Z Erasmus
Biographic Data
| ID | 31007 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Z Erasmus |
| GIVEN NAMES | Z |
| FAMILY NAME | Erasmus |
| SIGNATURE | ERASMUS Z |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Witwatersrand |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1528-0992 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 55 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Learning with letters
This article is about the use of long-form letters in the pandemic-pedagogical practice of a third-year undergraduate and writing-intensive course titled “‘Race’ and What it Means to be Human” and offered in anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2020. It was part of the university’s Writing Programme and of a project on epistolary pedagogy which emerged when the Covid-19 pandemic started in South Africa. I provide a reflexive ana…
Sylvia Wynter's Theory of the Human
How does Sylvia Wynter's theory of the human depart from Western bio-centric and teleological accounts of the human? To grapple with this question I clarify five key concepts in her theory: the Third Emergence, auto- and socio-poiesis, the autopoietic overturn, the human as hybrid, and sociogenesis. I draw on parts of Wynter's oeuvre, texts she works with and my conversations with Anthony Bogues. Wynter invents a Third Emergence of the world to m…
Racialisation and the afterlife of colonial divide and rule
In this response to Avtar Brah’s review of Race Otherwise (2017) I briefly clarify the relationship between the concepts ‘racism’, ‘race’ and ‘racialisation’. I expand my framing of the book as less about racism and more about specific processes of racialisation. To this end I draw on material from and beyond the book to illustrate the value of the concept ‘racialisation’ for understanding the afterlife of colonial divide and rule in South Africa…
Race Otherwise
Rearranging the Furniture of History
This article provides a counter-history to liberal conceptions of non-racialism. It outlines historical landmarks in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century South Africa that shaped anticolonial non-racialism. These reveal the ways colonial authorities used conversion to Christianity, “tribe,” and “race” to undermine resistance to colonialism, and they show that political approaches to anticolonial resistance were divided about (1) participation …
Sounding the Cape
The Nation, its populations and their re-calibration
Studies of affirmative action in South Africa generally pay attention to its successes and failures in particular sectors of the economy and at various levels of the social division of labour. This article situates the outcomes of affirmative action at the nexus of a series of contradictory processes: (a) increased wealth concentration among a few South Africans concurrent with growing local struggles among the poor about social exclusion from ba…
Forgotten Photographs Find Voice
Darren Newbury skillfully weaves fragments of biographical and archival record. He argues that Bryan Heseltine’s 1955 exhibition in London, A People Apart, “inaugurated a tradition of anti-aparthei
Creolization, colonial citizenship(s) and degeneracy
This work examines the nexus between creolization, colonial citizenship(s) and discourses of degeneration. It focuses on two sites: (1) 19th- and 20th-century Freetown, Sierra Leone, and (2) the early Cape and 20th-century South Africa. The author engages three key thinkers: Edouard Glissant, Jean-Loup Amselle and Mahmood Mamdani to illustrate how these colonial administrations deployed creolization to construct partial citizenships derived from …
Contact Theory
This article extends critiques of contact theory. It notes four deeper limitations: (1) what I call a “psychometric imaginary”; (2) an assumption that “race” is given, homogeneous and stable; (3) contact/noncontact dualism; and (4) inattention to whiteness. These limitations locate contact theory within raciological thought, making contact a reformist, rather than transformative antiracist strategy. I suggest an alternative: a critical literacy f…
Recognition Through Pleasure, Recognition Through Violence
In apartheid South Africa those classified 'Coloured' occupied a socio-political position characterized by both racial exclusion from full citizenship and selected inclusion as partial subjects. This ambiguous relation to the polity partly shaped discomfort with the place of 'the coloured' on the part of both the apartheid state and resistance movements. In the post-apartheid era this discomfort continues. More specifically, voting preferences am…
Oe! My Hare Gaan Huistoe
Contact Theory
This article extends critiques of contact theory. It notes four deeper limitations: (1) what I call a “psychometric imaginary”; (2) an assumption that “race” is given, homogeneous and stable; (3) contact/noncontact dualism; and (4) inattention to whiteness. These limitations locate contact theory within raciological thought, making contact a reformist, rather than transformative antiracist strategy. I suggest an alternative: a critical literacy f…
Sylvia Wynter's Theory of the Human
How does Sylvia Wynter's theory of the human depart from Western bio-centric and teleological accounts of the human? To grapple with this question I clarify five key concepts in her theory: the Third Emergence, auto- and socio-poiesis, the autopoietic overturn, the human as hybrid, and sociogenesis. I draw on parts of Wynter's oeuvre, texts she works with and my conversations with Anthony Bogues. Wynter invents a Third Emergence of the world to m…
Creolization, colonial citizenship(s) and degeneracy
This work examines the nexus between creolization, colonial citizenship(s) and discourses of degeneration. It focuses on two sites: (1) 19th- and 20th-century Freetown, Sierra Leone, and (2) the early Cape and 20th-century South Africa. The author engages three key thinkers: Edouard Glissant, Jean-Loup Amselle and Mahmood Mamdani to illustrate how these colonial administrations deployed creolization to construct partial citizenships derived from …
Oe! My Hare Gaan Huistoe
The Nation, its populations and their re-calibration
Studies of affirmative action in South Africa generally pay attention to its successes and failures in particular sectors of the economy and at various levels of the social division of labour. This article situates the outcomes of affirmative action at the nexus of a series of contradictory processes: (a) increased wealth concentration among a few South Africans concurrent with growing local struggles among the poor about social exclusion from ba…
Recognition Through Pleasure, Recognition Through Violence
In apartheid South Africa those classified 'Coloured' occupied a socio-political position characterized by both racial exclusion from full citizenship and selected inclusion as partial subjects. This ambiguous relation to the polity partly shaped discomfort with the place of 'the coloured' on the part of both the apartheid state and resistance movements. In the post-apartheid era this discomfort continues. More specifically, voting preferences am…
Learning with letters
This article is about the use of long-form letters in the pandemic-pedagogical practice of a third-year undergraduate and writing-intensive course titled “‘Race’ and What it Means to be Human” and offered in anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2020. It was part of the university’s Writing Programme and of a project on epistolary pedagogy which emerged when the Covid-19 pandemic started in South Africa. I provide a reflexive ana…
Racialisation and the afterlife of colonial divide and rule
In this response to Avtar Brah’s review of Race Otherwise (2017) I briefly clarify the relationship between the concepts ‘racism’, ‘race’ and ‘racialisation’. I expand my framing of the book as less about racism and more about specific processes of racialisation. To this end I draw on material from and beyond the book to illustrate the value of the concept ‘racialisation’ for understanding the afterlife of colonial divide and rule in South Africa…
Oe! My Hare Gaan Huistoe
Recognition Through Pleasure, Recognition Through Violence
In apartheid South Africa those classified 'Coloured' occupied a socio-political position characterized by both racial exclusion from full citizenship and selected inclusion as partial subjects. This ambiguous relation to the polity partly shaped discomfort with the place of 'the coloured' on the part of both the apartheid state and resistance movements. In the post-apartheid era this discomfort continues. More specifically, voting preferences am…
Contact Theory
This article extends critiques of contact theory. It notes four deeper limitations: (1) what I call a “psychometric imaginary”; (2) an assumption that “race” is given, homogeneous and stable; (3) contact/noncontact dualism; and (4) inattention to whiteness. These limitations locate contact theory within raciological thought, making contact a reformist, rather than transformative antiracist strategy. I suggest an alternative: a critical literacy f…
Creolization, colonial citizenship(s) and degeneracy
This work examines the nexus between creolization, colonial citizenship(s) and discourses of degeneration. It focuses on two sites: (1) 19th- and 20th-century Freetown, Sierra Leone, and (2) the early Cape and 20th-century South Africa. The author engages three key thinkers: Edouard Glissant, Jean-Loup Amselle and Mahmood Mamdani to illustrate how these colonial administrations deployed creolization to construct partial citizenships derived from …
Forgotten Photographs Find Voice
Darren Newbury skillfully weaves fragments of biographical and archival record. He argues that Bryan Heseltine’s 1955 exhibition in London, A People Apart, “inaugurated a tradition of anti-aparthei
Sounding the Cape
The Nation, its populations and their re-calibration
Studies of affirmative action in South Africa generally pay attention to its successes and failures in particular sectors of the economy and at various levels of the social division of labour. This article situates the outcomes of affirmative action at the nexus of a series of contradictory processes: (a) increased wealth concentration among a few South Africans concurrent with growing local struggles among the poor about social exclusion from ba…
Race Otherwise
Rearranging the Furniture of History
This article provides a counter-history to liberal conceptions of non-racialism. It outlines historical landmarks in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century South Africa that shaped anticolonial non-racialism. These reveal the ways colonial authorities used conversion to Christianity, “tribe,” and “race” to undermine resistance to colonialism, and they show that political approaches to anticolonial resistance were divided about (1) participation …
Racialisation and the afterlife of colonial divide and rule
In this response to Avtar Brah’s review of Race Otherwise (2017) I briefly clarify the relationship between the concepts ‘racism’, ‘race’ and ‘racialisation’. I expand my framing of the book as less about racism and more about specific processes of racialisation. To this end I draw on material from and beyond the book to illustrate the value of the concept ‘racialisation’ for understanding the afterlife of colonial divide and rule in South Africa…
Sylvia Wynter's Theory of the Human
How does Sylvia Wynter's theory of the human depart from Western bio-centric and teleological accounts of the human? To grapple with this question I clarify five key concepts in her theory: the Third Emergence, auto- and socio-poiesis, the autopoietic overturn, the human as hybrid, and sociogenesis. I draw on parts of Wynter's oeuvre, texts she works with and my conversations with Anthony Bogues. Wynter invents a Third Emergence of the world to m…
Learning with letters
This article is about the use of long-form letters in the pandemic-pedagogical practice of a third-year undergraduate and writing-intensive course titled “‘Race’ and What it Means to be Human” and offered in anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2020. It was part of the university’s Writing Programme and of a project on epistolary pedagogy which emerged when the Covid-19 pandemic started in South Africa. I provide a reflexive ana…
Sociology (11 works) · Law (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · History (6 works) · History (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Art (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works)