Mike Kissack
Biographic Data
| ID | 1158772 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mike Kissack |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mike |
| FAMILY NAME | Kissack |
| SIGNATURE | KISSACK M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Witwatersrand |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Hospitality in Karel Schoeman's Promised Land and Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull
This essay places Karel Schoeman's representation of an ethically stunted and uncompromising Afrikaner community in his novel, Promised Land (1978) in counterpoint to Antjie Krog's efforts, in Country of My Skull (1999), to inaugurate a new ethics of representation in response to the demands and opportunities of the post-apartheid dispensation. We relate the two texts by reading them through the lens of Derrida's seminar on the ethics of hospital…
The Role of the Humanities in the Modern University: Some Historical and Philosophical Considerations
Journal Article The Role of the Humanities in the Modern University: Some Historical and Philosophical Considerations Get access Mahali Phamotse, Mahali Phamotse National University of Lesotho, P.O. Roma 180, Maseru, Lesotho Correspondence: Mahali Phamotse, National University of Lesotho, P.O. Roma 180, Maseru, Lesotho. Email: [email protected] and Mike Kissack, School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, Johann…
The Antinomies of a Liberal Identity: Reason, Emotion and Volition in the Work of R.F.A. Hoernlé and W.M. Macmillan
This article reassesses the complex and controversial phenomenon of white liberalism in South Africa between 1920 and 1940 through a re-examination of the work of the philosopher, R.F.A. Hoernlé, and economic historian, W.M. Macmillan, both of whom worked at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. These two men considered their analyses and recommendations to be embodiments of a Western liberal tradition, thereby contributing a particu…
The persistent castaway in South African writing
There is a small bundle of letters in the archives of the National Library in Cape Town that was assembled and dispatched, with a detailed explanation, by the black Presbyterian priest, John Knox B
Secular improvisations: The poetics of invention in Ivan Vladislavić's The exploded view
Each of the four protagonists in The exploded view (2004) attempts to negotiate the field of post-apartheid signs, material objects and ideological possibilities and limits. In this article we analyse the limited capacity of each protagonist to make sense of the transforming world he inhabits. We characterize this limited capacity to make meaning by relating the four narratives comprising the novel to certain theoretical moves in the work of Mich…
The Secularization of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Mike Nicol's The Ibis Tapestry
In this article we read Mike Nicol's The Ibis Tapestry (1998) as an intertextual novel that brings a postmodern inflection to its interrogation of the principles and practices of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Using the distant mirror of the life, work, and death of Christopher Marlowe, the novel unravels aspects of the ethical ideology and epistemological framing of the Commission in a way that, we argue, amounts to its s…
A wrecked life: Allegorical transcendence in André Brink's An instant in the wind
André Brink's An instant in the wind (1976) is most commonly interpreted as presenting a Utopian alternative to apartheid's politics of race. This alternative is constructed as an Edenic allegory in which Elizabeth Larsson, who is abandoned in the interior of South Africa, and Adam Mantoor, an escaped slave, discover a genuinely liberated libidinal mutuality unconstrained by colonial ideology. We are concerned to investigate Brink's presentation …
The dynamics of discontent: Containing desire and aggression in Coetzee'sDisgrace
In this article we explore the experiences of David Lurie and his daughter Lucy, the main protagonists in J. M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace, in terms of the tensions in modern society analysed so trenchantly by Sigmund Freud in his short investigation, Civilisation and its Discontents. We demonstrate how David's self‐understanding and internal conflicts are a reflection of the fundamental conflict between impulse and social constraint, the basis upo…
The mangled flesh of our griots’: Music in the verse of Seitlhamo Motsapi
This article considers the use of black Atlantic music in Seitlhamo Motsapi's volume of verse, earthstepper/the ocean is very shallow. In his poetry, Motsapi constructs a critique of the popular music industry while heralding the therapeutic potential of various dissonant musical modes, central among which is free improvisational jazz. We are concerned to appraise whether this musical genre, which by its own insistent definition resists represent…
“The foot does not sniff”: Imagining the post‐ anti ‐apartheid intellectual
The South African literary institution is engaged in an examination of both its role in the history of apartheid and its potential futures. Originating in Edward Said's search for an alternative to a “politics of blame”, this article considers recent attempts to explore the possibility of “secular interpretation” in (and of) the South African context. Leon de Kock's trope of “the seam” and Mark Sanders's notion of “complicity” are considered. We …
Humility in a Godless World: Shame, Defiance and Dignity in Coetzee’s Disgrace
Irony as objectivity: Orientations for history teaching in post-apartheid South Africa
This article provides an account of Hayden White's claim that historiographical difference can be explained in terms of the varying narrative forms in which historical depictions are presented, rather than in terms of the data or evidence on which historical representation are based. Narrative form is constructed around particular organising categories, which assemble and present the content (data/evidence) of particular historical portrayals, to…
The Role of the Humanities in the Modern University: Some Historical and Philosophical Considerations
Journal Article The Role of the Humanities in the Modern University: Some Historical and Philosophical Considerations Get access Mahali Phamotse, Mahali Phamotse National University of Lesotho, P.O. Roma 180, Maseru, Lesotho Correspondence: Mahali Phamotse, National University of Lesotho, P.O. Roma 180, Maseru, Lesotho. Email: [email protected] and Mike Kissack, School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, Johann…
The persistent castaway in South African writing
There is a small bundle of letters in the archives of the National Library in Cape Town that was assembled and dispatched, with a detailed explanation, by the black Presbyterian priest, John Knox B
Irony as objectivity: Orientations for history teaching in post-apartheid South Africa
This article provides an account of Hayden White's claim that historiographical difference can be explained in terms of the varying narrative forms in which historical depictions are presented, rather than in terms of the data or evidence on which historical representation are based. Narrative form is constructed around particular organising categories, which assemble and present the content (data/evidence) of particular historical portrayals, to…
Irony as objectivity: Orientations for history teaching in post-apartheid South Africa
This article provides an account of Hayden White's claim that historiographical difference can be explained in terms of the varying narrative forms in which historical depictions are presented, rather than in terms of the data or evidence on which historical representation are based. Narrative form is constructed around particular organising categories, which assemble and present the content (data/evidence) of particular historical portrayals, to…
“The foot does not sniff”: Imagining the post‐ anti ‐apartheid intellectual
The South African literary institution is engaged in an examination of both its role in the history of apartheid and its potential futures. Originating in Edward Said's search for an alternative to a “politics of blame”, this article considers recent attempts to explore the possibility of “secular interpretation” in (and of) the South African context. Leon de Kock's trope of “the seam” and Mark Sanders's notion of “complicity” are considered. We …
Humility in a Godless World: Shame, Defiance and Dignity in Coetzee’s Disgrace
The mangled flesh of our griots’: Music in the verse of Seitlhamo Motsapi
This article considers the use of black Atlantic music in Seitlhamo Motsapi's volume of verse, earthstepper/the ocean is very shallow. In his poetry, Motsapi constructs a critique of the popular music industry while heralding the therapeutic potential of various dissonant musical modes, central among which is free improvisational jazz. We are concerned to appraise whether this musical genre, which by its own insistent definition resists represent…
A wrecked life: Allegorical transcendence in André Brink's An instant in the wind
André Brink's An instant in the wind (1976) is most commonly interpreted as presenting a Utopian alternative to apartheid's politics of race. This alternative is constructed as an Edenic allegory in which Elizabeth Larsson, who is abandoned in the interior of South Africa, and Adam Mantoor, an escaped slave, discover a genuinely liberated libidinal mutuality unconstrained by colonial ideology. We are concerned to investigate Brink's presentation …
The dynamics of discontent: Containing desire and aggression in Coetzee'sDisgrace
In this article we explore the experiences of David Lurie and his daughter Lucy, the main protagonists in J. M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace, in terms of the tensions in modern society analysed so trenchantly by Sigmund Freud in his short investigation, Civilisation and its Discontents. We demonstrate how David's self‐understanding and internal conflicts are a reflection of the fundamental conflict between impulse and social constraint, the basis upo…
Secular improvisations: The poetics of invention in Ivan Vladislavić's The exploded view
Each of the four protagonists in The exploded view (2004) attempts to negotiate the field of post-apartheid signs, material objects and ideological possibilities and limits. In this article we analyse the limited capacity of each protagonist to make sense of the transforming world he inhabits. We characterize this limited capacity to make meaning by relating the four narratives comprising the novel to certain theoretical moves in the work of Mich…
The Secularization of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Mike Nicol's The Ibis Tapestry
In this article we read Mike Nicol's The Ibis Tapestry (1998) as an intertextual novel that brings a postmodern inflection to its interrogation of the principles and practices of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Using the distant mirror of the life, work, and death of Christopher Marlowe, the novel unravels aspects of the ethical ideology and epistemological framing of the Commission in a way that, we argue, amounts to its s…
The persistent castaway in South African writing
There is a small bundle of letters in the archives of the National Library in Cape Town that was assembled and dispatched, with a detailed explanation, by the black Presbyterian priest, John Knox B
Hospitality in Karel Schoeman's Promised Land and Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull
This essay places Karel Schoeman's representation of an ethically stunted and uncompromising Afrikaner community in his novel, Promised Land (1978) in counterpoint to Antjie Krog's efforts, in Country of My Skull (1999), to inaugurate a new ethics of representation in response to the demands and opportunities of the post-apartheid dispensation. We relate the two texts by reading them through the lens of Derrida's seminar on the ethics of hospital…
The Role of the Humanities in the Modern University: Some Historical and Philosophical Considerations
Journal Article The Role of the Humanities in the Modern University: Some Historical and Philosophical Considerations Get access Mahali Phamotse, Mahali Phamotse National University of Lesotho, P.O. Roma 180, Maseru, Lesotho Correspondence: Mahali Phamotse, National University of Lesotho, P.O. Roma 180, Maseru, Lesotho. Email: [email protected] and Mike Kissack, School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, Johann…
The Antinomies of a Liberal Identity: Reason, Emotion and Volition in the Work of R.F.A. Hoernlé and W.M. Macmillan
This article reassesses the complex and controversial phenomenon of white liberalism in South Africa between 1920 and 1940 through a re-examination of the work of the philosopher, R.F.A. Hoernlé, and economic historian, W.M. Macmillan, both of whom worked at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. These two men considered their analyses and recommendations to be embodiments of a Western liberal tradition, thereby contributing a particu…
Art (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Aesthetics (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · History (7 works) · Literature (7 works) · South African History and Culture (7 works) · Law (6 works)