Papers by Terblanche Delport
This study will attempt to foreground the various underlying facets of Sobukwe’s historical imagi... more This study will attempt to foreground the various underlying facets of Sobukwe’s historical imagination and social philosophy through a close reading of his speeches and writings. It will be shown how Sobukwe’s thought contains important observations for the study of identity, culture, history, and society; all concepts that are also of great importance to the field of psychosocial studies. The specific psychosocial dimension of Sobukwe’s thought lies in an attention to the role of the historical imagination, what we can tentatively name a historical form of consciousness. This is a form of consciousness that stands in opposition to and looks beyond what is confined and prescribed as the current and its possibilities. The interrelationship between psychological and political liberation will be explored and expanded upon through a focus on the role that history plays in both. It will be shown how Sobukwe, together with other intellectuals and politicians associated with Pan-Africanism and African Nationalism, mobilised history as a theatre of struggle that tied together the realms of the psychological and the political in the quest for African liberation.
In this German translation done by Franz Martin Wimmer, We engage in a discussion of work we've b... more In this German translation done by Franz Martin Wimmer, We engage in a discussion of work we've been engaged in over the past 3 years, we examine the continuity of colonial racism in academic philosophy in South since 1994 and the advent of the "new" South Africa. We do this by comparing the present to the past of philosophical teaching and practice. Our argument is that the marginalisation of African philosophy is correspondent to the elsewhere political and social reality of the marginalisation of the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation. This occurs most tangibly through the outstanding resolution of the restoration of sovereignty over the territory and title over it to the indigenous people.
When Lesego Rampolokeng took the stage at the University currently known as Rhodes in 2012 to per... more When Lesego Rampolokeng took the stage at the University currently known as Rhodes in 2012 to perform his public lecture, writing the ungovernable, 1 he had the following to say about the current historical disposition of the country: "my generation break-beaten into line / obscenity-heritage / pornography pageantry … superstars, asteroids/arse-steriods & haemorrhoids / all things I try to avoid / now) time's stuck a fist so far up my rectum / it's waving Amandla out of my mouth / (what a boneless slogan to chew)". Rampolokeng is here throwing a looming shadow over the bright colours of the South African rainbow and the heroes and icons it produces. He is questioning the history and the narrative that has continually been re-told as the story of the glorious end of apartheid, complete with heroes, waving fists, and limp Amandla slogans.
Acta Academica, Dec 2014
How do we critically engage South African constitutionalism today? This is the basic question tha... more How do we critically engage South African constitutionalism today? This is the basic question that will animate this article. In order to investigate this, I will specifically look at the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 108 of 1996 (the Constitution) from the perspective of an ethics of liberation. This investigation will proceed by way of two main points of discussion, namely an exposition of Enrique Dussel's formulation of an ethics of liberation and an application of this ethics of liberation related to the Constitution as critique. The three fundamental principles -material, formal, feasible -of an ethics of liberation will be discussed and applied, in the form of three questions, to the current constitutional order. These questions will then be discussed and answered in order to show how the Constitution came into being due to a process of unethical feasibility.
Phronimon, 2012
The question that this paper will address is that of the human being's relationship to technology... more The question that this paper will address is that of the human being's relationship to technology and nature. The main argument considers how the human being is "world-forming" as opposed to the animal being "poor in world" (Heidegger). The investigation into the question of the human being's symbiosis with nature and technology will be explored mainly through the work of Martin Heidegger, Giorgio Agamben and Bernard Stiegler. Heidegger and Agamben will assist in elucidating the difference between the animal's open and the human's unconcealment in order for the argument to be made that the animal and the human navigate their world by way of a succession of marks. The animal's marks are already given while the human constructs its marks. The myth of Prometheus and Epimetheus, as retold by Stiegler, will serve to show how the "human is technics". Stiegler's concept of epiphylogenesis offers a view of the human as Weltbildend that takes further Heidegger's assertion that "[t]echnē is a mode of alētheuein [revealing]" (Heidegger 2011: 222). Through seeing the human as technics, Stiegler offers a view of technology that does not fall into the traditional parameters of technological or cultural determinism on the one side, or technological substantivism and instrumentalism on the other.
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Papers by Terblanche Delport