'[D]ecolonization, the postapartheid, is first and foremost, a resumption of interrupted history. A resumption not indeed of some original purities and essences before the Fall, but of interrupted dramas, indigenous and universal dramas; above all a resumption of our dialogue with one another, with ourselves.' (Sekyi-Otu 2003) This paper reflects on academic freedom during structural adjustment, a period of economic and political crises so bruising that African societies – and their universities – have yet to emerge from it. Universities often resisted structural adjustment, but instead of defending universities, the state typically responded with brutality. It was then that academics turned towards society for support, and discovered the extent of their social alienation, for the academic project appeared at best irrelevant, and at worst, a form of colonial violence. Within this context, CODESRIA convened a pan-African gathering in Kampala in 1990 to ask: what does it mean to be free as an intellectual? Academic Freedom in Africa represents the first fruits of these debates, but has yet to be subjected to a close reading. This paper focuses on a central claim in the volume: that the lack of freedom in the academic community is closely related to its lack of social relevance. Paying careful attention to contributors’ debates over this claim, I argue, suggests a conceptualisation of the university as a potential space for society to argue with itself, where public argument is a critical component of an autonomous and flourishing society. As such, the book is an act of astonishing and fierce hope – that in place of the developmental university or its marketized counterpart, the democratic, sovereign spirit of a people could come to live within the university. Our time is again a time of crisis, and academic freedom is again a dangerous question. Yet, as a close reading of this book shows, there is something about crisis, and the refusal to give in to it, the refusal to flee intellectually and politically by retreating from self-critique. In the dance between these two, between crisis and refusal, we might find a way to think deeply and carefully together.
WISER Seminar Papers
- WISER's TRUST seminar is hosted on-line every Monday afternoon from 16:00 - 17:00 SA time during the teaching semester. Forthcoming seminars are available here, and past events are detailed in our archive.
- Please register on Zoom in advance of the meeting on this link.
- Participants should please read the paper (below) prior to the seminar; it will typically be available by the Friday preceding the seminar.
In this semester, the Trust seminar will explore questions of credit and debt on the African continent. In contrast with the argument that trust and confidence are synonymous (most evident in the Edelman Trust Barometer and the reporting around it), some of the most convincing scholarship argues for the direct association of trust with credit. Other researchers, studying informal African institutions, have found credit everywhere on this continent, but little that can be associated with trust. Some state institutions (like SACCOs in Kenya) and simpler penalties, like efficient bankruptcy laws, seem also to be instrumental in shaping the politics of credit. One key driver of credit systems is a secondary market, which depends in part on institutions and information that derive from (and support) fiduciaries. These are especially important in the contemporary tensions between firm-based and individualised credit systems. The seminar series this semester will explore some of these dynamics, examining how they have shaped the cultures and politics of debt and credit from the precolonial to the contemporary period.
