A Decolonial Perspective on the Politics of Blackness and Black Academic Identity Formation in the South African Academy

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-630-7_2How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Decolonial Theory; Blackness; Black Academic Identify Formation; Non-South African Black Academics

Abstract

In this article, I use decolonial theory, literature, and data from my PhD research to analyze the complexities of blackness and the formation of black academic identities in the landscape of South African higher education. I argue that in addition to numerous other forms of identification that black academics deploy to self-identify, it is largely blackness that frames their ontological experiences of the academy. Further, through critical analysis, I demonstrate that the debates on identity politics framing the post-1994 polity in South Africa in general equally shape the discourse on identity politics at South African institutions of higher learning. I advocate for a discussion and engagement with broader identities that include non-South Africans in the academy. I analyze ‘default’ related to how black academics enter the academic profession while simultaneously arguing for a departure from such practice towards collective and deliberate efforts aimed at socializing blacks into the academic profession. I conclude the article by discussing how black academics deploy ‘consciousness’ to understand the prevalent cultural institutional cultural practices that define the South African academy.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Eckson Khambule
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/12/31
TI  - A Decolonial Perspective on the Politics of Blackness and Black Academic Identity Formation in the South African Academy
BT  - Proceedings of the Focus Conference (TFC 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 4
EP  - 29
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-630-7_2
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-630-7_2
ID  - Khambule2024
ER  -