with Acts of State. Photographs by Juan Orrantia, Thursday 9 July 2009

2009-07-14T07:03:00.000-07:00

John Comaroff’s ‘Politics of Law’

2009-07-14T06:36:00.000-07:00

Achille Mbembe and John ComaroffJohn Comaroff’s presentation on “Politics of Law” largely centered on the growing hegemony of the law and the rising culture of legality as the privileged domain of 21st century politics. In what follows, I will attempt to touch on a few key points that emerged in Comaroff’s robust presentation. Rather than relying on the symbology of the process of sacralization

Belonging in the neoliberal age: Following Peter Geschiere’s lecture at the JWTC

2009-07-14T06:33:00.000-07:00

Geschiere on THE question In times when I have the privilege of listening to scholars sharing their thoughts and ideas on the world we live in today, I cannot help but wonder about THE question that lies beneath their reflections, analysis, conclusions, interpretations. That question that drives them to think hours into the night and keep digging for answers in the places

The Common in Communism

2009-07-14T06:26:00.001-07:00

JWTC on the commons Michael Hardt’s The Common in Communism Caveat: what follows is an attempted synopsis of what were very complex ideas. Apologies to their author! Addressing what he described as the ‘sea change’ in the political landscape of the current fiscal crisis, Professor Hardt sought to work through a reconfiguration of communism drawing on Marx’s early economic

Belonging As An Episteme

2009-07-14T06:23:00.000-07:00

Peter GeschierePeter Geschiere’s lecture “Neo-Liberalism and The Paradoxes of Community and Belonging” generates two accounts of belonging. The first account connects belonging to state power, the sharing of resources, recognition and rights within the nation state etc. At the heart of this reading of belonging is public recognition. And the key criterion for public recognition here is

Seriously Playful

2009-07-13T05:52:00.001-07:00

Seriously thoughtful

2009-07-13T05:47:00.000-07:00

Citizenship of images

2009-07-12T23:41:00.000-07:00

Ariella at openingOpening experienceThis is a multilayered experience, an encounter, as curator Ariella Azoulay called it. A series of affective moments crafted in the interaction of gazes looking at each other in multiple temporalities. In the exhibition Act of State, A Photographed History of the Occupation, different trajectories coalesce, with the intention of sparking if you wish, the

Critique of the Law

2009-07-12T23:37:00.001-07:00

Dale, Phumi and Kelly on the Law.The Studio Session, Critique of the Law, was triple framed: first by John Comaroff’s morning talk (see below), then by Achille’s recalling the four doors of intellectual encounter through the JWTC, focusing on the studio sessions as more informal conversational times, and finally by our two co-chairs Julia Hornberger and Kelly Gillespie. Kelly and Julia posed

2009-07-10T00:08:00.000-07:00

Below are four photographs from the exhibition ‘Act of State’ that opened at Constitutional Hill last night, addressed by curator and professor of philosophy and visual culture, Ariella Azoulay. She has kindly made four of its images available on the blog. Unidentified photographer 1967 1967/09 The Old City

“But, that’s blackmail!”

2009-07-09T06:03:00.000-07:00

Ahmed Veriava and Prishani NaidooIn response to Ahmed Veriava, Prishani Naidoo and Ulrike Kistner’s provocative presentation on the ‘Politics of Life and Survival,’ I would like to take up the matter Ahmed and Prishani admitted is a source of contention in their own work – the politics of survival. As someone whose research is focused on the bio-politics of HIV/AIDS in post-apartheid South Africa

Is Capitalism Dead?

2009-07-09T05:56:00.000-07:00

Workers VanguardIn a much lauded recent book Architects of Poverty, political analyst Moeletsi Mbeki reflects on why “African capitalism” needs changing. Instead of enriching their societies, indigenous elites and the powerful “sell off the Continent’s assets to enrich the rest of the world”, he argues. In return for these services, “they receive the crumbs from the tables of the foreigners who

Common Cause

2009-07-09T00:46:00.000-07:00

Michael HardtThis evening, after a lively day of discussion led by Michael Hardt on questions of biopolitics and “the common” as a theory of subversion in late capitalism, I returned to my lodging to see the following news item on the BBC:Scientists in Newcastle claim to have created human sperm in the laboratory in what they say is a world first. Blinking at this newsflash, I first observed how

The Critique of Neoliberalism in Art

2009-07-09T00:43:00.000-07:00

Each speaker at the panel on the status of neoliberalism opened with a metaphor: John Comaroff called to mind a scene from a Marx Brothers movie to highlight the misdiagnosis of neoliberalism as dead; Michael Hardt compared neoliberalism to zombies in its existence even after its death; and Ashwyn Desai opened with the title: “Monty Python meets George Orwell in Johannesburg in 2009” to

What’s left of Neoliberalism?

2009-07-09T00:29:00.000-07:00

Ashwin Desai and Michael Hardt “Everything was forever till it was no more” (The title of Alexei Yurchak's 2005 book on the collapse of socialism) “Another ideological god has failed. The assumptions that ruled policy and politics over three decades suddenly look as outdated as revolutionary socialism” (Martin Wolf, “Seeds of Its Own Destruction”, Financial Times, March 8

A view from the Muslim World: For us Din (faith) and Dawla (politics) are the same!

2009-07-08T08:51:00.000-07:00

Jean Comaroff and Tawana KupeProf Jean Comaroff’s discussion on Politics of Faith was both inspiring and informative. Here, I would like reflect on the lecture with examples from my own research with examples from the Muslim world. An interesting observation can be drawn between the Pentecostal movements and trends in contemporary reformist and revivalist movements in Muslim world. The

Jesus is the answer, Jean is the genius!

2009-07-08T05:11:00.000-07:00

Jean Comaroff and Eric WorbyThe theme of Tuesday’s breathtaking morning session with Jean Comaroff was “the politics of faith”, revolving around the new entanglements of the religious, the political, and the economic. The God business booms, but what is new in this boom, Jean Comaroff argues, is how the sacred appears in ever more profane places. Governments discover citizens’ sense of empathy,

Superfluous Womanhood: The “Human,” Race and Other People’s Waste

2009-07-08T04:56:00.000-07:00

Shatema Threadcraft (left) in conversation with Lucia Cantera and Victoria Collis-ButheleziIn his talk, Democracy and the Ethics of Mutuality, Achille Mbembe discussed unemployment, closed routes to manhood and the importance of South Africa as one of the key experiments in how to dismantle race-based systems while striving to create racial equality through positive law. He discussed the changing

Politics after Liberation I

2009-07-07T23:44:00.000-07:00

Steven Robbins and Julia HornbergerThis studio session, presented by Steven Robins and Harry Garuba, interrogated the character of politics in post-Apartheid South Africa. Both departed from the idea that mass political mobilization during the 1980s has been displaced by a transformed society, where government capacity, and the law as a mechanism to create a more just society, appears to

Politics after Liberation II

2009-07-07T23:39:00.000-07:00

Harry GurubaGreetings to all JWTC participants and outside readers. I write in response to a set of remarks made by Harry Garuba and Steven Robins under the heading “Politics After Liberation” on Monday afternoon’s studio session. As its title suggests, this panel inaugurated debate on one of the central questions posed by the JWTC: What forms does the practice of politics take in the

Mbembe’s Democracy and the Ethics of Mutuality

2009-07-07T01:57:00.000-07:00

Achille Mbembe The Workshop has drawn together a thrilling mix of students and teachers, initiates and sages, from south and north, for an ambitious attempt to “rethink the political”. Whether consciously or not, much is being staked not only in the concepts and conclusions of this Workshop but in the mode of conversation and the quality of mutual regard that such a

Welcome to JWTC 2009

2009-07-06T08:12:00.000-07:00

In July 2008, the highest point in Johannesburg became the site for an extraordinary conversation. In preparation, Johannesburg-based students and scholars spent the early months of last year in a reading group called ‘Future Tense.’ And then from across the world, scholar-friends journeyed here into conversation. The question that called us together was ‘how do we think the future from here?’