University Spaces as Sites of Conscience
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12497239 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Karin Van Marle (0000-0002-7798-0962, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 205-218 |
| Publication date | 2022-03-16 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Space and Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1206-3312 • E-ISSN: 1552-8308 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/12063312211065263 |
| OpenAlex | W4220687418 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 20 |
In this article, I reflect on the idea of university spaces as potential sites of conscience. I explore how these spaces act not only as continuous reminders of past violence, marginalization, and exclusion, but as reminders also of ethical accountability and redress. The latter discloses opportunities and possibilities for a reinterpretation of such spaces, keeping in mind that the traces of the past will remain and that every attempt at erasure will be incomplete. The article considers how spaces or places that remain in the process of decolonization can be mobilized as sites of conscience. These sites/spaces/places manifest relationality also between materiality and symbol and between judgment and ethical accountability. The article focuses on issues surrounding the removal of a statue of the past president of the Republic of the Orange Free State, President M. T. Steyn at the University of the Free State (UFS) in Bloemfontein, South Africa. The university has a long and troubled history of exclusion, racism, and authoritarianism, among others. Since the early 1990s, many attempts have been made to transform, not all in vain. The statue itself was a site of contention at the UFS for many years and was removed over the last weekend in June 2020. I conclude that space that remains on the UFS campus is one of haunting that urges a certain sense of place and atmosphere that could forge learning, education, and transforming citizenship
Accountability · Aesthetics · Art · Conscience · Materiality (auditing · Political science · Redress · Sociology · African cultural and philosophical studies · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Law · South African History and Culture
Atmospheric Architectures
Keeping Hold of Justice
Justice and the Politics of Difference
Decolonizing the university
Imperial Nostalgia, Social Ghosts, and Canada’s National War Memorial
Art and the Immemorial
Parallel Societies” of the Past? Articulations of Citizenship’s Commemorative Dimension in Berlin’s Cityscape
Affective atmospheres
Rhodes Must Fall
Parramatta Female Factory Precinct as a Site of Conscience
Negotiating the Past
Between the public intellectual and the scholar
Life is Not Simply Fact
Social divisions carved in stone or cenotaphs to a new identity? Policy for memorials, monuments and statues in a democratic South Africa
Affective politics and colonial heritage, Rhodes Must Fall at UCT and Oxford
Icons of the Old Regime
Transitional Justice in Law, History and Anthropology
Michel Serres
| Citations per year | 0.25 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2022 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |