HACkers blog

A comment on a recent post on this blog invoked The Other in the context of UCT. It's a concept about which many assumptions are made - who holds the centre, who is relegated to the margins - and, depending on one's own positionality, perspectives differ.

My own assumptions about the centrality of white men were blown apart when an academic in one of the Blessed Disciplines confessed that he'd always felt marginalised because of his class roots. Another admitted similar feelings based on his discipline - given the neoliberal deification of Science, Engineering and Technology that had sprung up within the University, he felt his field tainted him as "dead wood" despite his active research profile and empassioned teaching. And, of late, the policy thrust which has embraced the discourse of equity and redress has seen many white men feeling threatened, superfluous, endangered.

The black staff who are the intended beneficiaries of many of these policies feel no more affirmed or empowered - many question the commitment of the institution to enacting these policies as they continue to see around them the appointment, promotion and affirmation of those traditionally affirmed. Skepticism at best; outright suspicion and hostility at worst.

Neither women as a group, nor people with disabilities, see their identity reflected back at them when viewing the institution. They still feel the need to adapt, compromise, suppress, mask - which has, some claim, gotten worse in recent times rather than better, with the heightened focus on performativity which makes unreasonable demands of the kind best borne by those who have wives, servants, Others to pick up in the domestic sphere when their attention needs to be focused increasingly above and beyond working hours on putting in extra just to stay afloat.

So... if we all feel Other, who feels affirmed and reflected back in this institution? Are we all completely alienated, or is there - lurking somewhere in the bowels of Bremner perhaps - someone who truly feels this place is their own?

Freedom Day presents a good opportunity to reflect and review, as our democracy enters its terrifying teenage years. And while there have been many changes for the better, one reality we can no longer avoid is that what intellectual space remains has been captured by the Centre and the Right. The proud tradition of the Intellectual Left is no more.

And nowhere was that point more forcefully brought home than in the aftermath of the recent Great "Debate" on Affirmative Action / Equity here at UCT. The newspapers rankled with grumpy UCT-aligned voices seeking to have their pubic say on the matter, using arguments as diverse as attacks on the validity of non-empirical disciplines and harkening back to the rhetoric of group rights, but nowhere were there voices identifiable as Left not merely by the posturings of the author, but by the content of their discourse.

There were the inevitable assassinations of straw men, some fumbling caressing of neoliberalism, and large outpourings of sentiment, but I searched in vain for a credible, coherent or compelling case from the Intellectual Left. The roar of silence deafened me.

Emotional responses to such a topic are certainly valid and demand acknowledgement, but bleeding is not debate and an argument based on sentiment cannot compete in an arena of reason. It left me disquieted, disappointed, demotivated...

And confused.

I have always supported Affirmative Action, and have always called for class rather than just the rough proxy of "race" (for both moral and instrumental reasons) as indicator of disadvantage. Growing up in Cape Town with its complex interplay of "race", class, gender, ethnicity, religion and language, I've always resisted the simplistic reduction of disadvantage to a single factor. My position hasn't changed, but through the "debate" I find that my positioning has.

I'm no longer clear which "side" I'm on or which "side" I'm seen to be on. I'm embarrassed by the intellectual poverty of arguments offered by those I'd formerly have considered to be "progressive", and I'm questioning the placement on the political landscape of my imagination of terms like "conservative" and "progressive". When "progress" is headlong towards the uncritical embracing of global market capitalism, is "progressive" not an epithet belonging to the Right, and - to the extent that the values they seek to conserve against this headlong rush are fairness, dignity, respect, are the "conservatives" not to their Left?
And the Liberals, what of them?

Are there any intellectuals left on the Left? It seems there are few enough left at all.

Perhaps an indication of the rigor of a debate is the extent to which the participants engage with what each other is actually saying, rather than some convenient caricature of an extreme position extrapolated from an oversimplification of whichever incidental point most grips the imagination of the opponent.

It's not entirely unrelated to that great political interview tool, the substituted question: if asked a question a politician doesn't like, many will shrewdly answer a question vaguely related to the asked one, a simpler question which better showcases their performance - as if that had been the question which had been asked. We've seen this in action on Campus often enough - it's the very stuff of Faculty Boreds and Senate meetings.

But while its aim is to reduce the opponent's argument, it deeply insults the intelligence of the audience too. It suggests that we are not astute enough to recognise the substitution, to spot the verbal sleight of hand, to realise that what we're hearing is not debate but, at best, evasion.

An interesting exercise in perception: A moment during The Great Debate, seen through different eyes.

What happened (more or less): David Benatar, having asked a question of Martin Hall, insisted on a response to that question, to inform what question to ask next. Martin refused, asking for all of the questions at once, before responding. The Chair - Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela - intervened; David insisted that he be allowed to proceed as per "Socratic method" debating, subsequently granted by Martin.

What was seen by black, mostly "non-academic", members of the audience*: A white male professor dismissing / ignoring the intervention of a black female colleague [who had situational authority, as the Chair, which was not respected].

What was seen by white "academic", mostly male, members of the audience*: An academic standing up to the bullying of a managerialist / Bremnercrat / DVC who had no regard for intellectual process.

What I saw: A sports match, with a deeply divided audience each cheering on their player when a point was scored. Ending without result, without resolution.

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It was - almost - an intellectual wet dream. Squaring off against each other, Liberal vs Neo-liberal, cast as the faces of the two sides of the great divide on issues of equity, affirmative action, transformation.

It's perhaps uniquely South African that Neo-liberalism is seen as an ideology of The Left (and thus, "progressive") while Liberalism is cast as Right Wing and reactionary. Of course, if the cynical choose to unpack whose interests are best served by presenting it thus, very little would be found to surprise anyone.

But there we had the makings of a great debate. On an issue that few would argue was not of great relevance and significance currently.

Sad then that it degenerated so quickly into point scoring and playing to the (packed) audience - I'd not seen the Beattie Theatre so full since we were told to be grateful we had offices on the mountain.

I left feeling bitterly disappointed. At the level and tone of much of the debate, certainly - but more disturbingly, at the huge divisions that the debate revealed about the audience. While diversity of views as well as anything else is certainly to be welcomed, the extent of polarisation, and the all-too-familiar faultlines along which it manifested, left me wondering about the blytheness with which we mouth terms such as "UCT community".

We need to open up these issues and talk about them. But we need to do so in an atmosphere free from accusations and ad hominem attacks. Where we find such a space on Campus I've yet to discover.

Yesterday the Guardian reported on a study which confirmed the standard bleat of academics that, relative to other professionals, they're overworked and underpaid. Yawn.

I've not seen the original journal article, but based on the Guardian report, the study is interesting not in what it covers - absolutely nothing new there - but rather in what it chooses to ignore.

Firstly, that those teaching in Further Education or schools are paid even less. Ah, just a hint, then, that status might have something to do with it?

And secondly, that silence that we've all come to know and love: those employed in Higher Education, but not blessed with the luxury of academic working conditions and perks. Yep, the "non-academics" that are cursed in our particular University as "PASS" staff.

The study, it appears, stopped short of looking at those professionals that are conveniently invisible to academic staff seeking to grumble about their own lot - the "academic-related" staff who are also creators and purveyors of knowledge, whose hours are at least as long as the rather paltry 47 per week average of the academics (what luxury! that's a mere nine and a half a day excluding weekends!) but who lack the status, the recognition and - to get back to the point of the article - the remuneration levels of their academic colleagues.

Some of these staff have options outside of Higher Education, it's true - unlike academics, who are limited to universities, research councils or consultancies for employment, academic librarians could find employment at... hmmm. There must be somewhere else....? The two or three national libraries, perhaps, where State salaries are likely to be of the same order? Academic computing, e-learning and educational technology staff could always relocate to... private consultancy? Research, or scientific / technical officers might in some cases find a home in industry, depending on their disciplinary location, but no more or less likely than the academics in those disciplines. And if an Electrical Engineer, say, is choosing a career in academic rather than one in industry, why should her / his bleat for more money be given any more weight than the technical officer who is told "if you can earn more out there, why don't you leave and get a job out there instead of asking for more money here?"?

But of course, the study is silent about such matters. Conducted by academics, who control the field of Higher Education Studies both as the practitioners and as the subjects, why should such a study seek to undermine the interests of those it seeks to serve, even if the resulting omission leads to knowledge that can, at best, be described as partial (in all senses of the word)?

As yet another bigoted post thuds its excremental way onto the blogspot, even the most liberal proponents of those freedoms we love and hold dear start to consider the proposals being mooted for a Code of Conduct for the blogosphere. Not just to ration the amount of crud being posted as blog posts, but also to filter out inanity masquerading as comment.

It's perhaps always a risk to post something serious and have it hijacked as a vehicle for frivolity, and frivolity itself is not always a bad thing (after all, even our Statement of Values encourages us to laugh... ).

But sometimes, just occasionally, one misses the kind of thoughtful engagement we used to call "debate"...

Having recently been on the receiving end of this, I thought it appropriate to raise the topic in the very space in which this criminal activity has been taking place.

Cyberstalking is typically defined as the repeated use of electronic means and media to harass, intimidate or threaten someone - an extension of physical stalking into an online world.

"Make no mistake: this kind of harassment can be as frightening

and as real as being followed and watched in your neighborhood or

in your home."

Former USA Vice President Al Gore

For bloggers on the UCT blog spot, the risks are heightened by the ease with which a blogger's email address can be found or predicted given the new standard format.

As bloggers, we have editorial control over the comments posted to our blogs. Should you suspect that you are being cyberstalked through the posting of harassing or threatening comments on your blog, make a note of the IP address from which these comments are posted. Stalking is repeated behaviour, and the stalker's footprints may be visible very clearly. Tracking down the IP will assist with identification and building a case against the stalker. Further tips are posted below.

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Earlier I came across this headline about a "serial sodomist" having been arrested somewhere north of the jukskei curtain. The implication - that sodomy is criminal, and warrants arrest - is misleading and ignorant. Sodomy was in fact decriminalised in South Africa in 1999 on the grounds of its unconstitutionality. What the man in the report was being sought for was, it transpires, anal rape - and specifically the rape of minors.

This careless use of words is not merely negligent journalism; it belies a deeper - worrying - attitude that what is "deviant", "perverse", or "abnormal" is wrong. Evil. Criminal. This blurring between the moral and the legal is not uncommon; as this post from one of our own students shows, ignorance is not limited to those who don't know any better.

The Oxford English Dictionary Online defines sodomy as "an unnatural form of sexual intercourse, esp. that of one male with another" - a use commonly (but not exclusively) reduced to referring to anal sex. The term "unnatural" implies both that (a) it does not occur in nature, and therefore by implication (b) it is bad (or monstrous, as suggested by the OED). While the first meaning - not occuring in nature - is easily refuted by evidence, the second is more difficult to address. People's bedroom habits are not generally open to scrutiny (unless you're Paris Hilton, in which case - please not!) and even a Kinsey-type study is unlikely to establish accuracy of prevalence of behaviours that respondents might fear deviate from the norm - whether gay or straight, or any other persuasion.

It's a short walk from "I don't like that" to "that shouldn't be allowed", and the behaviours that might spring from that in terms of tolerance of diversity. That our students are failing to learn these values - after a term on Campus - shows that we are not living our values loudly enough.

And, by not challenging the laziness and ignorance of editors who endorse such headlines, we're condeming countless others to the continued complacence of their prejudice.

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