Re-Imagining the Social in South Africa: Critique and Post-apartheid Knowledge

As apartheid ended, why did the South African academy shift from critique to subservience? Why have common sense explanations of the social world of South Africans replaced searching questions? Why are conversations on social issues in South Africa controlled by technology, management, and, until their recent collapse, the idea of markets? Why has serious thought in the new South Africa become an indecent activity? These, and other, questions are at the heart of this book, which brings social theory to bear on social practice to disrupt received conceptions and representations of the social in post-apartheid South Africa. This subversive volume seeks to revive the tradition of intellectual argument that marked apartheid's final years. Using critical theoretical perspectives, the contributors offer explanations of narrowly focused, post-apartheid discourses, and imagine different orderings of contemporary South African life. Re-imagining the Social in South Africa revitalizes thinking on 21st-century South Africa by positioning the humanities, especially its critical spirit, at the very center of the national conversation.