Psychosocial Pathways Towards Reinventing the South African University: Wrestling with the Ghost of a Bull [1st ed.] 9783030490355, 9783030490362

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Psychosocial Pathways Towards Reinventing the South African University Wrestling with the Ghost of a Bull Sabrina Liccardo

Psychosocial Pathways Towards Reinventing the South African University

Sabrina Liccardo

Psychosocial Pathways Towards Reinventing the South African University Wrestling with the Ghost of a Bull

Sabrina Liccardo Psychology University of Pretoria Tshwane, South Africa

ISBN 978-3-030-49035-5    ISBN 978-3-030-49036-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49036-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration © copyright Sabrina Liccardo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Elvira, Giovanni and Alala.

Preface

Why is there a need to reinvent the “soul” of the South African university? The South African university’s skin (nonbeing) is wounded because its second skin (bounded space) is tainted. Its blood (dominant two-­ dimensional discourses) is constricted because its blood vessels (social structure-agency) are clogged. This has been the university’s discursive-­ circulatory system of reproducing a zone of what it means to be “human”  and a zone of nonbeing  (Fanon, 1967)  or not being “fully human”  in an anti-black and racist society, a color-line (Du Bois 2007 [1903]) of continuity along separate social pathways. The South African university’s eyes (not-becoming) are wilfully short-­ sighted because its third eye (linearisation of time) is tunnel-visioned. Its brain (single story scripts) is narrow-minded because its spinal cord (sedimented cultural memory) is unmalleable. This has been the university’s storied-nervous system of reproducing not-becoming “modern” people, hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines of continuity along linear psychical pathways. The South African university is in a state of breathlessness (no-­ belonging) because the air (chronotopes as one-dimensional symbols) it breathes is stale. Its lungs (atrophied knowledge) are punctured because its heart (predictable symbolic narratives) is shattered. This has been the university’s narrative-respiratory system of reproducing no-belonging to vii

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knowledge communities, (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion along enclosed and masked psychosocial pathways. The path dependence and lock-in of these systems have continued to move uniformly in a centripetal direction with few major breaks. In other words, the dominant inertial momentum of these systems has generally sustained its direction and continued to increase its speed along straight and narrow pathways (see, e.g. Mason 2009). This closed system of pathways is turned in upon itself, an enclosure of the heart collapsing into pieces at the centre of the Minotaur’s hierarchical labyrinth. This book takes us on a long trek into the heartbroken soul of the university at the centre of the Minotaur’s hierarchical labyrinth in “post”-apartheid South Africa. What unfolds at the centre of the Minotaur’s labyrinth? What causes shattering failure as paralysis at the centre of this labyrinth and the breaking apart of science, art, and human reality? And what does it mean for me to wrestle with the ghost of this bull? What is my intention for doing this research and writing this book? How has this knowledge been produced? Who does it serve? How does my positionality as a white, middle-class South African woman affect the production of this research in ways which serve to preserve the modern/colonial knowledge system? How does one consciously sit with the discomfort of ambivalence and hear the reality of what unfolds at the centre of the Minotaur’s labyrinth in “post”-apartheid South Africa? And how does one simultaneously move against this central vacuum of space and time, and dominant energy that is stuck in limbo? What are the possibilities for reinventing threads of pathways that move away from the centre and “out of” the labyrinth in which the South African university finds itself? In other words, what meanings, symbols, knowledges and relational selves emerge in the process of endlessly sitting with and working through the problem of formulating a “way out”? The rise of the Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall student movement in South Africa, demanding for the fall of institutionalised racial hierarchies, has inspired the design of the cover image which depicts the death and rebirth of narrative formations of relational selves. I have used this cover image in the spirit of exploration to think with and through undulating networked forms which might advance possibilities to forge new psychosocial pathways towards decolonising and reinventing the “soul” of South African universities. In doing so, this book offers an

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in-­depth exploration of what these psychosocial pathways could potentially entail, what realities these pathways could create, what would the psychosocial effects of these realities be and how could these realities and its effects be unmasked and trans-formed. In other words, this book presents a conceptual-empirical framework for exploring forms of continuity and change along psychosocial pathways in South African universities. These psychosocial pathways account for the multiple systems, processes and organising principles involved in the material-discursive, storied, and symbolic practices of (non)being, (not)becoming and (no)belonging to knowledge communities in “post”-apartheid South Africa. These pathways are grounded in the symbolic narratives and knowledges of young scientists, engineers and architects—all interlocutors in the research from which this book is based. Alala, Mamoratwa, Welile, Odirile, Kaiya, Amirah, Takalani, Nosakhele, Naila, Ambani, Khanyisile, Itumeleng, Ethwasa and Kgnaya provide collective standpoints in the multiplicities within and between the lived lives and told stories of young Black South African women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. These young women were recipients of the Oya scholarship programme from 2007 to 2012 and were former students and graduates from a variety of STEM degree programmes at a historically white university (HWU) in South Africa. From 2007 to 2011, I was employed as a support staff member in the Transformation Office, which implemented, monitored and evaluated the university’s student equity programmes, including the Oya scholarship programme. Therefore, these psychosocial pathways are also connected to my experiences of working in this office and with the young women on their scholarship programme, whom I came to know and care about. By travelling into their worlds, they profoundly reconfigured and made a home in mine. Our history thus influenced the kinds of stories they shared with me in this project. For example, they spoke passionately about the various ways in which they are making contributions to science and society through their research projects which are addressing pressing challenges facing humanity. They also spoke about their experiences of academic failure and exclusion from university as a way of critically reflecting on how the Oya scholarship was perpetuating exceptionalist discourses in which

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academic success was attributed to individual effort, based on a system of meritocracy, with social power axes being disregarded. As a result, their experiences of academic failure created feelings of shock, disbelief, confusion, loneliness, devastation and defeat because being what the university defined to be academically successful largely became a part of who they understood themselves to be rather than something that they did. Although they actively resisted the university’s terms of recognition for what counts as admirable or acceptable, as evaluated against white middle-­class habitus, this emotional labour came at a cost for them. This was distressing for me as well. I felt a sense of failure to them and myself. I could not ignore my complicity with the modern/colonial knowledge system by how I had constructed the programme’s inclusion criteria in line with the university’s standards of academic success or “excellence”. It forced me to confront my complacency with a symbolically violent system that not only provided these scholarship recipients access into the university space that rewards those who possess particular dominant forms of cultural capital (i.e. predominantly white men) but also blocked their progression within this system, thus, creating socially-induced feelings of nonexistence for them. Without minimising the critical factors of financial access, they made me aware of the wider implications of such programmes for transforming and reproducing the existing dominant institutional culture of the university. I became aware of how many transformation programmes were informed by white logic models that operated according to the regulative principles of nonbeing, not-becoming and no-belonging to knowledge communities. How then could one develop a complex systems programme model which disrupts white logic and translates the guiding principles of being, becoming and belonging to knowledge communities into social praxis? With these kinds of unresolved questions in mind, I continued to walk along this pathway which consisted of a number of significant events such as resigning from my position at the Transformation Office in 2011, completing a PhD and a postdoctoral fellowship at the university currently known as Rhodes University at the height of the #FeesMustFall student movement and starting another postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pretoria, where I began to write this book in order to process and piece together various fragments of this journey.

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Therefore, by  bringing this 14-year journey to a close  and beginning to collectively translate the conceptual-empirical framework into social praxis  by following the lead of communities of people of colour who have long been working to radically change the system, the concluding chapter of this book explains how the Minotaur’s hierarchical labyrinth of shattering failure as paralysis maintains white logic through the regulative principles of nonbeing, not-becoming and no-belonging to knowledge communities. Conversely, the concluding chapter also proposes a complex systems model or strategy for a programme called the Toroidal-maze of tragic love in motion, which takes the form of rhythmic whole infinity networks that could potentially disrupt white logic through the guiding principles of being, becoming and belonging to knowledge communities. In other words, this book tells a story about the dialectical connections between the Minotaur’s hierarchical labyrinth of shattering failure as paralysis in relation to the Toroidal-maze of tragic love in motion. The complex narrative system of rhythmical whole infinity networks hovers on the border of chaos at the (re)turning and crossing thresholds between the breaking points and interstices of our webwork heart. Could this tragic love sustain a resistant inertial momentum for the rebirth of new directions and liberatory pathways in science, art, and human realities to emerge? And in moving towards this future, this creative process of becoming, what would the emergence of these changing worlds possibly look like? The South African university’s lungs (living knowledges) is heartened because her soul (unpredictable symbolic narratives) is a webwork. Her breath is regenerative (belonging) because the air (chronotopes as multi-­ dimensional symbols) she breathes is spirited. This is her narrative-­respiratory system of reconstructing belonging to knowledge communities, rhythmical whole infinity networks of interconnected psychosocial pathways. The South African university’s brain (plurality of stories) is broad-­ minded because her spinal cord (r-evolving cultural memory) is malleable. Her eyes (becoming) are farsighted because her third eye (cyclical time) is visionary. This is her storied-nervous system of  reimagining becoming modern peoples, whole infinity loops of circular psychical pathways. The South African university’s blood (multi-dimensional discourses) is fluid because her blood vessels (structure-agency) are unclogged. Her skin (being) is sutured because her second skin (unbounded space) is open to

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infinite possibilities. This is her discursive-circulatory system of reinventing the heart of what it means to be human, rhythmical infinity threads of social pathways that ebb and flow within a network of contradictions. This complex adaptive system of pathways is turned away from itself in the  infinite process of collectively (re)pairing pieces of our brokenness which sustains the beating of her heart in its coming back to life. Through her undulating pathways of unpredictable symbolic narratives and living knowledges, we sense our World’s creation. Our co-creation of a Toroidalmaze of tragic love in motion:

Tshwane, South Africa 28 March 2020

Sabrina Liccardo

References Du Bois, W.  E. B. (2007 [1903]). The Souls of Black Folk. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mason, M. (2009). Making educational development and change sustainable: Insights from complexity theory. International Journal of Educational Development, 29, 117–124.

Acknowledgements

I feel incredibly fortunate to have crossed paths with people during different times in my life who have shown me the human heart in its most honest, noble, and complex form. People who have passed through my life and profoundly reconfigured my world, not only through their scholarship but also through their continued acts of kindness. These threads of caring connections with so many interlocutors have sustained my own efforts to formulate creative ways through challenging times. I begin by thanking my family and friends Elvira, Giovanni, Luigi, Shelley-Ann, Miriella, Pamela, Joann, Ursula, Natania, Katia, Chipo and Jennifer for their constant love and boundless encouragement in life. Especially my mother and my father, whose love and concern for everyone else other than themselves seems to be endless. You are all the heart of my world. To Alala, Mamoratwa, Welile, Odirile, Kaiya, Amirah, Takalani, Nosakhele, Naila, Ambani, Khanyisile, Itumeleng, Ethwasa and Kgnaya, I am so grateful to each of you for inviting me into your lives and sharing your stories with me, which have been deeply moving. My only hope is that I have honoured you, your stories and the time we spent together with this work. I would also like to acknowledge my colleagues at the Transformation Office for their commitment to the Oya scholarship and their spirited work in complicated terrain. xiii

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I wish to give my heartfelt appreciation to Norman Duncan for his thoughtful guidance and mentorship. Thank you for always making time to talk with me, for listening to me attentively and for sharing your reflections openly. Thank you for encouraging me to trust my intuition and to continue with this project when I lost faith in it. This project has been nurtured to life through your unwavering commitment to it. I am also grateful to Nafisa Cassimjee for her unfailing enthusiasm and confidence in this project. I have cherished the spirit of intellectual exchange between us which has stretched my imagination in unimaginable directions. A special debt of gratitude is extended to Pamela Nichols, who has taught me about the art of active listening. The clarity of your insights has profoundly enriched this project. To Marzia Milazzo, who has had an immense impact on my life. Thank you for being so generous with your time and reflections, for sharing so many insights and resources with me and for always reminding me of the necessity to get over myself. I am also very grateful for your invaluable feedback on a long chapter of this manuscript. I feel lucky to have met you and to have learnt so much from you. Jill Bradbury has played a central role in developing this work, particularly when it was in its PhD form. I will always be appreciative to you for introducing me to the life of knowledge through your commitment to teaching and the endless emotional energy that you dedicate to your students. It was wonderful to have had the opportunity to contribute to the Narrative Enquiry for Social Transformation (NEST) Special Issue of the South African Journal of Higher Education (Vol. 32. No. 3 of 2018), which was guest-edited by Ronelle Carolissen and Peace Kiguwa. Ronelle Carolissen, I have learnt a great deal from you over the years. Thank you so much for your invaluable input into this work, especially when it was in its PhD and article form. To Peace Kiguwa, NEST feels like an intellectual home because of the caring connections shared with valued colleagues like you. I have been moved many times by your warmth and wisdom. I am thankful to be a part of the Centre for Narrative Research and the NEST interdisciplinary network of scholars whose critical and creative

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scholarship has been inspirational. I am also very grateful for the humbling moments that I experienced at the Decoloniality Summer School, UNISA, where I really began to learn how to become comfortable with being discomforted and to move against a sense of paralysis. This project has also been nourished by my conversations with Hannah Botsis and Yasmine Dominguez-Whitehead. Your influence on me has continued to deepen over time. The project has benefited greatly from Tharina Guse’s inspired leadership as well as Claire  Wagner, Nyambeni Matamela, Carina Young, Beth Amato and Amanda Van der Westhuizen’s valuable contributions. My deep thanks to the commissioning editor and assistant editor for psychology at Palgrave Macmillan—Beth Farrow and Joanna O’Neill— for seeing this book through to completion. I am especially indebted to Joanna O’Neill, who has been an anchor for this book since it was in its proposal form. I appreciate your enthusiasm, professionalism and for doing everything in your power to give this book the space and time it needed to breathe. I also think gratefully of the anonymous readers for their constructive commentaries which helped me to reshape the initial manuscript as well as the external examiners of my PhD thesis for their valuable contributions. This manuscript has benefited considerably from these contributions as well as many others which are detailed in the footnotes. All remaining errors are my own. I acknowledge the financial support that I received in 2017 from the Department of Research and Innovation (DRIS), University of Pretoria, in the form of a postdoctoral fellowship, which gave me the time to write the first draft of this manuscript. I also acknowledge the financial support from the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission during my doctoral studies. Thank you to Maria Tamboukou and Louise Vincent for their thoughtful mentorship and guidance during my time as a doctoral and postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Narrative Research, University of East London, and the Department of Political and International Studies, at the university currently known as Rhodes University. Finally, to the magnificent intensity of all those students whom have been my most spirited and insightful teachers, you embody the heart and soul of the university. This book is also for you.

Contents

1 The Labyrinth of the Minotaur in “Post”-apartheid South Africa: Wrestling with the Ghost of a Bull  1 2 Decolonising the South African Higher Education System 49 3 Theorising a Biographic Visual-Narrative and Decolonising Methodology of (Non)being (Space), (Not)becoming (Power) and (No)belonging (Knowledge) 73 4 The Lived Lives and Told Storymazes of Young Black South African Women in STEM Fields145 5 Pathway A: The Discursive-Circulatory System of (Non)being a Science Person—The Lived Social Life of Institutional Culture183 6 Pathway B: The Storied-Nervous System of (Not)Becoming Modern Scientists—The Told Psychic Life of Pedagogy257 7 Pathway C-entre. The Narrative-­Respiratory System of (No)belonging to Knowledge Communities: The Collective Psychosocial Life of Social Scientific Research325 xvii

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8 Towards a Complex-Reproductive System of (Re)pairing Being, Becoming and Belonging to Knowledge Communities in South Africa421 9 The Toroidal-Maze of Tragic Love in Motion: Proposing a Complex Systems Programme Model for Translating Theoretical Pathways into Social Praxis489 References521 Index553

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4 Fig. 3.5 Fig. 3.6 Fig. 3.7

Fig. 3.8

Fig. 4.1

The Minotaur’s labyrinth of White colonial domination and hetero-­patriarchal control over production 6 Conceiving narrative formations of relational selves in the infinite dialectics of (non)being, (not)becoming and (no)belonging76 Manichean hierarchical entities as a metaphor for racial power 80 Rhythmical whole infinity networks as a metaphor for disrupting racial power 82 Dividing and rhythmical forms of (non)being in space (existential “ontoepistemology” [Barad, 2007]) 89 Entity and networked forms of (no)belonging with/in knowledge (epistemology) 92 Hierarchical and holistic forms of (no)becoming with power (axiology)95 The discursive-circulatory system of the zone of nonbeing (Fanon, 1967) a “person”, storied-nervous system of notbecoming “modern” people and narrative-respiratory system of no-belonging to knowledge communities 107 The narrative-respiratory system of belonging to knowledge communities, storied-nervous system of becoming modern peoples and material-discursive-circulatory system of being a person108 Lived life and told story of Kgnaya 148 xix

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Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4 Fig. 4.5 Fig. 4.6 Fig. 4.7 Fig. 4.8 Fig. 4.9 Fig. 4.10 Fig. 4.11 Fig. 4.12 Fig. 4.13 Fig. 4.14 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3 Fig. 6.4 Fig. 6.5 Fig. 6.6 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 8.1 Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2 Fig. 9.3

List of Figures

Lived life and told story of Ethwasa 149 Lived life and told story of Itumeleng 151 Lived life and told story of Khanyisile 154 Lived life and told story of Ambani 156 Lived life and told story of Naila 159 Lived life and told story of Nosakhele 161 Lived life and told story of Takalani 163 Lived life and told story of Amirah 166 Lived life and told story of Kaiya 168 Lived life and told story of Odirile 170 Lived life and told story of Welile 173 Lived life and told story of Mamoratwa 175 Lived life and told story of Alala 177 A color-line (Du Bois, 2007[1903]) of nonbeing a “person” and rhythmical infinity threads of being a person 188 Hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines of not-becoming “modern” people and whole infinity loops of becoming modern peoples 264 Labyrinth story (collated) 314 Rhythmic storymaze (collated) 314 Looped storymaze (collated) 315 Network storymaze (collated) 315 Labyrinth, rhythmical, looped and network storymazes (collated)316 (Neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion and infinity networks of belonging to knowledge communities 333 Co-mapping pathways into the centre and “out of ” the Minotaur’s labyrinth 427 A white logic model 493 A complex systems programme model that disrupts white logic494 The Toroidal-maze of tragic love in motion: A narrative symbol516

List of Tables

Table 3.1 Profile of the women in this research project Table 8.1 Co-mapping pathways into the centre of the Minotaur’s labyrinth: Manichean hierarchical entities of shattering failure as paralysis Table 8.2 Reinventing pathways away from the centre and “out of ” the Minotaur’s labyrinth: Rhythmical whole infinity networks of tragic love in motion

119 446 473

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1 The Labyrinth of the Minotaur in “Post”-apartheid South Africa: Wrestling with the Ghost of a Bull

Wrestling with a Ghost of a Bull In the first month of moving to Pretoria/Tshwane in 2017, I had a vivid dream that the ghost of a bull was circling me and pulling me towards it, but I woke myself up. A few months later when I visited the Voortrekker Monument,1 I saw this buffalo bull head over the main entrance, and I knew it was that space which contained the depleting energy from the ghost of the bull in my dream (Image 1.1).  The Voortrekker Monument, designed by architect Gerard Moerdijk (1890–1958) is erected on a hill to the southwest of Pretoria/Tshwane, South Africa. This eighteen-year project was inaugurated on 16 December 1949. It was built to serve as a reminder to all white South Africans, particularly Afrikaners, “of the history and significance of the Great Trek, socially, politically and culturally it embodied the ascendance of the Afrikaner” (Steenkamp, 2015, p.  33). Alta Steenkamp (2015) describes the Voortrekker Monument as: “a conception of normative space in the power it ascribed to architectural and decorative elements to symbolise the ‘civilised’ and ‘uncivilised’ in the ‘white’ and ‘black’ body respectively” (2006, p. 250) and “a racist narrative interplay between strength in the face of suffering as represented by the white female in opposition to savagery and barbarity as represented by the black male” (2015, p. 44). My interpretation of the connections between the history of the Voortrekker Monument in relation to the Greek myth of the labyrinth and the Minotaur at its centre is beyond the scope and not the focal point of this book. There are also clear connections to be made between the symbolism of the Voortrekker Monument in relation to various statues and buildings at South African universities, particularly HWUs. These connections will be explored elsewhere. 1

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Image 1.1  A buffalo bull head above the  main entrance of the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria/Tshwane, South Africa

Why is it that this bodiless head of a bull situated at the very centre of the Voortrekker Monument feels like a silent vacuum of space and time, and dominant energy that is stuck in limbo? I begin with this dream to situate myself in this research project and to situate this project within its historical context. As a white, middle-class South African woman and researcher of this project, I write from a position of systematically conferred privilege and unearned advantage. What does it mean for me to wrestle with the ghost of this bull? I have been troubled by this dream. Why did I wake myself up instead of confronting this bull? I keep returning to the prologue of the Black existentialist novelist, Ralph Waldo Ellison’s Invisible Man (1995 [1952]) in which the unnamed narrator states: I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. (p. 3)

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The narrator who describes himself as the invisible man is invisible not because he is a ghost, but his invisibility is a product of white people’s refusal to see him because it benefits them not to see him (Milazzo, 2017). Instead of seeing the invisible man as a human being and recognising his complex humanity and individuality, white people only see his “surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except [him]” (Ellison, 1995 [1952]) p. 3). The narrator is trying to establish what the right norms of belief in a distorted looking-glass world are, because these make him invisible to white people (Mills, 2007). On the one hand, it has been argued that individuals actively conform to normative practices that not only contribute to the accumulation of capital specific to a field but also to the reproduction of the structure of social space (Naidoo, 2004). As Richard Dyer (1997) has shown in his incisive discussion of whiteness and the privilege which is associated with being the invisible norm, it is important to constantly interrogate what counts as “normal” and by implication what is either privileged or rendered illicit and “abnormal” (Vincent, 2015). Melissa Steyn (2012) describes what she calls the Ignorance Contract2 as the systematic misperception and tacit agreement to misrepresent the world and entertain “ignorance” as a social accomplishment with strategic value; “ignorance” provides a comforting or “insulating medium” for white people from seeing how their privileges for their psychological well-being is maintained by realities of social injustices (Steyn, 2012). The normative practices that maintain unjustly conferred privileges go unquestioned, perpetuating unequal power relations and reproducing racial hierarchies3 (Steyn, 2012). Steyn (2012) maintains that “ignorance” is important to world-making because dominant groups have the capital and power to deliberately institute an ignorance contract by imposing their interests upon social fields and in doing so effect social control. However, on the other hand, at the end of the prologue, the invisible man challenges the notion of white ignorance by referring back to an  As a subclause of Charles Mills’s (1997) Racial Contract.  According to James Baldwin (1962) in The Fire Next Time, “[i]t is the innocence which constitutes the crime” (p. 6). Innocence constitutes the crime of racism or how normative society pleads “innocent” to the crime of racial inequality on which it is built. 2 3

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earlier incident in which he demanded that a white man who had bumped into him apologise for his actions: I won’t buy it. You can’t give it to me. He bumped me, he insulted me. Shouldn’t he, for his own personal safety, have recognized my hysteria, my “danger potential”? He, let us say, was lost in a dream world. But didn’t he control that dream world which, alas, is only too real! and didn’t he rule me out of it? And if he had yelled for a policeman, wouldn’t I have been taken for the offending one? Yes, yes, yes! (Ellison, 1995 [1952], p. 14)

The narrator does not state that white people are ignorant of how they rule out the invisible man from their “dream world”, but that they actively construct, control, perpetuate and are therefore responsible for this world (Milazzo, 2017).4 These normative centres of what it means to be “human” in a distorted looking-glass world continue to be written into the core of South African society structured in racial hierarchies by deliberately adding new layers of what George Lipsitz (2006) calls the possessive investment in whiteness. These layers include the active re-inscription of unjustly conferred white privilege, the refusal to see the complex humanity and individuality of Black peoples and the denial that history is not the past and that horrific inequalities and injustices produced by racial distributions of power persist, in our present. In a documentary film I am Not Your Negro, the  African  American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist James Baldwin states: History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history. If we pretend otherwise, we literally are criminals. (2017, emphasis in original, p. 107)

 In her article, “On White Ignorance, White Shame, and Other Pitfalls in Critical Philosophy of Race” Marzia Milazzo (2017) argues that, “white people strategically feign ignorance as a tactic of domination”, therefore it is useful to shift the conceptual lens to deliberate disavowal because white ignorance cannot account for the systematic ways in which colour-blind logics are reproduced across discourses, disciplines and national contexts (p. 568). 4

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 he Labyrinth of the Minotaur in “Post”T apartheid South Africa The Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall student movement in South Africa for free higher education and decolonisation of the institutional practices and curricula have raised necessary debates about whiteness and the devastating effects of institutional racial hierarchies (Mbembe, 2019a). It is a reminder of the imperative for, as the Cameroonian philosopher, political scientist, and public  intellectual  Achille Mbembe (2015) notes, “the demythologizing of certain versions of history [which] must go hand in hand with the demythologizing of whiteness” (n.d. emphasis in original). In his paper, “Decolonizing Knowledge and the Question of the Archive”, Mbembe (2015) explains that human history is beyond whiteness, history is about the future whereas “[w]hiteness is about entrapment. Whiteness is at its best when it turns into a myth. It is the most corrosive and the most lethal when it makes us believe that it is everywhere; that everything originates from it and it has no outside” (n.d). The  metaphorical illustrations of narrative forms that organise this book are firmly grounded in reality and the particular context which is depicted in Fig. 1.1,5 that is, the Minotaur’s labyrinth of White colonial domination and hetero-patriarchal control over production.

 Instead of providing my own interpretations of the cover image in relation to Fig. 1.1 and 9.3, I hope that readers will construct their own meanings of these images. However, I will mention that because of the religious intention of the Voortrekker Monument, which is part of its meaning and symbolism, the pathways leading towards the centre of the Minotaur’s labyrinth in Fig.  1.1 are symbolic of the Roman historian Sallust’s notion of “libido dominandi” or the lust for domination which could be viewed as the seed of war. Kelly and Harding (2018) in their article, “Bergson’s Theory of War: A Study of Libido Dominandi”, explain that in Augustine’s text The City of God, he interprets the lust for domination and a desire for luxury as the manifestation of pride or love of the self and the turning down of the love of God. In their words: “Rather than turning outward towards God, the love of self turns inward upon itself—incurvatus in se. In turning inward, this love of self creates an enclosure of the heart that experiences all of reality as objects of enjoyment or possession subordinated to one’s own good” (Kelly & Harding, 2018, p. 602, emphasis in original). Therefore, following Kelly and Harding (2018), Fig. 1.1 therefore suggests that the lust for domination is a closed system which has turned inward, collapsing upon itself that desire for luxury and domination to structure the world in a way that is suited to one’s own desires. On a separate note, for the symbolism of  “the sperm in the egg”  depicted in Fig.  1.1. see, for e.g.  Lugones, 2010, p. 758; Martin, 1991, p. 500; Moore, 2007, pp. 6 and 151. Fig. 1.1. is to be read alongside Fig. 9.3. 5

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Fig. 1.1  The Minotaur’s labyrinth of White colonial domination and hetero-­ patriarchal control over production

Just as the bodiless head of a buffalo bull is positioned at the centre, symbolically protecting the Voortrekker Monument as the edifice of racial power,6 the Minotaur is confined to the centre of a giant maze called The Labyrinth. The various elements of the Greek myth of the labyrinth and the Minotaur7 at its centre will be situated in the South African context and retold throughout the coming chapters. According to Greek mythology, the Minotaur (Asterios) was a flesh-eating beast with the head of a bull and a human body. The Minotaur was the son of Queen Pasiphae by a bull. King Minos, Pasiphae’s husband, got the ­architect Daedalus to make a giant maze called the Labyrinth and the Minotaur was confined to the centre of this maze. During this time, Minos’s son, Androgeus, died while he was participating in the Panatheniac  I borrow the term racial power from Claire Jean Kim who defines the term as follows: “Racial power refers to the racial status quo’s systemic tendency towards self-reproduction. It finds concrete political, economic, social, and cultural processes that tend cumulatively to perpetuate White dominance over non-Whites” (as cited in Milazzo, 2015, p. 23). 7  I am indebted to Pamela Nichols for listening to me talk about how I was developing labyrinths and storymazes as a visual narrative method and then introducing me to the myth of the Minotaur. 6

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Games in Athens. As Minos believed that King Aegeus of Athens was responsible for his son’s death, he prayed to the gods for revenge and a plague fell upon Athens. As revenge for his son’s death, Minos declared that every year, King Aegeus would need to send a group of youths as sacrifices to be offered to the Minotaur. After a few years had passed, Theseus, the son of Aegeus, volunteered to be one of the tributes so that he could enter the labyrinth and slay the Minotaur. Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos and half-sister to the Minotaur, gave Theseus a ball of thread so that he could use it as a guide to find his way out of the labyrinth. Theseus tied the ball of thread to the entrance and when he reached the centre of the labyrinth, he killed the Minotaur.8 What is the labyrinth of the Minotaur in “post”-9apartheid10 South Africa? How could we map out the labyrinth’s coordinate system? What are the pathways that lead to the centre of the labyrinth? And is there a thread for us to find a “way out”11 of the labyrinth in which the South African university finds itself? What symbols,  knowledges,  relational selves, memory and meanings emerge in the psychosocial journey of endlessly working through the problem of finding a “way out”? And what sustains these efforts?

 For a nuanced retelling and performance of this myth, see The Minotaur. 2 DVD set (2008). [Music by Harrison Birtwistle. Liberetto by David Harsent] London: Royal Opera House. 9  I have placed the prefix “post” in post-apartheid in inverted commas to emphasise Tshepo Madlingozi’s (2007) assertion that the quest of a post-apartheid South Africa is “elusive” (p. 77) or as Karin Van Marle (2010) has noted “might forever be postponed” (as cited in Modiri, 2017, p.  80). Similarly, Joel  Malesela Modiri (2017) asserts that the continued economic and social inequalities in South Africa are left untreated and further entrenched by the constitutional dispensation. He writes: “I argued for an argumentized shift from the view that the Constitution represents a practically false promise of an equal and liberated South Africa (this much in any case being empirically verifiable) to the view that it also, and more importantly, represents an unjust and unethical vision of social life which perpetuates colonial power relations and knowledges” (Modiri, 2017, p. 80). 10  Apartheid is an Afrikaans word which refers to “the state of being apart” or “separateness”. The Afrikaans “heid” meaning “apart-hood”. 11  I have used scare quotes around “out of ”, to emphasise that decolonisation of institutional practices and curricula is not an outcome but rather an endless struggle of working through the problem of finding a “way out”  of the Minotaur’s labyrinth of White colonial domination and hetero-patriarchal control over production. 8

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 emythologising Scientific Endeavour D as a White Male Achievement The production of scientific knowledge is infused by the historical, cultural and political legacies of South Africa. The economies of industrialised countries around the world are becoming increasingly dependent on computer technologies, particularly with the advent of the fourth industrial revolution which has progressively increased the lucrative value of the male-dominated Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Scientific knowledge is considered to be a defining differential of contemporary society as the capacity to circulate information from national to global spaces with the aid of technological infrastructure is arguably the premier source of economic growth (Nowotny, Scott & Gibbons, 2001). The developmental effects that STEM fields of enquiry could potentially have on society is not easily attainable because access to and engagement with scientific knowledge in South Africa is highly gendered, racialised and classed (see, for e.g.  Liccardo & Bradbury, 2017). The racialised gender gap in STEM fields raises critical concerns around the political and economic drivers of scientific enquiry and the continued marginalisation of Black women12 in higher education and society. The subordination of young Black women is especially the case in their under-representation in STEM subjects in higher education in contemporary South Africa. The American lawyer, civil rights advocate, and critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989; 1991) has coined the term intersectionality to refer to a concept and analytic tool which needs to be taken into account if any analysis is to address the ways in which Black women are subordinated. She has examined the ways in which Black women are marginalised within the legal system in the United States. In her article, “Demarginalizing the  Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics”, Crenshaw (1989) initially used the concept of intersectionality  The “category” of “Black women” could potentially be homogenising. By Black women I refer to a collective of all women of colour that represent collective standpoints of diverse experiences and voices. 12

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to account for how the interaction between race and gender shapes the various dimensions of Black women’s experiences of employment. She showed that the intersection of racism and sexism in the lives of Black women cannot be fully captured by approaching the race or gender dimensions of discrimination as separate (Crenshaw, 1989). Similarly, the intersection of racism and sexism in the lives of Black women studying in STEM disciplines cannot be wholly captured when practices “expound identity as woman or person of colour as an either/or proposition” (Crenshaw, 1991, p. 1242). The concept of positionality will be used as an analytic tool in this research project because it takes cognisance of the power relations at work in the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion or recognition, nonrecognition and misrecognition (Anthias, 2002;  Fathi, 2017; Yuval-Davis, 2011). In this context, Black women in STEM disciplines in South African universities are both marginally positioned (by race and gender) and centrally positioned by the prestige associated with the sciences. Their simultaneous and dual membership to a marginal and an elite group creates shifting senses of belonging and alienation in academic communities aligned with white, male and middle-class normative constructions of Science and scientists. This holds possibilities for demythologising scientific endeavour as a white male achievement and shifting knowledge communities across gendered, racialised, class and national divides.

 apping out the Labyrinth’s Coordinate M System: A Biographic Visual-Narrative and Decolonising Methodology of (Non)being (Space), (Not)becoming (Power) and (No) belonging (Knowledge) How could we account for the multiple systems, processes and organising principles involved in the material-discursive, storied and, symbolic practices of (non)being, (not)becoming and (no)belonging to knowledge

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communities in “post”-apartheid South Africa?13 This book shows how visual narrative methods could not only be used for the purposes of gathering and analysing empirical narratives but also for building theory. For example, the cover image of narrative formations of relational selves is used in the spirit of exploration to think with and through the relation between the dialectical tensions between (non)being, (not)becoming and (no)belonging to knowledge communities. I developed the cover image by drawing on the concept and analytic tool of forms as defined as “all shapes and configurations, all ordering principles, all patterns of repetition and difference” (Levine, 2015, p. 3). On the one hand, the image makes “white [as] a metaphor for power” (Baldwin, 2017, p.  107) visible in the form of Manichean14 hierarchical entities. On the other hand, the also image depicts rhythmic whole infinity networks as a metaphor for how the collisions between one or more forms could potentially disturb, complicate and reroute exclusionary boundaries. The literary theorist Caroline Levine (2015), in her book Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network, extends the common definition of form in literary studies to include socio-political arrangements. As forms are at work everywhere in the structuring and patterning of experience, it has implications for understanding socio-political life and how power operates through different forms of order in the material world (Levine, 2015). If forms structure works of art and organise socio-political life (Levine, 2015), then how could socio-political life transfigure the forms that organise works of art? To be a person in relation to another is an open question which we continually reformulate: What am I? What am I doing? Who am I? Why am I doing this? Where am I? Where am I going? Where do I belong? The questions of What am I? and What am I doing? is accounted for through stories about Who I am? and Why I am doing this?. “[S]elf-making is a narrative art”  This research method is informed by decoloniality which is premised on three central concepts: coloniality of being (Fanon, 1963; Maldonado-Torres, 2007; Mignolo, 2003; Wynter, 2003), coloniality of knowledge (Maldonado-Torres, 2005; Mignolo, 2003, 2007; Quijano, 2000; Walsh, 2007) and what Aníbal Quijano calls coloniality of power (Grosfoguel, 2007, 2013; Quijano, 2000; Quijano & Wallerstein, 1992). These perspectives were initiated by what Arturo Escobar (2007) refers to as the “Latin American modernity/coloniality research program”. 14  According to the Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist, philosopher, and revolutionary Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth (1963), Manicheanism subtends the colonial order as “a world divided into compartments” (p. 39). The colonial space of consciousness is divided by Manicheanism. 13

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(Bruner, 2003) because we make up a story when we tell oneself about who and what we are (and are not), and why we do what we do. In an interview with Katherine McKittrick, the Caribbean theorist and writer Sylvia Wynter suggests that our hybrid origins as a species emerged over the last decade as the Third Event (Wynter & McKittrick, 2015).15 Wynter identifies the Third Event as being marked by the Blombos Cave in South Africa in which the Henshilwood team of archaeologists found decorative beads made of shells that evidence communal cooking, and upon further excavation, they also found tools and ingredients used to create ochre engravings in what seemed to be an art workshop. Wynter explains that, for Judy Granh (1994), the ochre engravings are symbolic of fictive menstrual blood: In this ritual, biological life, or the first form of life, is transformed into symbolic life or a communal/fictive referent-we, which Wynter calls homo narrans. Human beings are thus not only languaging creatures but also mythmakers or storytellers.16 In Wynter’s words: “I identify the Third Event in Fanonian-adapted terms as the origin of the human as a hybrid-auto-instituting-languaging-storytelling species: bios/ mythoi” (Wynter & McKittrick, 2015, p. 31). Human practice is made meaningful because it is mediated symbolically (McGuigan, 2005). Stories thus account for the temporal vicissitudes of human intentionality, which is a motivating force that animates meaning (Ricoeur, 1988). Ian Hacking (1995), in his book Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory, suggests that narrative is a metaphor for memory: We constitute our souls by making up our lives, that is, by weaving stories about our past, by what we call memories. The tales we tell of ourselves and to ourselves are not a matter of recording what we have done and how we have felt. They must mesh with the rest of the world and with other people’s stories, at least in externals, but their real role is in the creation of a life, a character, a self. (pp. 250–251)

In this sense, the self is not a monologue but a relational conversation through language which enables us to meaningfully articulate our-selves  Wynter explains that the “First and Second Events are the origin of the universe and the explosion of all forms of biological life, respectively” (p. 31). 16  See Juan Luis Arsuaga’s The Neanderthal’s Necklace. 15

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as well as communicate and connect with others (Crites, 1986). Self-­ consciousness is social because the self can only develop the capacities necessary for it to become a self through others (Fay, 1996). The self is able to distance itself from itself and recollect itself through the process of reflection and inner dialogue (Miller, 2014). Drawing on the work of Vygotsky (1978), Ronald Miller (2014) explains that “Signs or word meanings that are shared between persons provide the link between social structures or systems and consciousness because the roles we enact are embedded with meaning” (p.  43). These word meanings are also the means through which we reflect on our own actions, imagine alternatives and effect changes in ourselves as well as changes in the social systems and structures in which we participate (Miller, 2014). By drawing on the concept of narrative forms and Nira Yuval-Davis’s (2006) analytics for the politics of belonging as “social locations, identifications and emotional attachments, and ethical political values” (p. 199), this book offers an analytic framework of narrative formations of (non)being (space), (not)becoming (power) and (no)belonging (knowledge). First, this chapter proposes that “being” is socially positioned in “what I am”. The forms of dividing lines and rhythmical flowing threads are attributes of (non)being, of existential “ontoepistemology” (Barad, 2007). Discourses function as a performative and communicative speech act in which people choose particular words and grammatical features to convey particular meanings and to present themselves in a particular way to particular audiences. Second, belonging as identifications and emotional attachments to social locations is the space “where I am”. The forms of entities and networks are attributes of (no)belonging, of epistemology. Symbolic narratives function as an abstract structural form which (in)forms the construction of subjects and subject positions in the social world. Third, becoming is the re-valuation and re-positioning of “who I am”. The forms of hierarchical lines and boundless wholes are attributes of (not)becoming, of axiology. Stories function as a cognitive tool or instrument for invention that individuals and groups of people use to reflect on and make sense of their affective sense of belonging to particular social locations in relation to others and in particular socio-­ political contexts. This chapter argues that social locations and the practice of identification and emotional attachments to various collectivities and groupings hinge on narrative “identity” (i.e., a narrative sense of

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relational selfhood) through which agents meaningfully reflect on and re-­position themselves in alternative discourses, within conditions of impossibility and alter subjectivity and subject positionings. Agents do this through the narrative mechanism of “emplotment” (Polkinghorne, 1988). In this sense, the subject as embodied and located refers to a person’s narrative identity of becoming which is discursively produced in space and symbolically represented through knowledge. The interrelation between the discursive-circulatory system of space (zones of non/being) and storied-nervous system of power (not/becoming) produces the narrative-respiratory of knowledge (no/belonging) which informs a set of assumptions that constitutes a particular worldview. The narrative-respiratory system of no-belonging (neoliberal entities of inclusion-­ exclusion) is a site of breathlessness17 that is to be controlled through people’s narrative “identities” of becoming  (i.e., their  narrative sense of relational selfhood). This state of breathlessness is depicted on the cover image by the trachea or windpipe that is blocked at the apex of Manichean hierarchical entities. Could we develop a research framework that accounts for how the narrative-respiratory system of knowledge is a site of breathlessness (nobelonging) that simultaneously holds the possibility of expelling new air (belonging)? The Puerto Rican Fanonian philosopher and activist Nelson  Maldonado-Torres (2016) proposes an Outline of Ten Theses on Coloniality and Decoloniality which are informed by two diagrams depicting some basic dimensions in the “analytics of coloniality” (p. 20) and “analytics of decoloniality” (p. 30) where, from a Fanonian point of view, the damnés18 are the subjects who occupy a structural and subjective position at the crux of the coloniality of power, knowledge and being. Following Frantz Fanon (1963, 1967), Maldonado-Torres (2016, p. 19) proposes the following “scheme to approach modernity/coloniality: Knowledge: Subject, Object, Method Being: Time, Space, Subjectivity Power: Structure, Culture, Subject”.  See, Khensani Masisi’s (2016) poem, Stripped of My Dignity and Integrity Hence I Can No Longer Breathe. 18  Maldonado-Torres (2016) explains that Fanon focuses on the colonised black subject in Black Skin, White Masks and that he “refers to subject in a similar structural and subjective position as the damnés” or condemned in The Wretched of the Earth [Les damnés de la terre] (p. 20). 17

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The damnés are not only consumed by oppression, but they resist and disrupt the coloniality of knowledge that aims to mould, violate or erase them. The revolutionary task to “build the world of the You” (Fanon, 1967, p.  181,  emphasis in original) must therefore be centred on the action of the damnés: “Decoloniality involves a decolonial epistemic turn whereby the damné emerges as a questioner, thinker, theorist, writer, and communicator” (Maldonado-Torres, 2016, p. 24). In an attempt to develop an analytic framework of narrative formations of relational selves into a decolonising research framework of embodied forms of (non)being (space), (not)becoming (power) and (no)belonging (knowledge), I have adapted Maldonado-Torres’s analytics of coloniality and decoloniality as follows: Real space: Space (being) and social structure-agency (discourses) Imaginary power: Time (becoming) and cultural memory (stories) Symbolic knowledge: Chronotopes as symbols (belonging) and knowledge (narratives). Although there are several other constituent elements involved in the analytics of coloniality and decoloniality, these elements could be viewed as the research framework’s points of axis, simultaneously part of many large clusters and thus more highly linked than other elements. How do these constituent elements work together to construct a narrative-­ respiratory system of knowledge as a site of breathlessness that simultaneously holds the possibility of expelling new air? In addressing this question, I compare the following constituent elements with particular “healthy”19 and “unhealthy” bodily coordinates in order to think about change and continuity along multiple psychosocial pathways. On the one hand, I map the “analytics of coloniality” onto the form of Manichean hierarchical entities. In other words, Fig.  3.7 depicts the discursive-circulatory system of zones of  nonbeing  a “person”,  By comparing particular concepts with a human body which is “healthy” (Fig.  3.8) and “unhealthy” (Fig. 3.7) bodily coordinates, I do not mean to reproduce the dominant discourse of healthiness, as espoused in Western culture, as a moral ideal. I do not imply that “unhealthy” bodily coordinates so not function “normally”. “Healthiness” and “unhealthiest” is used in a metaphorical sense. My focus is on the elements which constitute a healthy living system. 19

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storied-­nervous system of not-becoming “modern” people and narrative-­ respiratory system of no-belonging to knowledge communities.20

Pathway A as the discursive-circulatory system of a zone of nonbeing (Fanon, 1967) a “person”: A1) Bounded space (tainted21 second skin) A2) Nonbeing (wounded skin) A3) Social structure-agency (clogged blood vessels) A4) Dominant two-dimensional discourse (constricted blood).

Pathway B as the storied-nervous system of not-becoming “modern” people: B1) Linear time (tunnel-visioned third eye) B2) Not-becoming (wilfully short-sighted eyes) B3) Sedimented cultural memory (unmalleable spinal cord) B4) Single story scripts (narrow-minded brain).  While providing a critique of Hegel, Lewis R. Gordon (1999) states that, “White people are universal, it is said and Black people are not” (as cited in Ahmed, 2007, p. 161). Sara Ahmed interprets this statement by explaining that, “If to be human is to be white, then to be not white is to inhabit the negative: it is to be ‘not’. The pressure of this ‘not’ is another way of describing the social and existential realities of racism” (2007, p. 161). The systems of nonbeing, not-becoming and no-­ belonging as depicted in Fig. 3.7 represent the inhabitation of the “negative” or the “social and existential realities of racism” as Ahmed notes. 21  Tainted second skin (bounded space) is connected to tunnel-visioned third eye (linear time) and stale air (chronotopes as one-dimensional symbols). Therefore, I use the words “tainted” second skin (bounded space) and “stale” air (chronotopes as one-dimensional symbols) to refer to the absence of a living and breathing system. I use the words “tainted” and “stale” to refers to the blockage of creativity, inspiration, innovation, inventiveness, modernity, discovery and humanness which creates a site of breathlessness in the form of (neo)liberal entities (no-belonging). In other words, second skin (bounded space) is tainted by the social structure or the environment in which subjects are located. On the cover image, no-belonging as unjust (neo)liberal entities (breathlessness) is represented by a stillborn whereas belonging as rhythmical whole infinity networks (regenerative breath) is represented by a brainchild. The reproduction of (neo)liberal entities is my interpretation of what Fanon (1967) calls “middle-class society” which he describes as follows: “any society that becomes rigidified in predetermined forms, forbidding all evolution, all gains, all progress, all discovery” (p. 175). A middle-class society is “a closed society in which life has no taste, in which the air is tainted, in which ideas and men are corrupt. And I think that a man who takes a stand against this death is in a sense a revolutionary” (Fanon, 1967, p. 175). 20

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Pathway C-entre as the narrative-respiratory system of no-belonging to knowledge communities: C1) Chronotopes as one-dimensional symbols (stale air) C2) No-belonging or (neo)liberal inclusion-exclusion logic (breathlessness) C3) Atrophied knowledge (punctured lungs) C4) Predictable symbolic narratives (shattered heart). On the other hand, I map the “analytics of decoloniality” onto the form of rhythmic whole infinity networks. Starting from the centre (Pathway C), I have reversed these constituent elements. Put differently, Fig. 3.8 depicts the narrative-respiratory system of belonging to knowledge communities, storied-nervous system of becoming modern peoples and discursive-circulatory system of being a person.

Pathway C-entre as the narrative-respiratory system of belonging to knowledge communities: C4) Unpredictable symbolic narratives (webwork heart) C3) Living knowledges (heartened lungs) C2) Belonging (regenerative breath) C1) Chronotopes as multi-dimensional symbols (spirited air)

Pathway B as the storied-nervous system of becoming modern peoples: B4) Plurality of stories (broad-minded brain) B3) (R)evolving cultural memory (malleable spinal cord) B2) Becoming (farsighted eyes) B1) Circular time (visionary third eye)

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Pathway A as the discursive-circulatory system of being a person: A4) Multi-dimensional discourses (fluid blood) A3) Social structure-agency (unclogged blood vessels) A2) Being (sutured skin) A1) Unbounded space (infinitely open second skin) If the aim of the coloniality of power, being and knowledge is to keep the damnés in a fixable place, then to produce fresh air for decolonisation to move, as Maldonado-Torres (2016) explains, each of these constitutive elements needs to be in dialogue with each other, along with concrete institutional strategies and actions for social change. If one’s answerability to the questions What am I?, What am I doing? Who am I?, Why am I doing this?, Where am I? Where am I going? Where do I belong? takes the form of narratives, then stories are a means through which one negotiates, repositions and traverses multiple locations within and between these psychosocial pathways. Stories, which are particular and intersectional, are thus a valuable tool to analyse positionality. The relational self, as a psychosocial phenomenon, is like the infinite-­ merging surfaces of a Möbius strip,22 narrated in the dialectical interplay between one’s dual position as a subject which shape the world but in turn is shaped by the world. In other words, these psychosocial pathways of relational selves are depicted on the cover image as entangled Möbius strips in the geometric form of an infinity symbol (rotational space-time) that endlessly go back and forth in shaping us and the world we inhabit. These psychosocial pathways are thus embodied because social and political life (green strip) is expressed with/in and through personal lives (red strip), endlessly co-creating symbolic narrative formations of relational selves or self-knowledge (blue strip). As Sylvia Wynter (1995) remarks: Human beings are magical. Bios and Logos. Words made flesh, muscle and bone animated by hope and desire, belief materialized in deeds, deeds  The Möbius strip that I have in mind is depicted on the cover image of Clarke and Hoggett’s book Researching Beneath the Surface. Psycho-social Research Methods in Practice. My thanks to Ursula Lau for introducing me to this text. 22

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which crystallize our actualities. ‘It is man who brings society into being’ (Fanon, 1967, p. 11). And the maps of spring always have to be redrawn again, in undared forms. (p. 35)

Through this passageway of time, we imaginatively re-collect and selectively gather together a trail of past events with present concerns into a followable story (Freeman, 1993). Stories are thus the needle we use to thread together re-collected fragments of our-selves and lives into new innovative patterns of meaning. Over time, individual memories are knitted into webs of meaning that bind the material/symbolic, social/ personal, and historical/psychical. This network of interconnections coalesces in individual life narratives (Kuhn, 1995). The evolving sets of values, signs and symbols of a culture act as a central source of collective consciousness. The intertwining of personal and public histories that form cultural memory creates the terrain of people’s “historically effected consciousness” (Gadamer, 1982, p. xv). The turning of these hermeneutical “loops”, time and time again, creates unfolding and emerging networks of interconnected signs deposited in cultural works that take human understanding to greater heights. The point at which the hermeneutical circle crosses or loop folds, each time passes at a deeper level, so the hermeneutical project of human understanding through emergent self-knowledge reaches deeper levels and greater heights (Ricoeur, 1984). In this way, “the invisible cohesion” of “the cultural matrix” could be understood as the cooperation between rhythmical infinity networks and boundless wholes in that cultures are networked movements that flow and circulate within the boundaries of knowable wholes (Gallagher & Greenblatt, 2000, p. 13). This book is thus situated in phenomenological hermeneutics and a “Biographical Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM)” (Wengraf, 2011) because the stories we tell ourselves and others in order to make sense of social action are not just a social practice, but it is a practice in itself. Narrative is central to understanding human action because in our lives we not only live and tell stories, but also understand our lives (and those of others) in terms of stories. As Brain Fay (1996) notes, “Our lives are enstoried and our stories are enlived” (p. 197). Textuality is a model for human action (Ricoeur, 1981).

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Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) in her book Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples explains that as a research tool “story telling is a useful and culturally appropriate way of representing the ‘diversities of truth’ within which the story teller rather than the researcher retains control” (p. 146). Narrative approaches offer a way of affirming and centring the life histories and stories of excluded groupings, whose narratives or knowledges have remained at the margins in the representation of reality.  In their article, “Narrative Explorations of the Micro-­ politics of Students’ Citizenship, Belonging and Alienation at South African Universities”, Ronelle Carolissen and Peace Kiguwa (2018) suggest that recollecting, articulating and archiving collective memory of traumatic histories in the context of higher education offer possibilities for re-imagining the past for collective futures: “[it is] imperative that we find ways to mobilise these histories as symbolic resources for understanding the articulation of present-day narratives and projected developmental storylines that may offer different future narratives (Andrews, Squire, & Tamboukou, 2013)” (p. 2). The decolonising research framework of embodied forms of (non) being (space), (not)becoming (power) and (no)belonging (knowledge) has informed the conceptualisation of five sets of research questions. The group (of 14) young Black South African women who participated in this research project were recipients of the “Oya” scholarship programme and were former students and graduates from a variety of STEM degree programmes at an HWU. The biographical narrative interview conversations provided a way of differentiating between the context of one’s “lived life” (i.e. the life events as discursively experienced) and the form of the “told story” (i.e. the retrospective reordering of sequences of events and experiences through the narrative mechanism of emplotment) (Wengraf, 2011). Furthermore, I worked with the context, structure and content of meanings within and across the women’s life narratives and developed various models of storymazes23 in eleven layers of analysis.  In the ninth layer of analysis, as discussed in Chap. 4, I explored the multiple ways in which the women used stories to negotiate, reposition and traverse multiple locations and thus reorder their sense of space and time. As these storied formations resemble a maze, I refer to the structure of their stories as “storymazes” (see Figs. 4.1–4.14). 23

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 he Main Characters in This Story: The Lived T Lives and Told Storymazes of a Group of Young Black South African Women in STEM Fields As a way of introducing the women (as the participants and interlocutors in this research project) and myself (as the researcher of this project and a former support staff member of their scholarship programme), Chap. 4 will present individual portraits of the women’s lived lives and told stories. The focus will be on particular biographical turning points or moments of crisis in their lived lives which set in motion a cascade of particular experiences that changed the trajectory of their life paths. The women’s narratives will be foregrounded in the chapters to come, during which more will be learnt about them, while others will make less of an appearance. In Chap. 6 (section B4), there is a detailed discussion of the various ways the women give shape to their lives in a story form that resembles the structure of a labyrinth,24 rhythms, loops and networks. I will discuss four particular features which add complexity to the level of connectivity within and across the storymazes. Their individual stories not only offer “truths” that relate to real-life situations and lessons in education, but it also provides a “roadmap” for resolving conflicts along various pathways in the symbolic maze of life.

( Re)inventing Pathways into the Centre and “out of” the Minotaur’s Labyrinth: A Conceptual-Empirical Framework of Continuity and Change Along Psychosocial Pathways These psychosocial pathways, which are grounded in the symbolic narratives and knowledges of the young women in this research project, have been used to formulate a conceptual-empirical framework25 that provides  Whereas a labyrinth comprises a single pathway from the entrance to exit, a maze contains many points of entries and exits. However, the labyrinth and maze herein will generally  be used synonymously. 25  I would like to emphasise that this map is not a forecast or prescribed formula to be applied but rather it sketches key coordinates involved in framing an understanding of continuation and 24

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an account of the multiple systems, processes and core principles involved in the material-discursive, storied and, symbolic practices of (non)being, (not)becoming and (no)belonging to knowledge communities in “post”apartheid South Africa. The conceptual-empirical framework has been developed using core principles of systems theory and complexity theory, which govern linear and nonlinear interactions between elements or change and continuity along multiple psychosocial pathways. The notion of inertial momentum from physics, which is connected to the phenomenon of power, conceptually links the principle of emergent behaviour in complexity theory and the idea of socio-historical change in society (Mason, 2009). The path dependency and lock-in of a phenomenon that has dominant inertial momentum sustains its direction and increases its speed along a particular pathway until the inertial momentum of a competing phenomenon could disrupt and redirect that path (Mason, 2009). Whereas Manichean hierarchical entities are used as a metaphor for continuity along centripetal pathways in a closed system, rhythmic whole infinity networks are used as a metaphor for change along centrifugal pathways in a complex adaptive system which could potentially disrupt the dominant power structure’s momentum and redirect that path.

 o-mapping Pathways into the Centre C of the Minotaur’s Labyrinth: Manichean Hierarchical Entities as a Closed System of Shattering Failure as Paralysis We could view Manichean hierarchical entities as the Minotaur’s labyrinth of nonbeing, not-becoming and no-belonging to knowledge communities in South Africa. How could we theorise the dominant inertial momentum or continuity along centripetal pathways in this closed system? How could we account for the multiple systems, processes and regulative principles involved in the material-discursive, storied and, symbolic change along psychosocial pathways without being overly prescriptive and thus stifling creativity. The overlapping pathways are not linear, rather the key coordinates provide guiding principles in the recursive process of temporarily finding ‘ways out’ of the Minatour’s labyrinth.

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practices of nonbeing,26 not-becoming and no-belonging to knowledge communities in “post”-apartheid South Africa? These questions will be addressed by co-mapping pathways into the centre of the Minotaur’s labyrinth. On the one hand, I use 12 coordinates (four coordinates from each pathway) to map out the dominant pathway into the centre of the Minotaur’s labyrinth. In so doing, I provide a systems theory view of the regulative principles involved in the psychosocial re-formation27 or continuity along the pathways of nonbeing, not-becoming and no­ belonging to knowledge communities in South Africa. The geometric shape of Manichean hierarchical entities is used as a metaphor for the dominant inertial momentum along three centripetal pathways in a closed system. The following questions have provided a framework to explore  the operating system of the dominant inertial momentum along centripetal pathways into the enclosed centre of the labyrinth:  The term nonbeing relates to what Fanon (1967) calls a zone of nonbeing. Nelson Maldonado-­ Torres (2007) elaborates: “The damnés or condemned is not a ‘being there’ but a nonbeing or rather, as Ralph Ellison so eloquently elaborated, a sort of an invisible entity. What is invisible about the person of colour is its very humanity, and this is in fact what the cry tries to call attention to. Invisibility and dehumanization are the primary expressions of the coloniality of Being” (pp. 256–257, emphasis in original). These zones of what it means to be “human” is depicted by the entities above the line in the hierarchy on the cover image whereas the zones of nonbeing or not being “fully human” in an antiblack and racist society is depicted by the entities below the line in hierarchy. See also, Gordon’s (2017) discussion of how Fanon (1967), Manganyi (1973), including others in Africana philosophy have delineated the ways in which “racial conflict is also an existential one in which an existential ontology is posed against an ontology of being” (p. 32). 27  I have hyphenated the terms re-formation and trans-formation. Formations refer to forms defined as “all shapes and configurations, all ordering principles, all patterns of repetition and difference” (Levine, 2015, p. 3). Whereas the prefix “re-“ means “again [or] back”, the prefix “trans-“ refers to “across”, “beyond”, “through”, “changing thoroughly” or “transverse” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2018). Therefore, on the one hand, re-formation refers to how particular forms keep the same shape, configuration, organising principles and patterns (i.e. social and cultural reproduction). Re-formations refers to unchanging forms (e.g. a dividing line, hierarchical lines, and entities) which are associated with the dominant inertial momentum or continuity along straight and narrow pathways in a closed system. On the other hand, trans-formation refers to how particular forms interact with its context, travel across, through and/or  beyond boundaries and thus change its shape, configuration, organising  principles and patterns (i.e.  social and cultural change). Trans-formations refers to changing forms (e.g. rhythms, wholes and networks) which are associated with a resistant inertial momentum or change along multiple pathways in a complex adaptive system. It is argued that these trans-formations could potentially disrupt the dominant power structure’s momentum and redirect its path. 26

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1. What does the material-discursive, storied, and symbolic narrative re-­ formation of zones of nonbeing, not-becoming and no-belonging to knowledge communities entail? 2. What material-discursive, storied, and symbolic  narrative realities does the re-formation of zones of nonbeing, not-becoming and no-­ belonging to knowledge communities create? 3. What are the psychosocial effects of the re-formation of these material-­ discursive, storied, and symbolic narrative realities? 4. How are these material-discursive, storied, and symbolic  narrative realities and its psychosocial effects, masked and re-formed?

Pathway A) The discursive-circulatory system of zones of nonbeing a “science person”: An institutional culture structured by a color-line (Du Bois, 2007[1903]) Pathway A (institutional culture) is structured by the dominance of a color-line28 (Du Bois, 2007[1903]) that is regulated  by the  organising principles of disempowerment expressed as “closed and isolated system boundaries” (Skyttner, 2001), “a goal-maintaining system” (Skyttner, 2001), linear “self-organisation” (Cilliers, 1998), predictable “emergent behaviour” (Dekker, 2011) and weak “attractors” (Cilliers, 1998). The South African university’s skin (nonbeing) is wounded because its second skin (bounded space) is tainted. Its blood (two-dimensional discourses) is constricted because its blood vessels (social structure-agency) are clogged.

 In his book The Souls of Black Folk, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois states that, “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line” (2007 [1903], p. 15). In the introduction of this book, Brent Hayes Edwards mentions that W.E.B. Du Bois delivered a speech in 1900 titled To the Nations of the World at the first Pan-African Conference in London and in his speech, he describes the color-line as follows: “the question of how far differences of race … will hereafter be made the basis of denying to over half the world the right of sharing to their utmost ability the opportunities and privileges of modern civilization” (Du Bois, 1995, p. 639). W. E. B. Du Bois explains that it was “the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem [the problem of the color-line] that caused the Civil War” (p. 15). 28

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A1) Body29: Bounded space as our tainted second skin function through closed and isolated system boundaries According to the research findings, the material-discursive re-­formation of nonbeing a “science person” entails an absolute conception of bounded space which is attached to ideologically imposed identity categories. Whiteness is privileged as being the invisible norm of a “science person” against which all others are measured (Dyer, 1997), and it is normalised invisibly as the standard of achievement. One’s sense of being is kept in place or out-of-place in the intra-action of one’s body with monuments, buildings, statues, stairs, chairs and narratives of an institutional setting (Barad, 2007). A2) Body: Zones of nonbeing a “science person” as our wounded skin function through a goal-maintaining system The re-formation of nonbeing a “science person” creates a lived material-­ discursive reality of a zone of being “human” and what Fanon (1967) calls a zone of nonbeing or not being human enough (Gordon, 2006; Maldonado-Torres, 2008; Wynter, 2003). The reality of this institutional culture is that Black students’ bids for love and recognition are disrupted by race, whiteness is conflated with English and associated with mind and rationality (Dyer, 1997) and the misrecognition and delegitimisation of Black women’s membership to science communities is normalised. In other words, this institutional culture is a reality of restricted epistemological access (Morrow, 2007) and symbolic violence (Bulhan, 1985) in that it creates socially induced feelings of nonexistence for Black students.

 Although I set apart the terms “soul” and “body” in this book for analytical purposes, I do not imply that these are dualistic terms; thought is not separate to embodiment. As illustrated by the cover image of conceiving narrative formations of relational selves, relational selves could refer to one’s body as soul and one’s soul as body. Wittgenstein, for example, notes that the body is the best picture of the soul. For analytical purposes, it might be useful to map specific coordinates onto the “body” and the “soul” of the university in order to develop an integrated system of multiple concepts, pinpoint exactly what is meant by the “soul” of the university that is in a state of disrepair and therefore what strategies could be employed in reinventing the soul (/body) of the university. I borrow the term “to invent souls” from Aimé Césaire. In his book The Wretched of the Earth (1963), Frantz Fanon emphasises the centrality of education in the process of politicisation. By evoking Aimé Césaire, he writes: “Now, political education means opening their minds, awakening them, and allowing the birth of their intelligence; as Césaire said, it is ‘to invent souls’. To educate the masses politically … is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them … the demiurge is the people themselves and the magic hands are finally only the hands of the people” (p. 197). 29

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A3) Soul:30 Social structure-agency as our clogged blood vessels function through linear self-organisation and predictable emergent behaviour This lived material-discursive reality produces the social effects of structures of dehumanisation which are materialised into prison houses of epistemic “correctness” that alienate Black students from productions of their own meanings (Bulhan, 1985). These social effects are generated by nonmaterial social facts and real material social facts which thwart human needs through the possessive investment in whiteness (Lipsitz, 2006). A4) Soul: Dominant two-dimensional discourse as our constricted blood function as weak attractors This material-discursive reality, and its social effects are masked through deficient constructions of Black students as “lacking” dominant cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) and re-formed through Black students restricted financial access to university education and the ignorance contract (Steyn, 2012) as deliberately set by the white population with the aim of maintaining the size of their classed networks and the volume of their economic and cultural capital. In summary, a key societal challenge identified in this research entails the absolute conception of bounded space which is attached to ideologically imposed identity categories that are isolated from its environment. As a result, there is no exchange of energy, matter or information across its boundaries. The devastating reality that this problem creates for the material-discursive body of the university is that the pre-determined goal of a color-line is to maintain an absolute conception of bounded space through the reproduction of a zone of nonbeing (Fanon, 1967) and zone of being “human”  (Gordon, 2006; Maldonado-Torres, 2008; Wynter, 2003). The linear self-organisation of material and non-material social facts which thwart human needs effectively results in the predictable emergent behaviour of reproducing economic benefits to white people in  I do not think of the “soul” as a single core “thing” that is unitary, transcendental, immortal, eternal, or an unchanging “essence” of personal “identity”. Rather, as Hacking (1995) notes: “One person, one soul, may have many facets and speak with many tongues. To think of the soul is not to imply that there is one essence, one spiritual point, from which all voices issue” (p. 6). To speak of the “soul” or soulfulness refers to the will-to-meaning; it is to invoke values that include honesty, freedom, responsibility,  creativity and social justice but also, concrete institutional actions and political commitment to dismantling racial regimes and creating the conditions for radical democracy to thrive. 30

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South Africa through the possessive investment in whiteness (Lipsitz, 2006, p. 70). The shattered material-discursive soul of the university is masked and re-formed through dominant discourses that construct deficient misrepresentations of Black students as “lacking” dominant cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986). These discourses act as weak attractors or a magnetic force that pulls a system towards a linear trajectory of a color-line and keeping the ignorance contract (Steyn, 2012) intact.

Pathway B) Storied-nervous system of not-becoming “modern” scientists: Pedagogies structured by hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines Pathway B (pedagogy) is structured by the dominance of hierarchical-­ heteropatriarchal lines which are regulated by the organising principles of disempowerment expressed as too clearly defined hierarchies, linear causality, negative feedback “loops” (De Toni & Comello, 2010) and no learning, self-development or growth. The South African university’s eyes (not-becoming) are wilfully short-­ sighted because its third eye (linear time) is tunnel-visioned. Its brain (single story scripts) is narrow-minded because its spinal cord (cultural memory) is unmalleable. B1) Body: Linear time as our tunnel-visioned third eye operates through too clearly defined hierarchies The storied re-formation of not-becoming “modern” scientists entails a conception of temporality which draws on the reductionist approach of Newton’s theorisation of time for whom time functions like a spatial coordinate. Upon their entry into STEM fields, young Black women are viewed as surrogates who are expected to conform to Eurocentric norms and pedagogies (Roach, 1996). In this way, the production of knowledge is treated as an individual possession that is disconnected from people’s needs, reality and sense of humanity. B2) Body: Not-becoming “modern” people as our wilfully short-sighted eyes function through linear causality The re-formation of not-becoming “modern” scientists creates a told storied reality of “[b]ecoming white as an institutional line [that] is closely

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related to the vertical promise of class mobility” (Ahmed, 2007, p. 160). In this told storied reality, the dynamics of existing knowledge systems means that institutions are often in the business of what Philomena Essed and David Theo Goldberg (2002) call cultural cloning which systematically reproduces sameness through a conception of temporality that follows a linear trajectory of “progress”. Along this upward trajectory, individual agency is positioned within an autonomous, independent and rational mode of subjectivity at the apex of the hierarchy (Venn, 2000). This linear trajectory of “progress” creates a sense of alienation from the product of labour and the act of production itself (Bulhan, 1985; Marx, 1964). B3) Soul: Sedimented cultural memory as our unmalleable spinal cord function through negative feedback loops The psychical effects of the re-formation of this told storied reality are that cultural definitions of humanity become instruments of racial power (Kim, 2000) that are used to create cultural boundaries defined along the lines of racial, national, geographical or linguistic divisions (Payne, 2010). In this storied reality, the attainment of “full personhood” through assimilation into the dominant culture’s sense of value means separate deaths of oneself (Lugones, 2003; Lugones & Price, 1995). These psychical effects are endured through the dignity of struggle and tragic hope in remaining strong-willed even after devastating losses and disappointments (Eagleton, 2015). B4) Soul: Single story scripts as our narrow-minded brain function through no learning, self-development or growth This told storied reality, and its psychical effects are masked and re-­ formed through performing or acting out deeply entrenched and sedimented ideological “scripts” (Appiah, 1994), “story lines” (Bonilla-Silva, Lewis, & Embrick, 2004) or “story stock” (Linde, 2009, p. 4). In other words, this told reality is masked through rehearsing gendered scripts, such as “being a baby girl”, “being a good girl” and “childrearing as solely a female’s responsibility”. This told reality is re-formed through the Western31 distinction between the masculine and the feminine, the social construction of honour and shame  at the core of virginity control  I have capitalised the words “Western” and “Westernised” to refer to these terms as a social construction instead of presenting these terms as natural and neutral. 31

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(Awwad, 2011) and the patriarchal family as an administrative base unit in political-economic state structures (Ortner, 1978). In summary, another societal challenge identified in this research entails a conception of time which functions as a spatial coordinate of rigidly defined ideological categories that depend on a guarantee of meaning. In other words, meaning cannot be generated within a linear temporal order of space because meaning arises from a circular movement with/in and through time. The reality that this creates for the storied body of the university is a systematic reproduction of sameness or cultural cloning (Essed & Goldberg, 2002) through the linear causality between an institutional line of becoming “white” and “the vertical promise of class mobility” (Ahmed, 2007, p. 160). The negative feedback loops in the form of cultural definitions of humanity, defined along the  lines of racial, national, geographical or linguistic divisions, serve to regulate a system in which one can only attain “full personhood” through assimilation into the dominant culture’s sense of value, which in effect means separate deaths of oneself (Lugones, 2003; Lugones & Price, 1995). The shattered storied soul of the university is masked and re-formed by enstoring our lives through deeply entrenched and sedimented ideological “scripts” or “story lines” and acting out these stories. In doing so, we not only reproduce systems of oppression, but we also close ourselves off from the vital feedback generated by emotional encounters with a sense of unfamiliarity, discomfort and strangeness or “estrangement from our own normalcy” (Vincent, 2015, p. 29). As a result, no learning, understanding, self-development or change occurs.

Pathway C-entre) Narrative-respiratory system of no-belonging to knowledge communities: Social scientific research structured by (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion Pathway C-entre (social scientific research) is structured by the dominance of a (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion which are regulated by the organising  principles of disempowerment expressed as “entropy” (von Bertalanffy, 1968), separation of elements, controllability, stability, no change, the maintenance of a predictable order and a state of equilibrium.

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The South African university is in a state of breathlessness (no-­ belonging) because the air (chronotopes as one-dimensional symbols) it breathes is stale. Its lungs (atrophied knowledge) are punctured because its heart (predictable symbolic narratives) is shattered. C1) Body: Chronotopes expressed through one-dimensional symbols as the stale air we breathe function through entropy The (neo)liberal logic of inclusion in and exclusion from classed entities of knowledge entails histories of colonialism which has made the world “white” in that the “body-at-home is one that can inhabit whiteness” (Ahmed, 2007, p. 153). Identity categories are thus treated as representational and fixed entities which close down human relationality, perceived racial “authenticity” leads to the labelling of the new Black middle class as “coconuts” (Matlwa, 2007; McKinney, 2007) and the socialisation into cultural values of whiteness occurs through mass media. C2) Body: The (neo)liberal inclusion-exclusion logic (i.e. no-belonging) as our breathlessness function through the separation of elements (Neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion create a symbolic narrative reality of institutional timespaces that close a person’s body into separate unchanging entities with an inevitable overarching plot of sameness in the form of “academic excellence” or “academic talent” as evaluated against white middle-class habitus. On the one hand, this inclusion logic operates in two ways: First, students are “schooled” through the reward of formal recognition to confuse the value of education with grade advancement or academic “excellence”, and second, students are “schooled” to confuse academic “excellence” with their sense of self-worth. On the other hand, this exclusion logic operates in two ways: First, the mystery of failing for “overthinking” implies the mastery of the lecturer who is typically a white mister or missus (Ahrentzen & Anthony, 1993), and second, academic “excellence” is evaluated against white middle-class habitus in which academic failure creates traumatic effects on one’s sense of self-worth. C3) Soul: Atrophied knowledge as our punctured lungs function through controllability, predictability and no change The psychosocial effects of re-forming this symbolic narrative reality are that political systems and systems of knowledge work to rationalise and justify a “theodicean grammar” in which the “appeal to blacks as problem-people is an assertion of their ultimate location outside the

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systems of order and rationality” (Gordon, 2008, p.  76). This symbolic narrative reality of epistemic violence (Spivak, 1988) is reproduced through a set of white logic, white methods32 (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008). This historical context, which is written into the very core of institutions, bears upon culture like a “dead weight” (Thaver, 2006). C4) Soul: Predictable symbolic narratives as our shattered heart function through the maintenance of predictable order, stability and a state of equilibrium This symbolic narrative reality, and its psychosocial effects are masked in the following three ways: (1) Disciplinary decadence (Gordon, 2006), the internalisation of regulative rules, consumption of lifeless knowledge and the regurgitation of methods committed to colour-blind individualism and meritocracy, (2) Assessors’ judgement-making processes as constituted through disciplinary, departmental and institutional values which are embedded in regulative rules and procedures (Shay, 2008) and, (3) Global university ranking systems which obscure struggles of unequal power relations as struggles for meritocratic recognition (Amsler & Bolsmann, 2012) of “academic talent”. This preserves the legacy of an institutionalised racial hierarchy which perpetuates inequalities. This symbolic  narrative reality, and its psychosocial effects are re-formed through the fear of shattering failure as paralysis. In summary, the identified societal challenge entails a path dependency of (neo)liberal entities which move towards the predictable end state of entropy equilibrium in the form of a “body-at-home [as] one that can inhabit whiteness” (Ahmed, 2007, p. 153). The reality that this creates for the symbolic narrative body of the university is that the inclusion-­exclusion logic encloses the individual body into separate entities so that individual bodies (of self-knowledge) cannot interact, change or grow because it is confined to an inevitable overarching plot of sameness in the form of “academic excellence” or “academic talent” as evaluated against white middleclass habitus. Political systems and systems of knowledge that control this symbolic narrative reality with predicable “theodicean grammar” (Gordon, 2008, p.  76) in effect serve to rationalise, justify and maintain the  Zuberi and Bonilla-Silva (2008) describe white logic as the “context in which White supremacy has defined the techniques and processes of reasoning about social facts” (p. 17), whereas white methods describe the “practical tools used to manufacture empirical data and analysis to support the racial stratification in society” (p. 18). 32

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reproduction of social inequalities and  horrific injustices. The shattered symbolic narrative soul of the university is masked and re-­formed through disciplinary decadence (Gordon, 2006) and assessment practices which maintain a state of balance or equilibrium in the form of an overarching plot of sameness. This plot is reproduced through meritocratic recognition of “academic talent”, which leads to shattering failure as paralysis and severs the relation between science, art, and human reality.

 einventing Pathways Away from the Centre and R “out of” the Minotaur’s Labyrinth: Rhythmical Whole Infinity Networks as a Complex Adaptive System of Tragic Love in Motion We could view rhythmical whole infinity networks as a Toroidal-maze33 of being, becoming and belonging to knowledge communities in South Africa. How could we theorise a resistant inertial momentum or change along centrifugal pathways in this complex adaptive system? How could we account for the multiple systems, processes and guiding principles involved in the material-discursive, storied, and symbolic practices of being, becoming and belonging to knowledge communities in “post”apartheid South Africa? These questions will be addressed by reinventing pathways away from the centre and “out of ” the Minotaur’s labyrinth. I continue to use the coordinates to map a resistant pathway away from the centre and “out of ” the labyrinth. In so doing, I will provide a complexity theory view of the guiding principles involved in the psychosocial trans-formation or change along the pathways of being, becoming and belonging to knowledge communities in South Africa. The geometric shape of rhythmical whole infinity networks is used as a metaphor for the resistant inertial momentum along three centrifugal pathways in a complex adaptive system. Starting from the centre (pathway C4) of the labyrinth, the following questions have been reversed and provide a framework for understanding  A toroidal field (i.e. the shape of the torus) embodies the organising principles of healthy living systems. 33

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the operating system of a resistant inertial momentum along three centrifugal pathways away from the centre of the labyrinth: 4. How could these material-discursive, storied, and symbolic narrative realities and its psychosocial effects be unmasked and potentially trans-formed? 3. What would the psychosocial effects of the trans-formation of these material-discursive, storied, and symbolic narrative realities potentially be? 2. What material-discursive, storied, and symbolic  narrative reality would the trans-formation of being, becoming and belonging to knowledge communities potentially create? 1. What would the material-discursive, storied and symbolic narrative trans-formation of being, becoming and belonging to knowledge communities entail?

Pathway C-entre) Narrative-respiratory system of belonging to knowledge communities: Decentring and overwriting (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion with rhythmical whole infinity networks Pathway C-entre (social scientific research) could be structured by resistant forms of rhythmical whole infinity networks guided by the organising  principles of empowerment expressed as negative entropy or “negentropy” (Schrödinger, 1944), the interconnection of interacting elements, uncontrollability, unpredictability, constant change and hovering on the border of chaos. Pathway C-entre is the crux of this future map. The South African university’s lungs (living knowledges) are heartened because her  soul (unpredictable symbolic narratives) is a webwork. Her  breath is regenerative (belonging) because the air (chronotopes as multi-dimensional symbols) she breathes is spirited. C4) Soul: Unpredictable symbolic narratives that hovers on the border of chaos as our webwork heart This narrative reality, and its psychosocial effects could be unmasked in the following ways: (1) Adopting an ethical practice of listening to, understanding and addressing students’ moral evaluations of how the university affects their sense of self-worth; (2) teaching and assessment

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practices that are driven by a complexity-transdisciplinary frame of reference and a teleological suspension of disciplinarity (Gordon, 2011); and (3) the exposure of psychic wounds through artistic expression with the aim of “decolonizing sensibilities” (Mignolo & Vázquez, 2013) and charting new theoretical journeys that would “guide us in the direction of liberatory terrain” (hooks, 2013, p. 191). This narrative reality, and its psychosocial effects could be trans-formed through a tragic love in motion. C3) Soul: Living knowledges as our heartened lungs function through uncontrollability, unpredictability and constant change The psychosocial effects of trans-forming this symbolic narrative reality is the construction and enactment of knowledge through Steve Biko’s (2012 [1978]) philosophy of Black Consciousness. C2) Body: Belonging as our regenerative breath function through interconnecting and interacting elements The trans-formation of belonging to communities of learning which practice “distantiation, appropriation, research and articulation” (Slonimsky & Shalem, 2006) could create a symbolic narrative reality of biographical timespaces where people disconnect their sense of self from the reproduction of sameness (Essed & Goldberg, 2002) and reconnect with the uniqueness of the narratable self (Cavarero, 2014). In other words, these biographical timespaces open a person’s body to communities of learning through interconnected networks of metamorphosis-­ based plots which portray the relationship between the  political and social with/in and through personal lives in its moments of crisis and rebirth (Bakhtin, 1981). C1) Body: Chronotopes expressed through multi-dimensional symbols as the fresh or spirited air we breathe function through negative entropy The symbolic  narrative trans-formation of belonging to knowledge communities entails a phenomenology of whiteness as sitting with and digesting what is habitual and routine in a world that is made “white” by colonialism (Ahmed, 2007). In this sense, the university could be a place that facilitates the “complex creativity involved in the ‘digestion’ and ‘liberation’ of contrasting spaces” (Harris, as cited in Peterson & Rutherford, 1995, p. 189). In summary, the shattered symbolic  narrative soul of the university could be unmasked through the teleological suspension of disciplinarity

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(Gordon, 2011) and exposure of psychic wounds through artistic expression that gives one a sense of “the mystery that lies at the heart of all selfhood” (Smith, 2019, p. 19); that which is incomprehensible and ultimately unknowable. The shattered symbolic narrative soul of the university could be trans-formed or (re)paired through a complex toroidal system of rhythmical whole infinity networks which hovers on the border of chaos at the (re)turning and crossing thresholds between the breaking points, cracks and crevices of our webwork heart. This tragic love which could sustains a resistant inertial momentum for the rebirth of liberatory pathways in science, art, and human reality to emerge. As a result, the spīritus of living thought would reach the breadth of human knowledge through the depths of self-understanding, which is constantly changing as we endlessly recreate our-selves. The reality that these effects would potentially create for the symbolic narrative body of the university is biographical timespaces that open a person’s body to knowledge communities through interconnecting and interacting networks of metamorphosis-based plots that follow the principle of circular causality in which socio-political life retroactively loops back into individual lives at moments of crisis and rebirth (Bakhtin, 1981). This would entail negative entropy as keeping one’s body open to sitting with and digesting the “habitual and routine in ‘the what’ of the world” (Ahmed, 2007, p. 165) that has been made “white” by colonialism not only to change habits but also to avoid entropy.

Pathway B) Storied-nervous system of becoming modern scientists: Dismantling hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines with whole infinity loops Pathway B (pedagogy) could be structured by a resistant form of whole infinity loops guided by the “hologrammatic” principle or holism (De Toni & Comello, 2010), circular causality, retroactive positive feedback “loops” (De Toni & Comello, 2010) and learning, self-knowledge and growth. The South African university’s brain (plurality of stories) is broad-­ minded because her spinal cord (r-evolving cultural memory) is malleable. Her eyes (becoming) are farsighted because her third eye (cyclical time) is visionary.

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B4) Soul: A  plurality of stories as our broad-minded brain function through learning, self-knowledge and growth This told storied reality, and its psychical effects are unmasked through sitting with fragmented pieces of our shattered selves and trans-formed by (re)pairing fragments of our-selves through critical psychosocial mnemonics (Duncan, Stevens, & Canham, 2014) and collective memory work (Haug, 1992). This memory work involves rituals of meaning-spirit making which shape individual lives as a question and reformulate collective cultural patterns of symbolisation. B3) Soul: (R)evolving cultural memory as our malleable spinal cord function through positive feedback loops The psychical effects of the trans-formation of this told storied reality are that human beings would be understood through communities and as co-creators of dialectically evolving set of values (Gordon, 2008). In this sense, the evolution of culture could be viewed  as new unfolding worlds as sustained through the growth of living knowledges and widening of the human imagination. B2) Body: Becoming as our farsighted eyes function through circular causality and retroactive loops The trans-formation of becoming modern scientists would create a told storied reality of the “body as narratively unruly” which resists semantic patterns and narrative closure (Punday, 2003, p.  94). In this told storied reality, the leadership of an institution would construct imaginative narratives of the future that invest confidence and resources in upcoming professionals which could create conditions for them to express their humanness through meaningful work, thereby transforming objects which in turn transform them (Bulhan, 1985; Marx, 1964, 1973). B1) Body: Circular time as our visionary third eye function through the hologrammatic principle or holism The storied trans-formation of becoming modern scientists entails a conception of temporality which draws on Einstein’s theorisation of relativity in which space takes into account the relations between positions of being within changing sequences of actions and events which are always in the process of becoming (Faist, 2005). A plot based on metamorphosis in the process of becoming involves infinite moments of crisis or breaking points, crossing thresholds and spiritual rebirth (Bakhtin, 1981).

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In summary, the shattered storied soul of the university could be unmasked and trans-formed through sitting with fragmented pieces of ourselves and keeping our bodies open to emotional encounters with uncertainty, unfamiliarity, discomfort and strangeness. By collectively feeding this information back into our-selves through critical psychosocial mnemonics (Duncan et al., 2014) and collective memory work (Haug, 1992), individual lives would be reshaped as questions and cultural patterns of symbolisation would be reformulated. This would not only result in learning, understanding, self-development and change but the process of building “a practical community of inquiry” (Torbert, 1991, p. 232) would potentially contribute to dismantling and overwriting ready-made single-story scripts. Positive feedback loops are created when human beings are understood as co-creators of dialectically evolving sets of values (Gordon, 2008) which in effect disrupt equilibrium, increase the level of connectivity between elements in a complex system and escalate change. The reality that these effects would create for the storied body of the university is that people’s bodies would become “narratively unruly” (Punday, 2003, p. 94) and resist the overarching plot of sameness because to address the question of “Who” is to tell a story of a life that involves multidirectional, fragmented and interconnected retroactive loops of being, becoming and longing to belong. This would entail Einstein’s theorisation of relativity in which time and space are parts of a whole that interact in horizontal, vertical and circular ways. As a result of this multidirectional causality, relations between positions of being in space are forever changing in the process of becoming with time.

Pathway A) Discursive-circulatory system of being a science person: Puncturing the color line (Du Bois, 2007[1903]) with rhythmic infinity threads Pathway A (institutional culture) could be structured by resistant forms of rhythmical infinity threads guided  by the  organising principles of empowerment expressed as strong “attractors” (Cilliers, 1998), nonlinear “self-organisation” (Cilliers, 1998), unpredictable “emergent behaviour” (Dekker, 2011) and multigoal-seeking, reflective and changing complex systems (Skyttner, 2001).

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The South African university’s blood (multi-dimensional discourses) is fluid because her blood vessels (structure-agency) are unclogged. Her skin (being) is sutured because her second skin (unbounded space) is open to infinite possibilities. A4) Soul: Multi-dimensional discourses as our fluid blood function as strong attractors This material-discursive reality, and its social effects are unmasked and trans-formed by shifting the research lens away from a deficit view of Black students as “lacking” dominant cultural capital to learning from the value of their community cultural wealth in the form of familial, social, navigational, aspirational, linguistic, and resistant capital (Yosso, 2005). A3) Soul: Social structure-agency as our unclogged blood vessels function through nonlinear self-organisation and unpredictable emergent behaviour This lived material-discursive reality would produce the social effects of agents refusing to accept the set terms of recognition that define their sense of humanity, thus, positioning themselves in alternative discourses within conditions of impossibility and altering subjectivity and subject positionings (Weedon, 1997; Vincent, 2015). A2) Body: Being as our sutured skin function through multigoal-seeking, reflective and changing complex systems The trans-formation of being a “science person” creates a lived material-­ discursive reality of keeping one’s body open to the ongoing process of articulating questions (Maldonado-Torres, 2016). The reality of this institutional culture is that people would step with the colonial inventions of race and gender and against their reification. Identification of a subject with ideological categories is thus “a process of articulation, a suturing, an over-determination not a subsumption” (Hall, 1996, p. 3). A1) Body: Unbounded space as our infinitely open second skin function through permeable system boundaries The material-discursive trans-formation of being a science person entails a relativist conceptualisation of space as constituted through human practices in which place is contested and fluid because its boundaries are always shifting as a result of power relations at play. In this sense, space is conceptualised as a social art that shapes humanity’s image of itself.

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In summary, the shattered material-discursive soul of the university could be unmasked and trans-formed through discourses which focus on learning from the value of Black students’ community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005). These discourses would act as strong attractors or a magnetic force that pulls a system towards a nonlinear spontaneous trajectory of rhythmical infinity threads which could potentially  puncture the color-line (Du Bois, 2007[1903]) and ignorance contract (Steyn, 2012) in the long-term behaviour of a complex system. Nonlinear spontaneous self-organisation in the form of agency creates interactions between various elements in the system which results in unpredictable emergent behaviour, new patterns of interactions and possibilities for altering the discursive constructions of subjectivity and subject positionings. As a result, structure-agency as our unclogged blood vessels would effectively function through nonlinear self-organisation and unpredictable emergent behaviour. The reality that these effects would create for the material-­ discursive body of the university is that people would keep their bodies open to the process of articulating questions and reflections (Maldonado-­ Torres, 2016) which would enable living systems to reflect on prior learning, choose from a variety of actions to respond to external conditions and shape anticipated futures. This would entail a relativist conceptualisation of space which is constituted through human practices, thus spaces are continually modified through the interpenetration of boundaries and the constant exchange of energy, matter or information with its environment. As a result, space as our infinitely open second skin would function through permeable system boundaries.

 he Toroidal-Maze of Tragic Love in Motion: T Proposing a Complex Systems Programme Model for Translating Psychosocial Pathways into Social Praxis In the final chapter, I plot the regulative principles of systems theory which fuel the dominant inertial momentum along a centripetal pathway in a closed system onto the geometric shape of Manichean hierarchical entities

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to illustrate how white logic models sustain its direction and increase its speed along a pathway by providing simple linear cause-and-­effect explanations to societal challenges. Conversely, I plot the guiding principles of complexity theory that sustain a resistant inertial momentum along a centrifugal pathway in a complex adaptive system onto the geometric shape of an infinity symbol in order to develop a complex systems programme model or strategy that disrupts white logic. It is argued that the resistant inertial momentum of rhythmic whole infinity networks, as a complex systems programme model, could possibly disrupt the dominant power structure’s momentum and redirect that path. These principles would guide the programme’s formation of responsive strategies and patterns of emergent behaviour without being overly prescriptive and stifling creativity. In other words, the final chapter aims to translate the conceptualempirical framework into social praxis by proposing a complex systems programme model that engages with the nonlinear dynamics involved in the complex nature of the material-discursive, storied, and symbolic practices of (non)being, (not)becoming and (no)belonging to knowledge communities in “post”-apartheid South Africa. By way of ending this theoretical work and beginning to collectively translate its ideas into social praxis by following the lead of communities of people of colour who have long been working to radically change the system, this book concludes with an artwork as a narrative symbol for the proposed programme (social change initiative), the Toroidal-maze of tragic love in motion.

The Geography of the Work In this chapter, I have mapped out the labyrinth’s coordinate system in relation to the key components in the story of this research. Chapters 2 to 9 will thus focus on particular components in the retelling of the myth of the Minotaur’s labyrinth in relation to this research. Chapter 2 (“Decolonising the South African Higher Education System”) focuses on the racialised gender gap in STEM fields which raises critical concerns around the continued marginalisation of Black women in higher education and society. Black women in STEM disciplines in South African universities are both marginally positioned (by race and

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gender) and centrally positioned by the prestige associated with the sciences. Through their crossing of multiple social locations, they could be in a position to contribute to shifting knowledge communities across gendered, racialised, class and national divides. In Chap. 3 (“Theorising a Biographic Visual-Narrative and Decolonising Methodology of (Non)being, (Not)becoming and (No)belonging”), I use the concept of forms (i.e. dividing lines and rhythmical flowing threads, hierarchical lines and boundless wholes, and  entities and networks) to think with and through the logic of oppression in the form of Manichean hierarchical entities in relation to the logic of resistance in the form of rhythmic whole infinity networks. By drawing on the concept of narrative forms (Levine, 2015), the analytical levels for belonging and the politics of belonging (Yuval-Davis, 2006) and the analytics of coloniality and decoloniality (Maldonado-Torres, 2016), this chapter offers a decolonising narrative research framework of embodied forms of being (space), becoming (power) and belonging (knowledge). In this chapter I discuss five sets of research questions, the method of recruitment, the biographical narrative interpretive method and how I developed a multi-layered narrative analysis of context, structure and content. By introducing the women in this research project and myself as the researcher of this project, Chap. 4 presents the individual portraits of the women’s lived lives and told storymazes. The empirical Chaps. 5–7 aims to develop the material-discursive, storied and symbolic systems of (non)being, (not)becoming and (­no)belonging to knowledge communities in South Africa. In these chapters I explore what these systems entail, how these systems create particular realities and with what effects, and the various ways in which these realities and its effects are masked and re-formed, as well as unmasked and possibly trans-formed. Chapter 5 (“Pathway A. The Discursive-Circulatory System of (Non) being a Science Person”) focuses on how rhythmic infinity threads could potentially contribute to puncturing a color-line (Du Bois, 2007[1903]) in the lived social life of institutional culture. Chapter 6 (“Pathway B. The Storied-Nervous System of (Not)becoming Modern Scientists”) explores how whole infinity loops could potentially contribute to dismantling dominant hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines in the told psychic life of pedagogy.

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Chapter 7 (“Pathway C-entre. The Narrative-Respiratory System of (No)belonging to Knowledge Communities”) focuses on how rhythmic whole infinity networks could potentially contribute to decentring and overwriting dominant (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion in the collective psychosocial life of social scientific research. In Chap. 8 (“Towards a Complex-Reproductive System of (Re)pairing Being, Becoming and Belonging to Knowledge Communities in South Africa”), I use these psychosocial pathways to develop a conceptual-­empirical framework that provides an account of the multiple systems, processes and organising principles involved in the material-discursive, storied, and symbolic narrative practices of (non)being, (not)becoming and (no)belonging to knowledge communities in South Africa. The research findings from Chaps. 5, 6 and 7 are interpreted using core principles of systems theory and complexity theory, which govern linear and nonlinear interactions between elements, or change and continuity along multiple psychosocial pathways. Based on the conceptual-empirical framework, Chap. 9 (“The Toroidal-­ Maze of Tragic Love in Motion”), proposes a complex systems programme model with the aim of translating theoretical pathways into social praxis collectively.

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Mignolo, W. D., & Vázquez, R. (2013, July 15). Decolonial AestheSis: Colonial Wounds/Decolonial Healings. Retrieved from https://socialtextjournal.org/ periscope_article/decolonial-aesthesis-colonial-woundsdecolonial-healings/ Milazzo, M. (2015). The rhetorics of racial power: Enforcing colorblindness in post-apartheid scholarship on race. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 8(1), 7–26. Milazzo, M. (2016). Reconciling racial revelations in post-apartheid South African Literature. Research in African Literatures, 47(1), 128–148. Milazzo, M. (2017). On white ignorance, white shame, and other pitfalls in critical philosophy of race. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 34(4), 557–572. Miller, R. (2014). Introducing Vygotsky’s cultural-historical psychology. In A. Yasnitsky, R. van der Veer, & M. Ferrari (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of cultural-historical psychology (pp. 9–46). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mills, C. W. (1997). The racial contract. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Mills, C. W. (2007). White ignorance. In S. Sullivan & N. Tuana (Eds.), Race and epistemologies of ignorance (pp. 11–38). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Modiri, J. M. (2017). The jurisprudence of Steve Biko: A study in race law and power in the “afterlife” of colonial-apartheid. (PhD thesis). University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa. Moore, L. J. (2007). Sperm counts: overcome by man’s most precious fluid. New York and London: New York University Press. Morrow, W. (2007). Learning to teach in South Africa. Cape Town: HSRC Press. Naidoo, R. (2004). Fields and institutional strategy: Bourdieu on the relationship between higher education, inequality and society. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 25(4), 457–471. Nowotny, H., Scott, P., & Gibbons, M. (2001). Re-thinking science: Knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press. Ortner, S. B. (1978). The virgin and the state. Feminist Studies, 4(3), 19–35. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. (2018). Paragon Software (Version: 8.7.465). Oxford University Press. Payne, M. (2010). Culture. In M. Payne & J. R. Barbera (Eds.), A dictionary of cultural and critical theory (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Peterson, K. H., & Rutherford, A. (1995). Fossil and Psyche. In B. Ashcroft, G.  Griffiths, & H.  Tiffin (Eds.), In the post-colonial studies reader (pp. 185–189). London and New York: Routledge. Polkinghorne, D. E. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. Albany: State University of New York Press. Punday, D. (2003). Narrative Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Narratology. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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2 Decolonising the South African Higher Education System

Introduction The Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall student movement in South Africa for free higher education and decolonisation of institutional practices and curricula raised necessary debates about whiteness and the devastating effects of institutional racial hierarchies (Mbembe, 2019a). The economies of industrialised countries around the world are becoming increasingly dependent on computer technologies, particularly with the advent of the fourth industrial revolution which has progressively increased the lucrative value of the male-dominated STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)  fields. The developmental effects that STEM fields of enquiry could potentially have on society is not easily attainable because access to and engagement with scientific knowledge in South Africa is highly gendered, racialised and classed (see, for e.g. Liccardo & Bradbury, 2017). Innovation in science and technology is driven by creative problem-solving, which requires scientists to collaboratively approach questions from different, diverse and transdisciplinary perspectives. How could academic excellence, equity and multiplicity be corequirements of one another? How could difference and diverse © The Author(s) 2020 S. Liccardo, Psychosocial Pathways Towards Reinventing the South African University, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49036-2_2

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perspectives serve as an impetus to problem-solving activities, scientific explanations and innovation in science and technology? How could an ethos of innovation at the university be embodied in social praxis and informed by the need to solve unprecedented challenges facing society? The focus of this chapter is on the racialised gender gap in STEM fields which raises critical concerns around the political and economic drivers of scientific enquiry and the continued marginalisation of Black women in higher education and society. By using the concept and analytic tool of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989; 1991), this chapter will explore how the intersection of racism and sexism in the lives of Black South African women studying in STEM disciplines cannot be wholly captured when practices “expound identity as woman or person of colour as an either/or proposition” (Crenshaw, 1991, p. 1242). In this context, Black women in STEM disciplines in South African universities are both marginally positioned (by race and gender) and centrally positioned by the prestige associated with the sciences. Through their crossing of multiple social locations, they could be in a position to contribute to shifting the entrenched ways in which the categories of race, gender and class exist as axes of power in society and cultivate new ecologies of knowledges (de Sousa Santos, 2007).

Higher Education Under the Apartheid Regime The “afterlife” of the apartheid government’s geopolitical construction of race continues to affect the schooling and higher education system. By the beginning of the 1980s, for example, the apartheid government’s geopolitical construction of race1 informed the hierarchical division and segregation of South African society into five separate geographic and legislative entities: The Republic of South Africa and four so-called independent republics, namely, the republic of Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, Ciskei (Bunting, 2004). These four entities became known as  Herein “race” is used to refer to an ideological construct. The political aim of race, as Norman Duncan (2003) explains is to “divide people into discrete reified social categories so as to justify extant patterns of domination, exclusion and entitlement (cf. Balibar, 1998)” (p. 139). 1

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“TBVC countries” and the first entity as the “RSA” which basically possessed all the land2 holdings (Bunting, 2004). The apartheid government instituted that Black Africans (who constituted close to 80% of the population) would be citizens of the “TBVC countries” and not of the Republic of South Africa and were therefore denied any representation in the national parliament3 (Bunting, 2004). The “TBVC countries” served to entrench the political, economic, material and social domination of white people through the direct disenfranchisement of Black4 (African, Indian and Coloured, in apartheid terms) people in South Africa. Inequalities are therefore reflected in the class structure. As Harold Wolpe (1990) notes in his book, Race, Class, and the Apartheid State: Once it is accepted that racial considerations enter into the structuring of class relations, and these class relations influence the structure of the racial order, then it is no longer possible to distinguish between race and class on the basis that the former is an exclusively political phenomenon and the latter an exclusively economic one. (p. 58)

Milazzo (2017) reminds us that as “White wealth is a direct consequence of Black poverty” (p. 561), racism needs to be examined relationally5 because the active production of racial dominance is clearly manifested in white people’s accrued benefits, ranging from economic, political, social to symbolic benefits. Access to information and education are vital  For more information about the land question in South Africa, see, for example, Ntsebeza (2011) and Ntsebeza and Hall (2007). 3  See Bunting, pp. 35 - 36, for an extended discussion of how the 1984 constitution drew a distinction between “own affairs” and “general affairs” and divided the national parliament into three chambers in which no provision was made for the representation of Black Africans in the RSA parliament. 4  I am using the apartheid-era racial categories, which continue to have traction in South African society. Racial categories continue to organise and shape the material realities of South Africans. Black is utilised as an overarching term for the Indigenous African population including the Indian population and Coloured (creolized people who were regarded as “mixed-race”) community. 5  In adopting a relational approach in methodological studies of race and racism, Goldberg (2009) stresses the importance of connecting “racial conception and racist expression constitutively to the colonial condition” and he argues that “[r]acial conception and racist practice are relational. They are to be fully comprehended, then, only once the constitutively relational aspects are not just integrated into but centred in the account” (p. 1273). Goldberg is drawing on the critical work on race and racism particularly by “W. E. B. du Bois, Ruth Benedict, Oliver Cromwell Cox, Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Jean-Paul Sartre, Hannah Arendt, Edward Said and Stuart Hall”. 2

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components of social mobility as well as class and wealth formation. The Bantu Education Act (1953) provided the establishment of a racially differentiated system of education, designed to entrench the dominant position of whites by deliberately reducing Black education to second rate. This was especially the case for mathematics and science, which were typically not available in the majority of schools situated in townships and villages,6 and where they were offered, schools were not sufficiently equipped with the financial and human resources to teach these subjects (Mouton & Gevers, 2009), which point to the problem of the schooling system as an outcome of institutional racism (Milazzo, 2015). Furthermore, the provision of higher education was racially segregated (Dukhan & Cameron, 2012; Mabokela, 2010; Sooryamoorthy, 2015). By the beginning of 1985, the apartheid government legally constrained higher education institutions, which were designated to one of four race groups (Black African, Coloured, Indian and white, in apartheid terms), from enrolling students from another race group (Bunting, 2004). The differentiation of the higher education system along racial and ethnic lines not only resulted in historically white universities (HWUs) and historically black universities (HBUs), but inequalities were also shaped along these lines7. The apartheid government further fragmented the higher education system by drawing rigid distinctions between universities and technikons. Universities were designated as institutions of research and producers of knowledge for its own sake whereas the application of knowledge was relegated to technikons (Bunting, 2004). Colonial and apartheid ideology situated and subordinated Black peoples to the bottom rungs of the racial hierarchy in South African society. In his article, “‘Race’ Talk: Discourses on ‘Race’ and Racial Difference”, Norman Duncan (2003) notes:  I do not use the South African euphemism of students that come from “rural” areas. The three participants in this research project referred to their schooling and upbringing in their home villages. Accordingly, I have used the term village. 7  For instance, while HWUs (English and Afrikaans-speaking) were located in urban areas and positioned as institutions of research, HBUs were ethnic-based institutions that were marginalised by their locations within “rural” communities and limited to being institutions of teaching. Robus and Macleod (2006) argue that this “urban–rural divide” has created “white space as the desirable, urban centre and black space as the undesirable, rural periphery [which] dovetails with a discourse of ‘white excellence/black failure’” (p. 473). Currently, HWUs remain advantaged and elitist while HBUs remain under-resourced. 6

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Within the system of Apartheid, these ‘races’ were stratified according to a strict hierarchy of economic, political and social privilege, with whites at the top of the hierarchy and ‘Africans’ at the bottom. While ‘Indians’ and ‘coloreds’ occupied intermediate positions within this racial hierarchy they, like ‘Africans’, did not have the franchise, nor many of the social and economic benefits to which whites could lay claim. (p. 139)

Black women in particular were situated at the lowest position in the racialised class structures as they were denied the basic right to travel, and to seek employment which locked them in a cycle of dependency on men for their livelihood. The system of traditional law and culture was reinforced by apartheid ideology, as Penelope Andrews (2001) explains in her article, “From Gender Apartheid to Non-sexism: The Pursuit of Women’s Eights in South Africa”: Under traditional law and culture, women were denied a host of rights: the right to own land, the right to custody of their children, and the right to be chief or elected as chief. These laws and policies, bolstered by an apartheid ideology that insisted on the second-class status of women within African society, cemented their [status at the lowest position in the social structure]; this legacy will continue to haunt women for many generations. (p. 697)

Transformation in Higher Education The shift to a democratic government in 1994 initiated demands for transformation in both educational and socio-economic spheres. Transformation of higher education has been conceptualised as encompassing equity and redress, diversity, social cohesion and social inclusion, institutional culture, curriculum, teaching and research, and engagement with communities (Department of Education, 1997). Although there has been institutional reform in South African higher education institutions and changes in various policies and legislation, the post-apartheid higher education transformation project is faced with the challenge of recruiting and retaining Black women in STEM subjects as well as Black individuals and women in academic and senior posts, particularly in historically white universities (HWUs). Several South African universities have responded

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to this challenge by initiating programmes for the “accelerated development” of Black academic staff (see, e.g. Booi, Vincent, & Liccardo, 2017). Various scholarship programmes have also initiated the recruitment and retainment of Black women in STEM subjects in higher education, such as the “Oya” scholarship programme on which this investigation is based. However, the question to be asked is whether or not these transformation programmes could be thought to have contributed to the interruption or reproduction of the existing dominant institutional culture of the university. What are the wider implications of such programmes for transforming/reproducing existing institutional cultures? Research evidence suggests that the reproduction of naturalised norms and values that form part of the existing culture of an institution are difficult to shift, even when a university succeeds in changing its demographic makeup (see, for e.g. Booi et al., 2017; Liccardo, Botsis, & Dominguez-Whitehead, 2015). It is difficult for even the most conscious and personally invested agents to interrupt the naturalised norms and values that form part of the existing institutional culture of a university. Agents struggle to interrupt normalised practices because of the highly valued currency of capital possessed by dominant actors in the form of white middle-class habitus, disguised as academic experience and “excellence” (Booi et al., 2017). According to extant literature, a major obstacle preventing women and Black  academics from thriving in South African higher education are alienating and exclusive institutional cultures, especially at HWUs (see, e.g. Badat, 2010; HESA, 2011; Canham, 2013). In short,  the South African sociologist Saleem Badat’s (2013) description of transformation8 captures its shortcomings: ‘Transformation’ has the aim of the dissolution of existing social relations and institutions, policies and practices, and creating radically new social arrangements. Of course, the processes of dissolution and creation may be uneven and vary in place, and there may not be uniform rupture or total displacement of old structures, institutions and practices. In a nutshell, while ‘transformation’ signifies fundamental change, not all change is transformation. (as cited in Van der Westhuizen, 2018, pp. 338–9)  An extended discussion about transformation in relation to institutional culture, pedagogy and research will be provided in Chaps. 5, 6 and 7, respectively. 8

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Without minimising the critical factors of financial access and support, it is clear that, although these important programmes do contribute to demographic change, what is required is not only institutional restructuring, change in employment policies, demographic and curriculum transformation but also a radical change of institutional cultures that are currently informed by racialised, gendered and classed assumptions inherited from the colonial and apartheid past and exacerbated by neoliberal economic forces. We need to interrogate the experiences of covert discrimination and the practices at play in the micro-social day-to-day experiences within institutions that continue to resist transformation at a primary level. Transforming and decolonising higher education in post-­ apartheid South Africa will involve a continued disruption of the dominant power structure’s momentum along the same straight and narrow pathways. It will involve new and radical pathways of rethinking, reimagining and reinventing all practices, institutions and values that existed in the apartheid system (Department of Education, 1997). In order to forge these pathways where, as Pamela Nichols (2014) argues, “positions are not predetermined”, we need to fundamentally “change shapes, learn to live differently. We need to develop listening cultures that are receptive and able to give birth to the new” (p. 900).

 he Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall T Student Movement in South Africa The student-led protests at universities in 2015 and 2016 brought the failures of the post-apartheid higher education transformation project to the forefront of national debates. Despite efforts to transform higher education, whiteness as a structural position interlocked with heteropatriarchal and middle-class privilege invisibly continues and is normalised as the standard of achievement in academic institutions. Whiteness remains by adopting a defensive posture with the aim of safeguarding unequal power relations (Van der Westhuizen, 2018). Existing patterns of power and privilege in education are sedimented

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and reproduced through fossilised (Vygotsky, 1978) traditions of knowledge and pedagogical practices. Subjectivities are ever-shifting and constantly reconstructed with/in and though a variety of larger cultural processes, as Carolissen and Kiguwa (2018) explain: “Static notions of citizenship themselves, change when considering how especially youth, remake identities and produce counter narratives in the making of the self ” (p.  2). Similarly, Comaroff and Comaroff (2005) propose that, “youth embody the sharpening contradictions of the contemporary world in especially acute form” (as cited in Botsis, 2015, p. 92). Universities could create the possibilities for people to collaboratively and creatively explore various ways of (re)making and expressing their sense of selves, space and time (Maldonado-Torres, 2016). However, the youth in South Africa are perceived to be the future only when they ascribe to dominant knowledge frameworks which expect them to strive for a future that is an extension of the present (which is rooted in the past). Conversely, they are perceived to be a problem by the system if they are dissatisfied with the present social order or hold their own views of the past and visions for the future that are different to dominant discourses (Maldonado-Torres, 2016) associated with rainbowism. The Polish-British sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman’s (2000) ideas about liquid modernity notwithstanding, the power dynamics of existing knowledge systems means that higher education is often in the business of what Essed and Goldberg (2002) call cultural cloning, which is a “systemic reproduction of sameness [that is] deeply ingrained in the organisation of contemporary culture, in social life generally, and in the racial, gendered and class structures of society, in particular” (p. 1067). The #FeesMustFall student movement in South Africa for free higher education and decolonisation of institutional practices and curricula is a critical moment of confrontation with what W.  E. B.  Du Bois (2007[1903], p. 32) in The Souls of Black Folk has described as “the problem of the color-line”. It is a reminder that whiteness comprises the Gold Standard of a color-line as evident in the widening gap between the rhetoric of transformation and the lived experiences of Black students and academics at South African universities (Booi, Vincent & Liccardo, 2017a). For instance, the Ministerial Committee (2008) reports that:

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discrimination, in particular with regard to racism and sexism, is pervasive in our institutions. The disjunction that is apparent between institutional policies and the real-life experiences of staff and students … it is necessary to understand why this disjunction exists in the first place, especially as there was consensus amongst both staff and students across institutions that the necessary policies were in place. (pp. 13–14)

Since the transition to a democratic government in 1994, student-led protests at historically black universities about issues such as high and increasing fees, the lack of accommodation, registration requirements and academic exclusions were not widely covered in the mainstream media. The national student-led movement in South Africa in 2015–2016, which was widely covered by the news media, was initially spurred by the #RhodesMustFall student movement which protested against and called for the removal of the statue of imperialist and colonialist  Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Cape Town (UCT).9 They protested high and increasing fees, racism and sexual violence particularly against women students. The student movement, which was driven by Black student activists whose families have scarce financial resources, raised urgent debates about free higher education, decolonisation in universities, the need to insource workers10 and intensify efforts to recruit and retain Black staff at historically white universities (HWUs). In his chapter, “Future Knowledges and their Implications for the Decolonisation Project”, Mbembe (2019a) notes that the student protests in South Africa have raised necessary debates about whiteness and the devastating effects of institutionalised racial hierarchies. It has not only generated essential questions about what counts as knowledge, but it has also forced society to reflect on whether universities are sites which replay already existing power relations. Mbembe asks whether academic institutions could be turned into “spaces of radical hospitality and if so, how, for whom and under what conditions” (p. 239).  See Fairbanks (2015) for an interview with Chumani Maxwele who initiated the Rhodes Must Fall movement by throwing human faeces on the statue of imperialist and colonialist Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Cape Town. 10  The rise of the #OutsourcingMustFall and #EndOutsourcing movement brought the history of exploitative outsourcing practices at university to the centre of the national stage. The university justified outsourcing practices with the assertion that it needed to focus on its “core business” of teaching and research. Thus, “non-core” services were outsourced to private companies. 9

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The Racialised Gender Gap in STEM Disciplines The economies of industrialised countries around the world are becoming increasingly dependent on computer technologies, particularly with the advent of the fourth industrial revolution which has progressively increased the lucrative value of the male-dominated STEM fields. Scientific knowledge is considered to be a defining differential of contemporary society as the capacity to circulate information from national to global spaces with the aid of technological infrastructure is arguably the premier source of economic growth (Nowotny, Scott & Gibbons, 2001). The production of scientific knowledge is, however, infused by the historical, cultural and political legacies of South Africa. Although scientific knowledge increases social mobility and contributes to class and wealth formation, it continues to be distributed unequally as class inequalities remain deeply entrenched in scientific practices (Sooryamoorthy, 2015).  In her paper, “Critical Capacities: Facing the Challenges of Intellectual Development in Africa”, the Nigerian-British writer, feminist and academic Amina Mama (2004) explains that: African perspectives remind us that this is an organisation of knowledge that has been deeply complicit in imperialism, and financed through capitalist expansionism and military interests. Nonetheless the irrefutable Western dominance of the world’s educational systems has seen this particular organisation of knowledge and its accompanying methodologies internationalised and exported, effectively globalized. (p. 24)

The developmental effects that STEM fields of enquiry could potentially have on society is not easily attainable because access to and engagement with scientific knowledge in South Africa is highly gendered, racialised and classed (Liccardo & Bradbury, 2017). The racialised gender gap in STEM fields raises critical concerns around the political and economic drivers of scientific enquiry and the continued marginalisation of Black women in higher education and society. Gendered exclusion, particularly from STEM fields of study and careers, is a global phenomenon with women stereotypically understood to be “better suited” to the humanities or being stronger in emotional qualities than rationality (Tamboukou, 2006). In the same way that access to the goods of

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education and employment (particularly in the STEM fields) is gendered, in South Africa, schooling and work remain racialised (Dyer, 1997). Race is thus implicated in the formation and reproduction of knowledge systems and consequentially, of class structures (Bourdieu, 1986; Dyer, 1997; Liccardo & Bradbury, 2017; Wolpe, 1990). African governments have tended to promote Science over Humanities on the assumption that the STEM fields hold the key to development, which as Mama (2003) has noted is conceptualised as a linear trajectory following in the slipstream of Western industrialisation and global economic developments (Liccardo & Bradbury, 2017). The student-led protests at universities have made evident that institutional practices and curricula are currently informed by colonial and apartheid legacies. Although the South African Constitution is committed to the principles of non-racism and non-sexism, and acknowledges people’s right to education, participation and graduation rates remain racially skewed and gendered in STEM subjects (Liccardo & Bradbury, 2017). While more females than males enrol in higher education, specific SET fields of study remain gendered: In  Engineering and Technology, (76%), Computer Science (63%), Architecture and Environmental Design (63%) and Mathematical Sciences (61%), majority of the students are male (Council on Higher Education, 2009). Conversely, in Health Care and Health Sciences (68%) and Industrial Arts, Trades and Technology (67%), majority of the students are female. In 2015 only 47% of students in Life and Physical Sciences, 51% of students in Mathematical Sciences and 54% of Engineering students completed the degree in five years and 50% of students enrolled in 2010 for SET dropped out of university (Centre on Higher Education, 2016b). For instance, regarding the participation rates in higher education in 2007, 54% of White youth (age cohort 18–24) and 43% of Indian youth attended university, whereas the comparable figures for “Coloured” youth and Black Africans are only 12% and 12%, respectively (Council on Higher Education, 2009). The most recent statistics show that in 2013, 55% of White youth (age cohort 18–24) and 47% of Indian youth go to university, whereas the comparable figures for “Coloured” youth and Black Africans are only 14% and 16%, respectively (Centre on Higher Education, 2016a). During 2007–2013, the representation of Black Africans in the student body

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increased slightly from 12% to 14%, similarly for “Coloured” and Indian youth there was an increase from 12% to 14% and 43% to 47%, respectively, whereas the percentage of White youth increased by 1%, from 54% to 55%. According to a survey on graduate pathways to work, “[e]mployment by race continues to reflect apartheid-era patterns of discrimination” (Cape Higher Education Consortium [CHEC], 2013, p.  13). Furthermore, the demographic representations in the academic staff of all 25 South African public universities remain racially skewed. During 2003–2009, the representation of Black Africans in the academic staff increased from 21.3% to 28%, similarly for “Coloured” and Indian academic staff there has been a slight increase from 4.5% to 5.2% and 7.9% to 8.4%, respectively, whereas, the percentage of White academic staff declined from 62% to 58% (Booi, 2015; HESA, 2011; Mngomezulu & Ndlovu, 2013). It is clear that, in addition to changing the demographic composition of the student body, fundamental changes to institutional cultures and pedagogical practices inherited from the colonial and apartheid past are required. It is also clear that the subordination of young Black women is especially the case in their under-representation in STEM subjects in higher education in contemporary South Africa.

 lack Women in STEM Disciplines B as Occupying Marginal and Central Positionalities and Shifting Social Power Axes Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989; 1991), has coined the term intersectionality to refer to a concept and analytic tool which needs to be taken into account if any analysis is to address the ways in which Black women are subordinated. She has examined the ways in which Black women are marginalised within the legal system in the United States. Crenshaw (1989) initially used the concept of intersectionality to account for how the interaction between race and gender shapes the various dimensions of

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Black women’s experiences of employment. She demonstrated that the intersection of racism and sexism in the lives of Black women cannot be fully captured by approaching the race or gender dimensions of discrimination as separate. Crenshaw (1989) writes: Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by cars traveling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them. Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed because she is in the intersection, her injury could result from sex discrimination or race discrimination. (p. 149)

Similarly, the intersection of racism and sexism in the lives of Black women studying in STEM disciplines cannot be wholly captured when practices “expound identity as woman or person of colour as an either/or proposition” (Crenshaw, 1991, p.  1242). Thinking intersectionality as both/and rather than the either/or emerged from the work of women of colour who have theorised the relational, interconnected and simultaneous oppressions faced by Black women (see, e.g. Anthias & Yuval-Davis, 1983; Carby, 1982; Collins, 1986, 2000; Combahee River Collective, 1983; Crenshaw, 1989; 1991; Davis 1981; Dill, 1988; hooks, 1981; Higginbotham, 1983; Mirza, 1997; Mullings, 1986; Phoenix, 2006; Rollins, 1985; Yuval-Davis, 2006). The reproduction of social dominance hinges on the various ways in which social, legal and academic practices entrench and frame social categories as given, isolated and fixed (Tomlinson, 2018). Brah and Phoenix (2004) explain that intersectionality signifies how varied dimensions of social life cannot be isolated into discrete and separate strands because of complex effects which emerge when multiple social power axes intersect in historically specific contexts. Social categories such as race, gender, class and other systems of power are complex constellations that are mutually constitutive, interconnected and relational (Tomlinson, 2018). The politics of location could be viewed as specific geographical, historical, economic, psychical, cultural and imaginative boundaries which (in)form political definitions of oneself and others (Mohanty, 1995, as cited in De Reus, Few & Blume, 2004). In a similar vein, Floya Anthias

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(2002b) uses the term translocational positionality11 to explain processes and formations of social locations and the various ways in which positionality consists of a set of relations and practices in which identification and action are implicated (Fathi, 2017). Positionality refers to both social position as “an outcome or a set of affectivities (social structure)” and social positioning as “set of practices, actions and meanings (agency)” (Fathi, 2017, p. 37). Therefore, in this book the concept of positionality will be used as an analytic tool because it takes cognisance of the power relations at work in the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion or recognition, nonrecognition and misrecognition (Anthias, 2002a; Fathi, 2017; Yuval-Davis, 2011). Social locations not only refer to one’s position in space but also the positioning of social categories of difference along an axis of power in society, which changes in historically specific contexts (Yuval-Davis, 2011). Gendered and racialised discourses are always enmeshed with structures of class, but the meanings of these are intersectional (Crenshaw, 1989; 1991) categories are further complicated and entangled through the particularly racist and sexist formulations of science in South Africa’s history. In this context, Black women in STEM disciplines occupy marginal and central positionalities in South African universities because they are both marginally positioned (by race and gender) and centrally positioned by the prestige associated with the sciences. The lingering effects of apartheid policies have resulted in the continued marginalisation of Black women. At the same time, the value associated with the sciences in the “post”-apartheid and global socio-economic context, places them in a central position of power. On the one hand, Black women in STEM disciplines could be said to be “outliers” who are marginally positioned at a distance from White, male and middle-class normative constructions of Science and scientists (Liccardo & Bradbury, 2017). This margin as a supplement to the centre is also a place of disruption and resistance which

 Anthias (2002) proposes that translocation or location could replace the idea of “identity”. See, Anthias, Floya (2002b). Beyond feminism and multiculturalism: locating difference and the politics of location, Women’s Studies International Forum. 25(3). pp. 275–86. 11

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holds the possibility of decentring the hegemonic forms of knowledge that constitute dominant discourses and  structures of  identities (Rutherford, 1990). On the other hand, the notion of occupying “outlier” positionalities could also lead to a discourse of exceptionalism for young, Black women to succeed in STEM disciplines because academic success is often put down to individual effort, based on a system of meritocracy, with social power axes being disregarded.12 For instance, in her article, “Why Did the White Woman Cross the Street?: Cultural Countermeasures against Affective Forms of Racism”, Paula Ioanide (2018) questions who determines what, under which conditions and who would qualify as a “positive Black exemplar”: [This] exemplar must uphold a level of perfectionism that is virtually impossible to fulfill in lived experience … A cultural milieu structured by the Eurocentric racial regimes has not only defined the criteria of what counts as admirable or acceptable; it reserves for itself the prerogative to accept or reject what kind of Black people might fall into such categories, as well as the entitlement to extricate them back to the “bad” category. (pp. 7–8)

Their simultaneous and dual membership to a marginal and an elite group creates shifting senses of belonging and alienation in academic communities aligned with white, male and middle-class normative constructions of Science and scientists (on which the stock story about academic “excellence” is evaluated against). By viewing systems of oppression as “interlocking”, we are able to account for the relative shifting positions of power in relation to the social class of a professional category (such as the scientist) and how the power of exclusion is at work “in creating a certain class position that is not always a marginal or a privileged one, but is a position that is in fluctuation from various positions in the class system” (see Collins 2000) (Fathi, 2017, pp. 34–35). The interlocking systems of power and oppression do not operate as a zero-sum game, in which whatever is gained in one place is lost at another place. Levine (2015) contends that no single form governs all others and they do not always align, rather the collisions of forms work to unsettle one another and “produce gains in odd places as to reinforce given structures of power” (p. 109).  See, for example, Chatterjee’s (2011) notions of “norm-deviation” and “norm-exception” paradigm. 12

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Therefore, if Black women in STEM fields occupy marginal and central positionalities in South African universities through their crossing of multiple social locations, then they could be in a position to contribute to shifting the entrenched ways in which the categories of race, gender and class exist as axes of power in society and articulate a cultural politics of difference (Rutherford, 1990)13 in which new ecologies of knowledges (de Sousa Santos, 2007)14 is cultivated. It is noteworthy that the need to succeed academically at university could be viewed as a driving force to assimilate into the dominant culture. However, this “assimilation is not a singular, smooth or unidirectional process” (Williams, Alvarez, & Andrade Hauck, 2002, p. 566), as Black women in STEM fields strategically deploy multiple identities in different settings (Dominguez-­ Whitehead, Botsis, & Liccardo, 2013). Carlone and Johnson (2007) propose that the notion of “identity” (or rather processes of identification and subject positioning) is a useful analytic lens in science education for a number of reasons: First, if science is viewed as a “community of practice” (Lave & Wenger, 1991), then students are socialised into the cultural norms and discursive practices of science (Brown, 2004; Varelas, House, & Wenzel, 2005). Second, creating a culture of learning (in) formed by students’ multiple backgrounds and social locations would promote equity and innovation in science education. Third, Brickhouse, Lowery, and Schultz (2000) suggest that to approach learning in science, educators should assist students to understand the content but also encourage them to reflect on how science relates to who they believe themselves to be. Theorists of social learning (Brickhouse & Potter, 2001; Carlone, 2003, 2004; Lemke, 2001; O’Neill & Polman, 2004) propose that identity enable new ways of viewing teaching and learning practices by, for example, revealing the ways in which social categories are either promoted or marginalised through these practices. For instance, Carlone and Johnson (2007) developed an interconnected model of “science  Rutherford (1990) defines the cultural politics of difference as follows: “living with incommensurability through new ethical and democratic frameworks, within a culture that both recognises difference and is committed to resolving its antagonisms” (p. 26). 14  de Sousa Santos (2014) explains that at the core of ecologies of knowledges is “the idea that different types of knowledge are incomplete in different ways and that raising the consciousness of such reciprocal incompleteness (rather than looking for completeness) will be a precondition for achieving cognitive justice” (p. 212). 13

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identities” (or processes of identifications and subject positioning) based on interviews with 15 women of colour who were undergraduate science students in a predominantly white university in the United States. The importance of recognition (of self and by others) as someone with the potential to excel in science was a core component in the development of this model. Carlone and Johnson (2007) report that the women’s bids for recognition were interrupted by institutional meanings of being a scientist that were aligned with those who possess particular forms of cultural capital (i.e. predominantly white men).

Conclusion Student-led protests at universities have brought the failures of the post-­ apartheid transformation project to the forefront of national debates. It is a reminder that the production of scientific knowledge is infused by the historical, cultural and political legacies of South Africa. The concept of positionality will be used as an analytic tool in this research project because it takes cognisance of the power relations at work in the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion or recognition, nonrecognition and misrecognition (Anthias, 2002; Fathi, 2017; Yuval-Davis, 2011). This chapter has explored how the simultaneous and dual membership of Black women in STEM disciplines to a marginal and an elite group creates shifting senses of belonging and alienation in academic communities aligned with white, male and middle-class normative constructions of Science and scientists (on which the stock story about academic “excellence” is evaluated against). This holds possibilities for demythologising scientific endeavour as a white male achievement and shifting knowledge communities across gendered, racialised, class and national divides.

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3 Theorising a Biographic Visual-Narrative and Decolonising Methodology of (Non) being (Space), (Not)becoming (Power) and (No)belonging (Knowledge)

Introduction This chapter is divided into eight sections. In the first section, I discuss the ways in which this book shows how visual methods could not only be used to gather and analyse empirical narratives but also for building theory. For example, I use the cover image of narrative formations of relational selves in the spirit of exploration to think with and through the dialectical tensions between (non)being, (not)becoming and (no)belonging to knowledge communities. Drawing on the concept and analytic tool of forms as defined as “all shapes and configurations, all ordering principles, all patterns of repetition and difference” (Levine, 2015, p. 3), this chapter will offer, on the one hand, Fig.  3.2 as an illustration of Manichean hierarchical entities, to make visible “white [as] a metaphor for power” (Baldwin, 2017, p. 107), and on the other hand, Fig. 3.3 as an illustration of rhythmic whole infinity networks as a metaphor for how the collisions between one or more forms could potentially disturb, complicate and reroute exclusionary boundaries. The second section builds on the concept of forms to provide an analytic framework of narrative formations of (non)being (space), ­ (not) © The Author(s) 2020 S. Liccardo, Psychosocial Pathways Towards Reinventing the South African University, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49036-2_3

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becoming (power) and (no)belonging (knowledge). To be a person in relation to others is an open question which we continually reformulate: What am I? What am I doing? Who am I? Why am I doing this? Where am I? Where am I doing? Where do I belong? If our answerability takes the form of narratives, then stories are a means through which we negotiate, reposition and traverse multiple locations. Stories, which are particular and intersectional, are a valuable resource with which to analyse positionality. By drawing on the British and diasporic Israeli sociologist Yuval-Davis’s (2006) analytics for the politics of belonging, “social locations, identifications and emotional attachments, and ethical political values” (p. 199), I will develop three claims: First, “being” is socially positioned in “what I am”. The forms of a  dividing line and rhythmical flowing threads are attributes of (non)being, of existential “ontoepistemology” (Barad, 2007). Second, belonging as identifications and emotional attachments to social location is the space “where I am”. The forms of entities and networks are attributes of (no)belonging, of epistemology. Third, becoming is the re-­ valuation and re-positioning of “who I am”. The forms of hierarchies and boundless wholes are attributes of (not)becoming, of axiology. I will argue that social locations and the practice of identification and  emotional attachments to various collectivities and groupings hinge on narrative identity through which agents meaningfully reflect on and re-position themselves in alternative discourses within conditions of impossibility and alter subjectivity and subject positionings. They do this through the narrative mechanism of “emplotment” (Polkinghorne, 1988). In this sense, the subject as embodied and located refers to a person’s narrative identity of becoming, which is discursively produced in space and symbolically represented within knowledge. In the third section, I will adapt Maldonado-Torres’s (2016) “analytics of coloniality” (p.  20) and “analytics of decoloniality” (p.  30) in an attempt to develop a decolonising research framework of embodied forms of (non)being (space), (not)becoming (power) and (no)belonging (knowledge). I will propose that the material-discursive system of human being functions like our circulatory system (Pathway A), the storied system of human becoming functions like our nervous system (Pathway B) and the symbolic narrative system of human belonging functions like our respiratory system (Pathway C).

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In the fourth section, I discuss how this book is situated in phenomenological hermeneutics and a “Biographical Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM)” (Wengraf, 2011) due to its “primacy of practice” (Van Manen, 2014, p. 67). In the remaining four sections, I discuss the research questions, the method of recruitment, the biographic visual-narrative interview conversations and how I have developed a multi-layered narrative analysis of context, structure and content.

(Re)imagining a Dialectics of Power Formations In her article, “Creative Twists in the Tale: Narrative and Visual Methodologies in Action”, Jill Bradbury (2017) asserts that it is not unusual to use visual methods for data collection purposes, but the use of visual techniques for analysis, which is less widespread, facilitates a creative approach to analysing both the structure and context of narrative content. This book shows how visual narrative methods could be used not only for the purposes of gathering visual narratives (in the form of objects which represent the past, present and projected future) and the analysis of empirical narratives (in the form of storymazes presented in Chap. 4) but also for building theory (in the form of the cover image of conceiving narrative formations of relational selves). This image acts as a heuristic device to illustrate narrative formations of relational selves in the infinite dialectics of (non)being, (not)becoming and (no)belonging (see Fig. 3.1). In his paper, “Who Needs ‘Identity’?”, Hall (1996) argues that “identity” could be used as a concept that is “under erasure” in that such terms “are no longer serviceable—‘good to think with’—in their originary and unreconstructed form” (p.  1). Following Derrida, Hall explains that as such terms which are under erasure “have not been superseded dialectically, and there are no other, entirely different concepts with which to replace them, there is nothing to do but to continue to think with them” (1996, p. 1). Consequently, I will use the cover image of narrative formations of relational selves in the spirit of exploration to think with and through the relation between the dialectical tensions in the interplay of

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Fig. 3.1  Conceiving narrative formations of relational selves in the infinite dialectics of (non)being, (not)becoming and (no)belonging

(non)being, (not)becoming and (no)belonging. We could view the notion of “identity” as narratives, “stories people tell themselves and others about who they are (and who they are not)” (Yuval-Davis, 2011, p. 202). In other words, the image illustrates how relational selves are socially constructed and mediated through narrative forms in which, as Mark Freeman (1993) notes in his book, Rewriting the Self: History, Memory, Narrative: we will see how certain stories become sanctioned and others disallowed, how the very world in which one lives becomes crossed with boundaries which all but dictate what can and cannot be said or done. … these same boundaries can be exploded and how, more generally the self may be transformed from an object, prey to the potentially constrictive power of culture, to a willful agent: a creator, able to cast into question those stories thought to be “given” and write new ones, thereby transforming in turn precisely that social landscape which is often deemed responsible for who we become. (As cited in Bradbury & Miller, 2010, pp. 699–700)

Cultural identities are not fixed in some essentialised past but rather emerge from historical landscapes which are constantly changing. As Hall

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(1990) notes: “they are subject to the continuous “play” of history, culture and power” (p. 225). Dialectical tensions in the narrative formations of relational selves will be used to show the complex ways that power operates: fissures and interstices, indeterminacy and ambivalence, interruptions and fragmentation in the crossing of multiple geographical, cultural, psychic and imaginative boundaries. Levine (2015) extends the common definition of form in literary studies to include socio-political arrangements. For the purposes of this book, form is defined as “all shapes and configurations, all ordering principles, all patterns of repetition and difference” (Levine, 2015, p.  3). Levine (2015) asserts that, “while it may be possible to rid ourselves of particular unjust totalities or binaries, it is impossible to imagine a society altogether free of organizing principles” (p. 9). Therefore, it is critical to analyse the major work that forms do to our selves and our world as well as the major work we do to reshape forms. In this book, the image of narrative forms of relational selves shows the arrangement of various constituent elements within the following systems of reality to create a particular ordering, patterning and shaping of chronotopes as expressed through symbols. (1) The material-discursive system of human being (spatiality), as arranged by the constituent elements of discourse and structure-­ agency; (2) the storied system of human becoming (temporality), as arranged by stories and cultural memory and (3) the symbolic narrative system of human belonging (chronotopes), as arranged by narratives and knowledges. The ordering, patterning and shaping of spatiality and temporality are not only an activity of forms but also a matter of politics. If political forces impose spatial and temporal patterns, hierarchies and boundaries on experience, “then there is no politics without form” (Levine, 2015, p. 3). As forms are at work everywhere in the structuring and patterning of experience, it has implications for understanding socio-political life and how power operates through different forms of order in the world (Levine, 2015). In theory, political forms put people in place. In practice, however, we encounter many forms in our ordinary daily experiences that make up a complex environment of multiple “modes of organization-­ forms” which not only arrange and contain us but also complete, collide and reroute one another (Levine, 2015, p. 16). No single form works in

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isolation. No single form in itself causes, organises or dominates, all other forms, rather, “aesthetic and political forms may be nested inside one another, and that each is capable of disturbing the other’s organizing power” (Levine, 2015, pp. 16–17). Forms do the work of making order out of disorder. Simultaneously, the collision of two or more forms could potentially generate more disorder than order (Levine, 2015). In this sense, forms intersect, overlap and operate all at once. As forms are abstract and transferrable organising principles and patterns, they overlap and collide in different contexts and historical periods (Levine, 2015). The collision of various forms results in unexpected and unpredictable results which cannot necessarily be traced back to a particular cause, deliberate intention or dominant ideology (Levine, 2015). Levine (2015) adds that, “forms do political work” in various historical contexts because they not only respond to and/or reflect political conditions but they also “shape what it is possible to think, say, and do in a given context” (p. 5). Another defining feature about how forms work is that forms constrain, differ and travel. Various forms constantly move back and forth across aesthetic and social materials through space and time. Levine (2015) draws on the concept of affordances from design theory—which refers to the possible uses of materials, objects and designs—to explain the complex operations of aesthetic and political forms. Drawing on the work of Henry S.  Turner, Levine (2015) explains that forms not only travel across time and space but also in and through material objects that are situated in space-time. The term affordance is a useful concept because it shifts from design to materiality and illustrates how abstract forms are inextricably entangled with material conditions and embodied experience. Forms organise materials, and materials take on forms. Put differently, forms organise patterns of experience and shape matter, imposing order on things (Levine, 2015). This book utilises visual techniques in an attempt to not only make visible “White [as] a metaphor for power” (Baldwin, 2017, p. 107) in the form of Manichean hierarchical entities but also visualise counter forms or how the collisions between one or more forms could potentially disturb, complicate and reroute exclusionary boundaries. Whereas Manichean hierarchical entities refer to the social structure in which

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subjects are positioned, rhythmic whole infinity networks refer to sets of meanings, actions and practices in which agents reposition themselves, within the conditional limitations of social structures.

 anichean Hierarchical Entities1 as a Metaphor M for Racial Power Saul Bellow states that the “old forms of existence have worn out, so to speak, and the new ones have not yet appeared and people are prospecting as it were in the desert for new forms” (as cited in Rutherford, 1990, p. 9). In his chapter, “A Place Called Home: Identity and the Cultural Politics of Difference”, Jonathan Rutherford (1990) interprets the “desert” as a metaphor of difference which refers to “the otherness of race, sex and class, whose presence and politics so deeply divide our society” (p. 10). As it is impossible for the social categories to articulate the complex patterning that constitutes society, it is important to analyse how these structures intersect and collide with one another as well as with many other kinds of forms (Levine, 2015). In analysing a phenomenon intersectionally, we need to examine the various ways in which dominant categories are included (i.e. privileged and remembered) and marginal categories excluded (i.e. subordinated and forgotten) within interlocking systems of power and oppression such as racism, heteropatriarchy and (neo)liberalism. Power is oppressive when ideological categories such as race, ethnicity, gender and class are mobilised into “sedimented hierarchies exploitable for conflict and profit” (Alexander, 2006, p.  2). Drawing on the work of Alexander (2006), Weems (2016) explains that social categories such as race and gender are “inventions of colonial capitalism” which hold material and symbolic significance for how people experience the world. Baldwin (2017, p. 107) refers to how white wealth is dependent on Black poverty: I attest to this: the world is not white; it never was white, cannot be white. White is a metaphor for power, and that is simply a way of describing Chase Manhattan Bank.

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If “White is a metaphor for power” (Baldwin, 2017, p.  107), then Manichean hierarchical entities (see Fig.  3.2) are a metaphor for the dominant formations and patterns of oppressive power such as racism and white supremacy, heteropatriarchy and masculine whiteness, (neo) liberalism and white privilege. The spatio-temporal matrix of Manichean hierarchical entities (Fig. 3.2) could be viewed as a representation of what the Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano (2000) calls the coloniality of power. In his article, “Coloniality of Power and Eurocentrism in Latin America”, Quijano (2000) explains that modernity/coloniality refers to two axes of power: First, “the codification of the differences between conquerors and conquered in the idea of “race”, a supposedly different biological structure that placed some in a natural situation of inferiority to the others” (p. 533). Second, these forms of subordination became entangled with economic class relations in the form of capitalism. As Quijano (2000) notes: “the other process was the constitution of a new structure of control of labor and its resources and slavery, serfdom, small independent commodity production and reciprocity, together around and upon the basis of capital and the world market” (p. 534).

Fig. 3.2  Manichean hierarchical entities as a metaphor for racial power

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 hythmic Whole Infinity Networks2 as a Metaphor R for Disrupting Racial Power Identity categories are open to incremental changes because of the collisions between various forms of power which have the potential to disturb, complicate and reroute exclusionary boundaries (Levine, 2015). Drawing on Judith Butler’s (1997) theorisation of the “ambiguity of agency”, Hannah Botsis (2015) explains that power is discontinuous or never repeated in exactly the same way because of the “ambivalence apparent in the process of subjectification itself: that constraint is a precondition for agency” (p. 61). Agency is present, although it is constrained and limited, because small changes in the repetitions of actions incrementally create change over time, while indexing the original subject. As Botsis notes: “an identity relation may be continuous over time, while the content of this identity may shift radically. This is evidenced through the slow bending of norms (Morison & Macleod, 2013)” (2015, p. 62). How could we visualise the slow bending of norms? In what ways could rhythmical whole infinity networks of meaning-making (see Fig. 3.3), which constantly move against the essentialisation of ideological categories, create other spatio-temporalities of being and becoming human? Rhythmical whole infinity networks as counter formations and patterns of power could be understood as a decolonial praxis in the sense that it aims to puncture, dismantle, decentre and overwrite the matrix of power in which ideological categories are essentialised and fixed into (neo)liberal entities of knowledge. MaldonadoTorres (2016) describes decoloniality as efforts towards rehumanising the world: to breaking hierarchies of difference that dehumanize subjects and communities and that destroy nature, and to the production of counter-­ discourses, counter-knowledges, counter-creative acts, and counter-practices that seek to dismantle coloniality and to open up multiple other forms of being in the world. (p. 10)

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Fig. 3.3  Rhythmical whole infinity networks as a metaphor for disrupting racial power

The image of intersecting forms (Fig. 3.1) illustrates how a color-line, hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines and (neo)liberal-lines of inclusion in and exclusion from classed entities of knowledge suffocate our visions of the future and render knowledge stillborn. What are the possibilities for rhythmical whole infinity networks to create knowledge communities that birth new forms, contexts and concepts of change? Could we  use  rhythmical whole infinity networks as a metaphor to think through what it would mean to puncture a color-line of zones of being a “person” and nonbeing a “person”, dismantle hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines of not-becoming “modern” people and decentre or overwrite (neo)liberal-lines of inclusion in and exclusion from classed entities of knowledge? The dialectical tensions between intersecting forms of Manichean hierarchical entities with rhythmical whole infinity networks might enable us to visualise the workings of power and contribute to developing a vocabulary for the re-formations and trans-formations of sociopolitical life.

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 tanding on the Border Between Manichean S Hierarchical Entities and Rhythmic Whole Infinity Networks In her article, “On Complex Communication”, the Argentine sociologist, feminist philosopher and activist, María Lugones (2006) asserts that there are two realities at work, because people not only are consumed by oppression but also resist and M N disrupt the system that aims to mould, violate or erase them. The two realities reveal that on one side, the logic of oppression prevails, and on the other, lies resistance and transformation. Manichean hierarchical entities (which suffocate people’s visions of the future and render knowledge stillborn) represent the logic of oppression or re-formation. The logic of resistance and trans-formation could be viewed through rhythmical whole infinity networks that forge knowledge communities in the “borderland”. Here, new forms, contexts and concepts of change could be birthed. Following Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera (1987), Lugones (2006) states that the act of resistance and transformation is to place oneself in the limen—a borderland in which “the oppressed create a clear sense of standing in a dual reality, one in which we use double perception and double praxis (p. 78). Lugones (2006) explains that Anzaldúa conceptually constitutes the borderland as “a rejection of dichotomies and of the dichotomizing impulse that constitutes the border, the split. Even the rejection of dichotomizing, that is the limen in its conceptual sense, is historicized since she connects it to the historical conquests of 1492 and 1848 [and] with European modernity” (p. 80). This “double vision” of keeping one eye on the oppressed reality and the other eye on the resistant reality is described as “world”-travel (Lugones, 1987), “multiple consciousness” (Matsuda, 1996) or “differential consciousness” (Sandoval, 1991) which are “methodologies that enable [the oppressed] to shift to the liminal by reading reality as multiple” (Lugones, 2006, p. 79).3 The creation of liminal spaces involves a dialectical movement from domination in which the oppressed maximise their freedom in a situation which is unfree (Lugones, 2006). This abstract gesture of placing oneself in the limen is to dramatically and actively “conceive ourselves” differently from the oppressor’s zombified construction of “the oppressed” that engenders

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passivity. As Lugones (2006) explains: “Indeed, as liminal we need to engage in a poiesis, a self-construction, an arduous and dangerous process” (p. 77, emphasis in original). Lugones (2006) concludes that it is in the limen where “we should see the need for coalition: a loving connection toward liberation” (p. 79).

 n Analytic Framework of Narrative A Formations of Being, Becoming and Belonging  elational Selves as a Discursive, Embodied R and Narrative Construction The cover image of narrative forms of relational selves is a visual representation of self-consciousness as our (dis)continuous sense of self in the infinite dialectic of being, becoming and be-longing. Relational selves take on various forms of spatio-temporality. Fay (1996) states that “the self is not a thing which undergoes various state changes, but instead just is various states of consciousness related in a certain manner” (p.  37 [emphasis in original]). Relational selves as shifting states of consciousness are the entanglement between space and time, and matter and meaning. Infinite forms of relational selves or the relational self as infinite forms could be understood as a verb (Fay, 1996; Bauman, 1996) in that it continually shifts from being in material space, to becoming with imaginary time, to belonging within symbolic space-time. In her book, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, the theoretical physicist and feminist theorist Karen Barad (2007) explains that, “[t]o be entangled is not simply to be intertwined with another, as in the joining of separate entities, but to lack an independent, self-contained existence … individuals emerge through and as part of their entangled intra-relating” (p. ix). Similar to matter and meaning, time and space, “come into, are iteratively reconfigured through each intra-action, thereby making it impossible to differentiate in any absolute sense between creation and renewal, beginning and returning, continuity and discontinuity, here and there, past and future” (Barad, 2007, p. ix). Being in space is a state of becoming with time and becoming with time is a state of belonging within space-time and belonging within

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space-time is in turn a state of being in space. In other words, belonging is an infinite symbolic intra-action of being what I am in material space and becoming who I am with imaginary time. Relational selves are formations of particular spatio-temporal forms which frame our embodied experiences in space and with time. Time is moulded in space and space is the mould of time. The word “person” means “persona ‘actor’s mask [or] character in a play’” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2018). To be a person is to reformulate and rearticulate our sense of our selves in concordance with and discordance to the normative moulds of identity and categorical boundaries. We fit the mould, and we break the mould. We enact the characters that are moulded in social scripts of identity categories and we rewrite these scripts with fragmented pieces of our particular stories. The notion of “identity” could be viewed as our sense of belonging or emotional attachments and detachments to various social identity categories as  articulated through language (Wetherell, 2012). Drawing on Butler’s (1997) idea of citationality, Botsis (2015) deduces that power is dispersed through the particular stories people tell about their personal and group identities from generation to generation. Identity categories are thus open to incremental change because power is not repeated in exactly the same way; we use language performatively to produce cultural narratives in new ways (Botsis, 2015). Miller (2014) describes self-­ consciousness as “an awareness of self as an internal other” (p.  43). Thinking and speech are key to our understanding of the nature of human consciousness (Miller, 2014; Vygotsky, 1978). Human beings are not unitary entities but culturally bound networks of relations in that the being of one’s self is interrelated with the being of an other (Fay, 1996). The self is not a monologue but a relational conversation through language which enables us to meaningfully articulate our sense of selves as well as communicate and connect with others (Crites, 1986). The relational self is a psychosocial phenomenon narrated in the dialectical interplay between our dual positions as subjects that shape the world but in turn are shaped by the world (Mishler, 1999). Bruner (2003) proposes that “self-making is a narrative art” because we make up a story when we tell oneself about who and what we are (and are not), and why we do what we do. To be a person in relation to another is an open question which we continually reformulate: What am I? What am I doing? Who

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am I? Why am I doing this? Where am I? Where am I going? Where do I belong? These kinds of questions compel us to make meaning from “the primal stew of data which is our daily experience” where  there is an arrangement, choosing and narration of detail (Rose, 1983, p 6). Put differently, the “‘first order’ activity of lives as they are lived is mirrored in ‘second order’ activities of reflection, representation, accounting and storytelling” (Andrews, Sclater, Squire & Treacher, 2004, p. 7). The questions of What am I? and What am I doing? is accounted for through stories about Who I am? and Why I am doing this?. Our answerability takes the form of narratives which could be described as “discourses with a clear sequential order that connect events in a meaningful way for a definite audience and thus offer insights about the world and/or people’s experiences of it” (Hinchman & Hinchman, 1997, p. xvi). If our answerability takes the form of narratives, then stories are the means through which we negotiate, reposition and traverse multiple locations. Stories, which are particular and intersectional, are a valuable tool to understand positionality, that is, social position as “an outcome or a set of affectivities (social structure)” and social positioning as “set of practices, actions and meanings (agency)” (Fathi, 2017, p. 37). Our sense of what we are, who we are and where we feel we belong are mediated through narrative, in its infinite variety of forms. As Roland Barthes (1975) notes, “[narrative] is present at all times, in all places, in all societies” (p. 237). Homo narrans, as Wynter puts it, are not only languaging creatures but also mythmakers or storytellers (Wynter & McKittrick, 2015). What is in the word narrative? I am the name of a person and the person is named as me. I am what is in a name, who is in a name and where a name feels it belongs. I am is to know. We narrate to know what we are, who we are and where we feel we belong. We come to know what and who we are through the narratives we tell ourselves and others in space and with time. I am is to be, to become and to belong; states of consciousness. If “I am” is narrative, then narrative is being in space, becoming with time and belonging within chronotopes as expressed through symbols. I am the space where I narrate I am. I am the time when I narrate I am. I am the symbols where I narrate, I belong. I inhale space and exhale being. I inhale time and exhale becoming. I inhale symbols and exhale belonging. By breathing-out being, becoming and belonging, I breathe life into spatiality, temporality and symbolic reality. “I am” is to

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animate social structure, cultural memory and knowledge; streams of collective consciousness. Levine (2015) believes that narrative “best captures the experience of colliding forms” because of the ways in which it affords detailed attention to what happens when and after forms come together (p. 19). Narrative also affords the imagining of the “subtle unfolding activity of multiple social forms” through thought experiments (Levine, 2015, p. 19). Form is inextricably entangled with material conditions. Although literature is made of language instead of the material world it depicts, overlapping forms are constantly moving around us and through us, imposing their order on our bodies, space and materials. As Levine (2015) remarks, “Form emerges from this perspective as transhistorical, portable, and abstract, on the one hand, and material, situated, and political, on the other” (p. 11). In her conception of human agency, Archer (2000) argues that our self-consciousness, or continuous sense of self, emerges from how we are biologically constituted, the way the world is constituted and our interaction with the external environment. Self-consciousness or our continuous sense of self is thus both a discursive and embodied construction. Clegg says, “while there are discursively produced subjectivities, there is also an embodied sense of self continuous through the history of a particular life, an and/and in which both can be theorized” (2006, p. 318, emphasis in original). In our conception of a “narratable self ”, Day Sclater asserts that it is important to imagine parts of the self that lie outside of the story, “[which] demands that we take account of the subject’s moral agency, her embodiment, and the force of unconscious fantasy, as well as the determinations of language, discourse and story. Crucially, too, selves are always relational” (2003, p. 8). The Latin root of narrative, narrativus, means telling a story and the verb, narrare, is from gnarus which means “knowing” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2018). Following Ryle (1945, p. 4), we could differentiate between various activities of narrative or modes of knowing, namely, “knowledge-how” (practical reasoning), “knowledge-that” (academic knowledge) and I will add knowledge-why (existential self-­ knowledge). In her article, “Belonging and the Politics of Belonging”, Yuval-Davis (2006) suggests that belonging is an emotional attachment or feeling a sense of being “at home” (p. 197) in the world and is constituted along three analytical levels: “social locations, identifications and

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emotional attachments and, ethical and political values” (p. 199). These analytical levels that constitute belonging and the politics of belonging will be used to discuss how narrative, as different modes of knowing, is contingent upon positionality. In other words, human subjectivity which is itself diverse and fragmented “carries within it the pushes and pulls of various available narratives, which are contingent upon social and cultural positioning” (Andrews et al., 2004, p. 12). Turner (2010) proposes that form as “an attribute of being, of ontology [of becoming]” could be viewed from one of two perspectives: “with the immaterial, abstract organizing principles that shape material realities [or] with the concrete, particular material thing and abstract from it to general, iterable patterns and shapes” (as cited in Levine, 2015, p. 10). If form is an attribute of “being”, of existential “ontoepistemology” (Barad, 2007), then form is also an attribute of becoming, of axiology as well as an attribute of belonging, of epistemology. In this sense, form could be conceptualised as an attribute of “being” (knowing-how), becoming (knowing-why) and belonging (knowing-that). Hall (1990) explains that cultural identity is not only a matter of becoming but also a matter of being or enactment because it belongs to the past as well as the future. Cultural Identities are not grounded “in a mere ‘recovery’ of the past, which is waiting to be found, and which when found, will secure our sense of ourselves into eternity” but rather identities are “the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past” (Hall, 1990, p. 225). Identities or the practice of identification and emotional attachments to various collectivities and groupings move through the dialectic processes of being and becoming, becoming and belonging, “belonging and longing to belong” (Yuval-Davis, 2006, p. 202).

 eing as Socially Positioned in “What I Am”: Dividing B and Rhythmical Forms of Space (Existential “Ontoepistemology” [Barad, 2007]) To answer the question, What am I? is to tell how we are positioned in the world by social discourses or as Hall notes (1996) it is the “‘chaining’ of the subject into the flow of the discourse” (p. 6). Discourse functions

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as a performative and communicative double-sided4 speech act in that people choose particular words and grammatical features to convey particular meanings and to present themselves in a particular way to particular audiences. Being socially positioned in the materiality of visceral space takes on dividing and rhythmical forms of space (see Fig. 3.4). In other words, “nonbeing” takes on a dividing form (constricted blood) and “being” takes on a rhythmic form (fluid blood). Dividing and rhythmical spatial forms are attributes of (non)being, of existential “ontoepistemology” (Barad, 2007). Drawing on the fields of political theory, political economy, cultural geography, postcolonial theory, critical race theory, and feminist theory, Barad (2007) has developed a framework of “ontoepistemology” which she calls “agential realism” that contributes to a “new materialist understanding of power and its effects on the production of bodies, identities, and subjectivities” (p.  35). Hall (1996) shows that the link between social and psychic reality could be theorised through the notion of “identity”: I use ‘identity’ to refer to the meeting point, the point of suture, between on the one hand the discourses and practices which attempt to ‘interpellate’,

Fig. 3.4  Dividing and rhythmical forms of (non)being in space (existential “ontoepistemology” [Barad, 2007])

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speak to us or hail us into place as the social subjects of particular discourses, and on the other hand, the processes which produce subjectivities, which construct us as subjects which can be ‘spoken’. Identities are thus points of temporary attachment to the subject positions which discursive practices construct for us (see Hall, 1995). They are the result of a successful articulation or ‘chaining’ of the subject into the flow of the discourse, what Stephen Heath, in his pathbreaking essay on ‘Suture’ called ‘an intersection’. (pp. 5–6, emphasis in original)

Hall refers to Althusser’s (1970) concept of ideological interpellation in which subjects are continually positioned in relation to others and the socio-political context. Social locations refer not only to the materiality of a subject’s position but also the positionality of social categories along an axis of power in society, some categories higher or lower than others, which changes with historically specific contexts (Yuval-Davis, 2006). Yuval-Davis (2006) points to the need of rendering social divisions visible, and the recognition, not of social identities but of social power axes, is of critical emancipatory importance. Identification is never completed but is rather an infinite process of articulation: “Like all signifying practices, it is subject to the ‘play’ of differance. It obeys the logic of more-than-one” (Hall, 1996, p. 3, original emphasis). And due to the fact that this process operates across difference, “it entails discursive work, the binding and marking of symbolic boundaries, the production of ‘frontier-effects’” (Hall, 1996, p. 3). Hegemonic power maintains and reproduces conventional categories of social divisions by the construction of symbolic boundaries that determine the standards of “normality” and access to economic, political, social and intellectual “goods” (Bourdieu, 1986; Yuval-Davis, 2011). Identity is thus to be understood not as a representational entity that is fixed and closed, but rather as an ongoing process of identification (or  dis-­ identification) with subject positions that the flow of social discourses of difference such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, nationality, dis/ ability, age and religion construct for us (Ngwena, 2018). As a person’s identity is embedded in difference, identity could be viewed as socially constructed self-definitions, labels, static characteristics or traits as applied by others (De Reus, Few & Blume, 2004). Difference refers to

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the distinctions made between and within groups which are based on socially constructed categories that mutually construct one another (De Reus, Few & Blume, 2004). Differences and diverse perspectives serve as an impetus to human knowledge, but the problem is the various ways in which people in positions of hegemonic power use difference to include or exclude, value or devalue, reward or punish, and elevate or oppress (Johnson, 2006). Hegemonic power, however, is fractured in historical moments of change and through the way in which particular individuals may inhabit multiple and contradictory social categories. The dynamic flow of cultural discourses in relation to social categories of difference results in a multiplicity  of human experiences, which cannot be essentialised and equated with social groupings (De Reus, Few & Blume, 2004). YuvalDavis (2006) reminds us that the discourse on social locations “cannot be conflated with the belonging discourse on [the practice of ] identifications and emotional attachments” (p.  202). Identity is not fixed, but rather relational as individuals are situated and negotiate the intersections of multiple locations, entailing a dynamic process of identification, finding new and temporary points of “suture”, as Hall (1996) contends, a fluid process of connecting with, and disconnecting from, social others in time and space (De Reus, Few & Blume, 2004; Liccardo & Bradbury, 2017). Belonging is inextricably entangled with the notion of  being because one’s feelings of attachment to social location is connected to the state of being positioned in social space by the flow of the discourse.

 elonging as Identifications and Emotional B Attachments to Social Locations in the Space “Where I Am”: Entity and Networked Forms of Knowledge (Epistemology) To answer the question, Where do I belong? is to tell what are the subject positions in the social world that are articulated in symbolic narratives. Symbolic narratives function as an abstract structural form which (in) forms the construction of subjects and social positions defined as “an outcome or a set of affectivities (social structure)” (Fathi, 2017, p. 37).

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Fig. 3.5  Entity and networked forms of (no)belonging with/in knowledge (epistemology)

Feeling a sense of belonging and no-belonging within affective chronotopes as expressed through symbols takes on entity and networked forms of knowledge (see Fig. 3.5). In other words, feeling a sense of no belonging with/in symbolic knowledge takes on an entity form (shattered heart) whereas feeling a sense of belonging with/in symbolic knowledge takes on a networked form (webwork heart). Entity and networked spatio-temporal and symbolic forms are attributes of (no)belonging, of epistemology. Language is that which makes us human because it is the medium through which we express our existence in the world as meaningful (Polkinghorne, 1988). It is through abstract language that we make sense and meaning of our subject positions and express our sense of belonging (Botsis, 2015). While the subject is formed in the abstract structure of language, which is constitutive of discursive meaning, the subject also becomes embodied through language which is spoken by people in their physical bodies and material locations (Botsis, 2015). Therefore, Botsis (2015) assets that “[e]mbodiment requires an understanding of Language [the abstract system of discursive power] as located in the fleshy reality of

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languages and their politics, and therefore requires attending to issues of affective-discursive meaning-making (Wetherell, 2012)” (p. 70). The affective aspect of belonging lies “between the abstract structure of language and the politics of particular languages” as carriers of history, meaning and power which socially position us in relation to others (Botsis, 2015, p. 86). Yuval-Davis (2011) views the practice of identification and emotional attachments to social identity categories as a performative and repetitive practice. Identities, as “stories people tell themselves and others about who they are”, not only pertain to social categories but also to individual characteristics, body images or aspirations (Yuval-Davis, 2011, p. 202). People have different perceptions of what it might mean to be a member of a particular grouping. Identities as narratives are thus multiple and contested, and they shift and change because the production of these stories and meanings from generation to generation are carried out in particular and selective ways, and like perceptions, emotions shift and change in different historical contexts (Yuval-Davis, 2006). Through the interconnected nature of social  identity categories, people experience multiple lines of belonging and alienation through multifaceted and contradictory social categories which themselves intersect in an infinite variety of ways (Anthias, 2006; Yuval-Davis, 2011). Yuval-Davis (2011) writes: “Our longings, or aversions, are related to our belongings in but complicated and ambiguous ways, and what social group or category we belong to does not determine our political or cultural values … And yet: the former inform the latter” (p. 6). Yuval-Davis (2011) adds that belonging is affected by how social locations and identity categories are valued and judged and is paradoxically largely activated through the experiences of exclusion (Anthias, 2006). People’s experiences of belonging and alienation are shaped by the labels that are ascribed to them and the ways in which these social categories are recognised, non-recognised and misrecognised: “who defines difference, how various categories of people are represented within the discourses of difference, and how much power is granted to (or stripped from) individuals and groups based on these classifications” (De Reus, Few & Blume, 2004, p. 3). During times in which people feel threatened, the emotional components used to construct themselves and their social identities become more central (Yuval-Davis, 2006). In this way, Yuval-Davis

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(2006) argues5 that, “free floating emotions ‘stick’ to particular social objects” and that social locations and specific social identities (and/or political views) are not necessarily connected to each other but rather emerge as a result of specific social practices. However, in the case where social constructions of self and identity are forced onto particular groupings and collectivities, then identities and belongings become a central component to people’s positionings and social locations, “and the relationships between locations and identifications can become empirically more closely intertwined” (Yuval-Davis, 2006, p. 203). The differentiation between social and economic locations, identifications as well as ethical and political values is thus important for a politics of resistance. Yuval-Davis (2006) explains that for Fanon (1967), such a politics of resistance “needs to be directed not only at oppressed people’s social and economic locations but also against their internalizations of forced constructions of self and identity” (p. 203). In addition to acknowledging how everyday narratives and abstract language is a mechanism through which we make sense of our subject positions and express our sense of belonging, what is also important to note that there is a unique individual who expresses a statement or action. When searching for the author of the action, we pose the question of “who”, who did this or who did that, in the domain of action (Ricoeur, 1991a). What cannot be disregarded is this question, who am I?. Discursive psychologists, however, are suspicious of the claim that narrative mechanisms can or ought to construct a continuous and “coherent” sense of self which could be read as essentialising the self. Our continuous sense of self is a discursive, embodied and narrative construction. While our selves as lived are multiple, fragmented, “saturated” (Gergen, 1991) and performed in relation to particular discursive conventions, our selves as told and narrated are simultaneously “a multiplicity of stories evolving in a de-centered psychological space” (McAdams, 2011, p. 102). In other words, as individuals seek some semblance of purpose through their actions in space and with time, the narrative sense-making of their lives as boundless loops or wholes creates patterns of meaning which transcend social performances.

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 ecoming as the Re-valuation and Re-positioning B of “Who I Am”: Hierarchical and Holistic Forms of Power (Axiology) In his book, Time and Narrative (Vol. 3), the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1988) argues that, “To answer the question ‘Who?’ … is to tell the story of a life. The story told tells about the action of the ‘who’. And the identity of this ‘who’ therefore itself must be narrative identity” (p. 246, emphasis in original). Stories function as a cognitive tool or instrument of invention that individuals and groups of people use to reflect on and make sense of their affective sense of belonging to particular social locations in relation to others and in particular socio-political contexts. Becoming and not becoming who I am with cerebral time takes on hierarchical and holistic forms of power (see Fig. 3.6). Put differently, not becoming with cerebral time takes on a hierarchical form (narrow-mindedness) whereas becoming with cerebral time takes on a holistic form (broad-mindedness). Hierarchical and holistic temporal forms are attributes of (not)becoming, of axiology. Ricoeur defines subjectivity in

Fig. 3.6  Hierarchical and holistic forms of (no)becoming with power (axiology)

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terms of narrative identity which is “neither an incoherent series of events nor an immutable substantiality, impervious to evolution” (1991b, p. 32). Narrative identity offers a particular way to think about “identity” to which people have access to because of the “mediation of the narrative function” (Ricoeur, 1991a, p. 73). Narrative identity thus allows for a complex notion of subjectivity because using narrative “the ‘self’ can be located as a psychosocial phenomenon, and subjectivities seen as discursively constructed yet still as active and effective” (Andrews, et al., 2004, p. 1). Social locations and the practice of identification and emotional attachments to various collectivities and groupings hinge on narrative identity through which agents meaningfully reflect on and re-position themselves in alternative discourses and within conditions of impossibility through the narrative mechanism of “emplotment” (Polkinghorne, 1988). Stories account for the temporal vicissitudes of human intentionality, which is a motivating force that animates meaning (Ricoeur, 1988). We participate in the agentic process of imposing an order on the flow of our experiences in a story form by keeping “the two manageably together, past and possible, in an endless dialectic ‘how my life has always been and should remain’ and ‘how things might have been or might still be’” (Bruner, 2003, p. 14). Consciousness-raising through storytelling enables us to potentially change “our subjectivity through positioning ourselves in alternative discourses which we produce together” (Weedon, 1987, as cited in Vincent, 2015, p. 31). Human agency refers to a person’s capacity, as a thinking and feeling social agent, to be able to reflect on the prevailing cultural discourses over time (Weedon, 1987). Narrative is conventionally understood as a temporal sequence of experiential events that are organised into a whole and where each event is evaluated as meaningful for a particular audience in relation to the whole (Berger, 1997; Riessman, 1993). Put differently, narrative is understood as a story with a beginning, a middle and an end in which events and experiences, that would otherwise be random and disconnected, are rearranged in multifarious directions moving across time, and resulting in changes in meaning (Chatman, 1980; Franzosi, 1998). Temporality is what discerns narrative from other ways of meaningfully articulating experience, as noted by Ricoeur (1984), “[narrative is] meaningful to the extent that it portrays the features of

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temporal experience” (p. 3). The plot of a story connects one event to another event by linking a prior occurrence to a subsequent event and the narrative accounts for how one event has been followed by another event under a particular set of circumstances (Polkinghorne, 1988). The primary narrative mechanism for making meaning from our (dis) continuous and unfolding sense of self in the infinite dialectic of being, becoming and be-longing is the activity of emplotment in which “sequences of events with beginnings, middles and ends... generate intelligibility by organising past, present and future in a coherent way” (Andrews 2004, et  al. p.  7). Narrative allows for the mediation in the interpretation of becoming one’s self in relation to being positioned by social discourses and feeling a sense of (no)belonging to social location or positions. Ricoeur (1988) notes that the self “may then be said to be refigured by the reflective application of such narrative configurations” (p. 246). If being is a state of becoming, becoming a state of belonging and belonging a state of being, then being and belonging are both connected to becoming. I suggest that becoming, as unfolding narratives of identities (lives as texts), is the hinge of being (in context) and belonging (with texts or symbolic knowledges). As social locations and the practice of identifications and emotional attachments to various collectivities and groupings hinge on narrative identity, I will focus on the intersecting, colliding and unfolding forms within the activity of emplotment. Narrative is able to best capture the experience of colliding forms because it affords the joining together of multiple events, without imposing a causal relation. As Levine (2015) notes, “[narratives] tend to present causality metonymically, through sequences of events, rather than by positing some originary cause” (p. 19). The plot of a story is a useful heuristic form because it “can set in motion multiple social forms and track them as they cooperate, come into conflict, and overlap, without positing an ultimate cause” (Levine, 2015, p. 19). Aesthetic forms are, however, not merely abstract but also political in that forms are embodied in subject positions and materialised in social locations. The focus of this book is on narrative identity; how the narrative mechanism of emplotment facilitates new pathways to belonging in which agents meaningfully reflect on and re-position themselves in alternative discourses within conditions of impossibility  and alter subjectivity and

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subject positionings. In his article, “Narrative Identity”, Ricoeur (1991a, p. 73) distinguishes between two major uses of the term identity, that is “identity-as-sameness” (or “idem”) and “identity-as-self ” (or “ipse”). He argues that the notion of the “ipseity” is not sameness by differentiating between the following four senses of identity as sameness: (1) “numerical identity”, (2) “extreme resemblance”, (3) “continuity” and (4) “permanence over time”. The first sense of identity-as-sameness is “numerical identity”, its opposite being plurality. Whereas numerical identity refers to “uniqueness” and corresponds to “identification understood as re-identification of the same”, the second sense is the idea of “extreme resemblance”, its opposite being difference (Ricoeur, 1991a, p. 74). The second sense of “extreme resemblance” serves as an indirect criterion of the first sense of numerical identity in the case when “re-­identification of the same is the object of doubt and argument; in such instances one does one’s best to point out material evidences (photos, imprints, etc.)” (Ricoeur, 1991a, p. 74). The third sense of identity-as-­sameness (“continuity”) takes into account change over time, its opposite being discontinuity. Ricoeur (1991a) notes that the demonstration of continuity (e.g. from fetus to old age) functions “as an additional criterion along with that of similitude in the service of numerical identity” (p. 74). It is from the third sense of continuity that the fourth sense of identity-­ as-­sameness arises, that is “permanence over time”, its opposite being diversity. Ricoeur (1991a) remarks that it is with this sense of permanence over time in which “true puzzles arise in that it is difficult not to assign this permanence to some immutable substrate, to a substance” (p. 74). Identity-as-permanence becomes problematic to the degree that “ipseity, the self, appears to cover the same space of meaning” (Ricoeur, 1991a) or of abstract language in the symbolic world. Ricoeur (1991a) notes that there is “discontinuity in the determination of what is identical [because] identity-as-uniqueness does not thematically imply time as is the case with identity-as-permanence” (1991a, pp. 74–75, emphasis added). Identity-as-permanence refers to the identity of things, of a plant or human being that is “not yet considered as a non-substitutable person” (Ricoeur, 1991a, p. 75). Most importantly, Ricoeur (1991a) explains that the fourth sense of sameness (identity-as-permanence) is the point at which the self, “ipseity”, intersects with sameness.

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To understand the notion of ipseity, one needs to look into the question of who, which is distinct from the question of what (Ricoeur, 1991a). When searching for the agent or author of the action, we pose the question of “who”, who did this or who did that, in the domain of action. “Let us call ascription the assignation of an agent to an action” (Ricoeur, 1991a, p. 75). Therefore, we insinuate that the action is the possession of one’s own self. The action belongs to him or her, the one who did it. Ricoeur (1991a) notes that onto this act “is grafted the act of imputation which takes on an explicitly moral signification [implying accusation or] an estimation according to “the good” or “the just”” (p. 75). We employ this vocabulary on the self instead of on the ego because “all grammatical persons are subject to ascription” (Ricoeur, 1991a, p. 75). In other words, the notion of self, of ipseity, “covers the range opened by ascription on the plane of personal pronouns and all the other deictics which depend on it: adjectives and possessive pronouns (mine, my, your, yours, he’s, hers etc.) and adverts of time and place (now, here etc.)” Ricoeur (1991a, p. 75). The break which separates idem from ipse is ontological in addition to grammatical, epistemological and logical (Ricoeur, 1991a). It is at the point of permanence over time, where the self-intersects with the same. The kind of permanence that belongs “to a self in light of ascription” is the fold between idem and ipse, without them being identical (Ricoeur, 1991a, p. 75). The self in light of ascription could be “a character defined by a certain constancy of its dispositions [idem], or, which one recognises in light of imputation by the sort of fidelity to self that is manifest by the manner in which one keeps promises [ipse]” (Ricoeur, 1991a, p. 75). The narrative construction of identity (i.e. a durable character of an individual) is proper to the plot which constructs the identity of the protagonist in the story (Ricoeur, 1991a). Ricoeur (1991a) writes: It is primarily in the plot therefore that we must search for the mediation between permanence and change, before being able to transfer it to the character. The advantage of this detour through the plot is that it furnishes the model of discordant concordance upon which it is possible to construct the narrative identity of the character. The narrative identity of this character will only be known correlative to the discordant concordance of the story itself. (pp. 77–78)

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Ricoeur (1991a) compares characters in literature and ourselves because they both think, act, suffer and die. Put differently, Ricoeur (1991a) notes that, “narrative fictions remain imaginary variations around an invariant; the presupposed embodied condition constitutes an unsurpassable mediation between the self and the world” (p. 78). Following Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger, Ricoeur (1991a) proposes that the reason we could look at the earth, not as a planet, but rather as a “mythic name of our being-in-the world” is because “fictions are imitations—as erroneous and aberrant as one wishes—of actions, that is, they seek of what we already know as action and interaction in physical and social environments” (p. 78). In applying literature to life, “what we transfer and transpose is the exegesis of ourselves is the dialectic of ipse and idem” (Ricoeur, 1991a, p. 79). Thought experiments are not only carried out by imaginary variations in narrative fictions on the level of theoretical reflection but also on the existence of our earthly condition (Ricoeur, 1991a). On commenting on the text-reader relation, Ricoeur (1991a) deduces that the self comes to know itself, not immediately, but only indirectly, “through the detour of cultural signs of all sorts, which articulate the self in symbolic mediation that already articulate action, among them the narratives of daily life” (Ricoeur, 1991a). The plot of a story facilitates the mediation of permanence and change or “discordant concordance” (Ricoeur, 1991b, p.  32) upon which the self-characterised by self-­ sameness can be refigured. Ricoeur (1988) remarks: Self-sameness, ‘self-constancy’ can escape the dilemma of Same and Other to the extent that its identity rests on a temporal structure that conforms to the model of dynamic identity arising from the poetic composition of a narrative text … Unlike the abstract identity of the Same, this narrative identity, constitutive of self constancy, can include change, mutuality, within the cohesions of one lifetime. (p. 246)

Narrative identity offers “a solution to the aporias [mind/body dualism] concerning personal identity” (Ricoeur, 1991a, p.  76) because it offers a way out of “the dilemma of Same and Other” (Ricoeur, 1988, p. 246) through the narrative plot. The fragments of life become meaningful when we interpret them in relation to the developing plot of our

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life stories (Ricoeur, 1981). As life is equated to the stories we tell about our lives, the act of narrating is crucial to the complex interconnectedness of life (Ricoeur, 1991a). Stories are thus to be understood through their “cultural locus” (Denzin, 1989, p. 73). A person’s narrative identity, as a psychosocial construction, is co-authored by the person herself and the master moral narratives that preside within a particular culture in which the person acts and narrates (McAdams, 2011; Nelson, 2001). It is due to our familiarity with the master moral narratives or type of plot within a given culture “that we learn to relate virtues, or rather forms of excellence, with happiness or unhappiness” (Ricoeur, 1991b, p. 23). Collective identity categories are thus  valued and judged differently and disproportionately by master moral narratives within a given culture. There are particular attitudes and ideologies that preside within master moral narratives “concerning where and how identity and categorical boundaries are being/should be drawn, in more or less exclusionary ways, in more or less permeable ways” (Yuval-Davis, 2006, p. 203). The binding and marking of symbolic boundaries which construct national “imagined communities” (Anderson, 2006) depend on people’s values, their social locations and narratives of identities (Yuval-Davis, 2006). Citing Crowley (1999, p. 15) who defines the politics of belonging as “the dirty work of boundary maintenance”, Yuval-Davis (2006) explains that these boundaries which underline the politics of belonging pertain to the political community of belonging that, “separate the world population into ‘us’ and ‘them’” (p. 204). These symbolic dividing lines in national imagined communities determine whether groups of people are either included as “one of us” or excluded as “one of them”. The politics of belonging includes struggles around boundary maintenance in which political agents strive to promote particular projects in constructing their collectivity but simultaneously promote their own power positions not only within but outside the collectivity by using these same projects and ideologies (Yuval-Davis, 2006). The politics of belonging is also concerned with the specific roles that social locations and narratives of identity play in determining what is involved in being a member of a community (Yuval-Davis, 2006). These contestations around community membership raise a critical question: “what are the minimum common grounds—in terms of origin, culture

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and normative behaviour—that are required to signify belonging” (Yuval-­ Davis, 2006, p.  207). Using the metaphor of Manichean hierarchical entities (Fig.  3.2), this book delineates the various ways in which the principle logic of inclusion into and exclusion from classed entities of knowledge are stratified along racial, heteropatriarchal and (neo)liberal lines. Conversely, this book also explores whether rhythmic whole infinity networks (Fig. 3.3) could disturb, complicate and reroute exclusionary boundaries and potentially facilitate new pathways to belonging to knowledge communities.

 Decolonising Narrative Research Framework A of Embodied Forms of (Non)being (Space), (Not)becoming (Power) and (No) belonging (Knowledge) In the previous section, I explored the various ways in which what I am in the materiality of visceral space takes on dividing and rhythmical forms of space (existential “ontoepistemology” [Barad, 2007]), (not)becoming who I am with cerebral time takes on hierarchical and holistic forms of power (axiology) and (no)belonging is symbolised through entities and networked forms of knowledge (epistemology). I have proposed that social locations and the practice of identification and emotional attachments to various collectivities and groupings hinge on narrative identity in  which agents meaningfully reflect on and re-position themselves, within conditions of impossibility in alternative discourses through the narrative mechanism of emplotment and alter subjectivity and subject positionings. In this sense, the subject as embodied and located refers to a person’s narrative identity of becoming which is materially-discursively produced in space and symbolically represented in knowledge. The interrelation between the discursive-circulatory system of space (zones of non/being) and storied-nervous system of power (not/becoming) produces the narrative-respiratory system of knowledge (no/belonging) which informs a set of assumptions that constitutes a particular worldview. The narrative-respiratory system of no-belonging (neoliberal

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entities of inclusion-exclusion) is a site of breathlessness that is to be controlled through people’s narrative sense of relational selfhood or identities of becoming. What is this site of breathlessness? Who is struggling to breathe? How does the systematic reproduction of this site make it difficult for Black, Indigenous and people of colour6 to breathe? What is it about the air that is stale? How is the body being deprived of fresh air? Why do some bodies revolt against this air and other bodies continue to breathe “normally”? How does my wilful short-sightedness contribute to the systematic reproduction of this site? What are the effects in the blindness of habitually inhaling stale storied forms of air on our bodies, youth, society, history and our world? And what are the effects of habitually exhaling stale forms of stories? How do we urgently and collectively create new fresh air in which we can all breathe as freely and consciously as possible? Could we develop a research framework that explains how the narrative system of knowledge is a site of breathlessness (no-belonging) that simultaneously holds the possibility of expelling new air (belonging)? In an attempt to develop this kind of research framework, I have adapted Maldonado-Torres’s (2016) “analytics of coloniality” (p. 20) and “analytics of decoloniality” (p. 30). Following Fanon (1963, 1967), Maldonado-­ Torres (2016, p.  19) proposes the following “scheme to approach modernity/coloniality: Knowledge: Subject, Object, Method Being: Time, Space, Subjectivity Power: Structure, Culture, Subject”. From a Fanonian point of view, the damnés are the subjects who occupy a structural and subjective position at the crux of the coloniality of power, knowledge and being. As Maldonado-Torres (2016) notes: Coloniality aims to make it impossible for the damnés to assume themselves as questioners, which is why the control of the means of producing knowledge is so key in modern/colonial societies. This is what makes schools and universities so fundamental sites of decolonial struggle. At the same time, coloniality cannot but generate questions for the damnés (p. 25).

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The damnés are not consumed by oppression, but they resist and disrupt the coloniality of knowledge that aims to mould, violate or erase them. The revolutionary task to “build the world of the You” (Fanon, 1967, p.  181,  emphasis in original) must therefore be centred on the action of the damnés. For the purposes of this research project, I have adapted this scheme as follows: Real space: Space (being) and social structure-agency (discourse) Imaginary power: Time (becoming) and cultural memory (stories) Symbolic knowledge: Chronotopes as symbols (belonging) and knowledge (narratives). How do these constituent elements work together to construct a symbolic  narrative system of knowledge as a site of breathlessness (no-­ belonging) that simultaneously holds the possibility of expelling new air (belonging)? How does the “self ” come to see what it feels and voice what it sees? Bruner (2003) comments that “the self ” is “intuitively obvious to common sense yet notoriously evasive to definition by the fastidious philosopher. The best we seem to be able to do when asked what it is, is to point at our forehead or our chest” (as cited in Frankish, p. 7). If our continuous sense of self moves in between being, becoming and be-­ longing, then when we point to our skin we could be referring to space, when we point to our forehead we could refer to power, and when we point to our chest we could refer to knowledge. Social space and psychical time are inextricably entangled. On the one hand, the psychical as “inside” sociality represents being (space), becoming (time) and belonging (chronotopes). On the other hand, sociality as “outside” the psychical represents discourse (structure), stories (cultural memory) and narratives (knowledge). Life, as an ongoing dialogue between these constituent elements, takes place at every moment of our daily experience. In his book, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, the Russian philosopher and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1984) remarks: The dialogic nature of consciousness, the dialogic nature of human life itself. The single adequate form for verbally expressing authentic human life is open-ended dialogue. Life by its very nature is dialogic. To live means to

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participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to agree, and so forth. In this dialogue a person participates wholly and throughout his [or her] whole life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with his whole body and deeds. He invests his entire self in discourse, and this discourse enters into the dialogic fabric of human life, into the world symposium. (p. 293, emphasis in original)

I will compare the following constituent elements with particular bodily systems and body components to think about change and continuity along social, psychological and psychosocial pathways. These psychosocial pathways are like the infinite-merging surfaces of Möbius strips in the form of infinity symbols that endlessly go back and forth co-­ creating us and the world we inhabit. First, I propose that the material-discursive system of human being functions like our circulatory system (Pathway A), which contains the following psychosocial elements: A1) Space (second skin) A2) Being (skin) A3) Social structure-agency (blood vessels) A4) Discourses (blood). Being is our skin because we live space which feels like a second skin. In other words, being is the organ of sense (skin) and space is the organ of feeling (second skin). Second, I suggest that the storied system of human becoming functions like our nervous system (Pathway B), which contains the following psychosocial elements: B1) Time (third eye) B2) Becoming (eyes) B3) Cultural memory (spinal cord) B4) Stories (brain). Becoming is our eyes because we enstory time, which contemplates like a third eye. Put differently, becoming is the organ of sight (eye) and time is the organ of vision (third eye).

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Third, I propose that the symbolic narrative system of human belonging functions like our respiratory system (Pathway C), which contains the following psychosocial elements: C1) Chronotopes as symbols (air) C2) Belonging (breath) C3) Knowledge (lungs) C4) Symbolic narratives (heart). Belonging is our breath because we inhale and exhale chronotopes as symbols which connects us like air. Belonging is the organ of respiration (breath) and symbols are the air we breathe. These constituent elements have been compared to “healthy” and “unhealthy” bodily coordinates to think about change and continuity along multiple psychosocial pathways. On the one hand, I map the analytics of coloniality onto the form of Manichean hierarchical entities. In other words, zones of being a “person” and nonbeing a “person” is depicted by a color-line (Du Bois, 2007[1903]), not-becoming “modern” people is depicted by the hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines and no-­belonging to knowledge communities is depicted by the (neo) liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion. Figure  3.7 makes visible the discursive-­circulatory system of zones of nonbeing a “person”, storiednervous system of not-becoming “modern” people and narrative-respiratory system of no-belonging to knowledge communities. On the other hand, I map the analytics of decoloniality onto the form of rhythmical whole infinity networks. Put differently, being is depicted by the rhythmical infinity threads, becoming is depicted by whole infinity loops and belonging is depicted as rhythmic whole infinity networks. Figure  3.8 makes visible the narrative-respiratory system of belonging, storied-nervous system of becoming and discursive-circulatory system of being.

3  Theorising a Biographic Visual-Narrative and Decolonising…  B1) TIME Tunnel-visioned third eye B3) CULTURAL MEMORY Unmalleable spinal cord

C1) CHRONOTOPES as one-dimensional symbols Stale air C3) KNOWLEDGE Punctured lungs

A1) SPACE Tainted second skin A2) NON BEING Wounded skin

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B2) NOT-BECOMING Wilful short-sighted eyes B4) STORIES Narrow-minded brain

C2) NO-BELONGING Breathlessness

C4) SYMBOLIC NARRATIVES Shattered heart

A3) STRUCTURE Clogged blood vessels A4) DISCOURSES Constricted blood

Fig. 3.7  The discursive-circulatory system of a zone of nonbeing (Fanon, 1967) a “person”, storied-nervous system of not-becoming “modern” people and narrative-respiratory system of no-belonging to knowledge communities

 Biographic Visual-Narrative Interpretative A Method of the Lived Life (Being/Space), Told Story (Becoming/Power) and Enstoried Lives (Belonging/Knowledge) This hermeneutic phenomenological study is situated in biographic-­ narrative interpretative and visual methodology due to its “primacy of practice” (Van Manen, 2014, p. 67). Stories are not just about practices,

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B1) TIME Visionary third eye B2) BECOMING Farsighted eyes

A1) SPACE Infinity open second skin

C1) CHRONOTOPES as multi-dimensional symbols Spirited air C3) KNOWLEDGE Heartened lungs

C2) BELONGING Regenerative breath

B3) CULTURAL MEMORY Malleable spinal cord

C4) SYMBOLIC NARRATIVES Webwork heart

B4) STORIES Broad-minded brain

A3) STRUCTURE Unclogged blood vessels A2) BEING Sutured skin

A4) DISCOURSES Fluid blood

Fig. 3.8  The narrative-respiratory system of belonging to knowledge communities, storied-­nervous system of becoming modern peoples and discursive-circulatory system of being a person

as Fay (1996) argues, but of them. The narrative construction of individual and social identities through stories we tell ourselves and others to make sense of social action is not just a socio-political practice, but it is a practice in itself. Narrative is central to understanding human action because in our lives we not only live and tell stories, but we also understand our lives (and those of others) in terms of stories. Our lives feed into stories and stories feed back into our lives, changing our interpretation of “self ” and narrative forms of being “what I am”, becoming “who I am” and belonging “where I am”. Fay (1996) writes: Stories are lived because human activity is inherently narratival in character and form: in acting we knit the past and future together. But stories are also told in that with hindsight we can appreciate narrative patterns, which we could not appreciate at the time of acting. We tell stories in acting and we continue to tell stories afterwards about the actions we have performed. Our lives are enstoried and our stories are enlived. (p. 197)

The interpretation of “who” is mediated through the reflective application of narrative configurations which take the form of description, narration and prescription (Ricoeur, 1992). In his chapter, “Life in Quest of

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Narrative”, Ricoeur (1991b) explains that hermeneutics or the art of interpretation lies in between the “internal configuration of a work and the external refiguration of life” (p. 67). The external refiguration of social action occurs through the internal configuration of a life in a narrative form in which social action is made meaningful through its position in the plot of a life narrative. In this way, forms do not only configure internal works of narrative fiction but also externally refigure political life. In their article, “Narrative Possibilities: Theorizing Identity in a Context of Practice”, Jill Bradbury and Ronald Miller (2010) explain that, according to Ricoeur, a narrative text is constitutive of human action and could be a framework for meaning, thus mediating self-knowledge through distanciation, explanation and appropriation: this dialectic of distanciation and appropriation can be applied in the reading of texts (of the logocentric or indeed other varieties), but also that we can treat our lives, ourselves, the human life-world of action as a kind of text: read them, interpret them, appropriate their meanings across a distance. (p. 694)

In other words, textuality is a model for human action (Ricoeur, 1981). Stories are not only recounted through the mode of metaphorical language but “also lived in the mode of imagination” (Ricoeur, 1991b, p. 27). Several layers of meaning unfold in the process of deciphering and interpreting human action because metaphorical language has a double meaning (Ricoeur, 1981). Narrative mediates the interpretation of relational selves through historical and fictional narratives, thus “making the life story a fictive history or … a historical fiction” (Ricoeur, 1991a, p. 73). Through the reflective application of narrative plots from history and fiction, lives become more readable and intelligible (Ricoeur, 1991a). This book utilises a “Biographical Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM)” (Wengraf, 2011) as a way of differentiating between the context of the “lived life” (i.e. the life events as discursively experienced) and the form of the “told story” (i.e. the retrospective reordering of sequences of events and experiences through the narrative mechanism of emplotment). Wengraf (2011) explains that the biographical narrative interpretive method adopts a “psycho-societal” approach because it facilitates an integrative analysis of psycho-dynamics and socio-dynamics in which the

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focus is not only on the “inner worlds” and subjectivity(ies) but also the macro-societal and the meso-institutional worlds in which we participate. The psycho-societal approach to differentiating between the lived life and told story creates a useful dialogue between contradictory layers of meaning and a better understanding of individual and social change (Andrews, Squire, & Tamboukou, 2013; Wengraf, 2011). However, meaning is not only constructed and communicated through language and speech but also through visual representations of experience. Time and space intersect and fuse in objects, which enables an object to “hold” memories of symbolic significance. Therefore, I propose that it would be useful to add a visual component to the biographical narrative interpretive method in the form of “objects” which are symbolic of one’s past, present life and projected future. Kuhn (1995) proposes that memory texts involve snapshots because the language of memory appears to be “above all a language of images” (pp. 5–6). Ricoeur (1984; 1991b) explains that a plot, as the mimesis of action, comprises the following three features: (1) prefiguration, (2) configuration or emplotment and (3) refiguration. I will now discuss the prefiguration of the lived life, configuration or emplotment as the told story and refiguration of the self. First, Ricoeur (1991b) shows that prefiguration or “preliminary competence” (p. 54) is needed to understand the symbolism of human action. In other words, Ricoeur (1984) writes, “to imitate and represent action is first to preunderstand what human acting is, in its semantics, its symbolic system, its temporality. Upon this preunderstanding, common to both poets and their readers, emplotment is constructed and, with it, textual and literary mimetics” (p. 64). The second feature of a plot, configuration or emplotment, involves the configuration of disparate events and experiences into a unified told story. The plot functions to reorder heterogenous factors in such a way that particular people, events, experiences, interactions and happenings make up a unified story that is both concordant with and discordant to the “development goal” or “evaluative endpoint” (Gergen & Gergen, 1986). Through the mechanism of a plot, narrative mediates permanence and change into a “model of discordant concordance” (Ricoeur, 1984) in which a narrative identity of a character could be known correlative to the discordant concordance of the story itself (Ricoeur, 1991a). The third feature of a plot, refiguration, refers to the point at which the text and the world of the reader intersect (Ricoeur, 1984).

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Narrative mediates self-knowledge as an interpretation in which the self is malleable or “figure-able”. As Ricoeur (1991a) notes: “What the narrative interpretation properly provides is precisely “the figure-able“ character of the individual which has for its result, that the self, narratively interpreted, is itself the figured self—a self which figures in itself as this or that” (p. 80). Due to the fact that form is inextricably entangled with material conditions, there is a  dialectical interplay between the “figure-­able” self as shaped by the world which in turn shapes the world in which she acts. As Butler (1997) explains, “the power that initiates the subject fails to remain continuous with the power that is the subject’s agency” (p. 12). Bradbury and Miller (2010) remind us that human lives are not reducible to the symbolic realm of abstract language and culture, therefore, they pose the following crucial questions: can [we] compose imaginative stories of a future that can alter the quality of that future for individuals and collectively for society … What stories can or should we make available to young people in envisaging new possible lives? Who chooses these stories to tell? Can we engender new alternatives simply by telling different kinds of stories? How do these different stories articulate with or challenge the very real material constraints on these young people’s lives? (p. 699)

In closing the gap between our material-discursive, embodied and symbolic realities, it is important to be more attuned to the dissonances between the world of the text and the world of lived experience, without falling into the “dual traps of nostalgia and romantic idealism” (Bradbury & Miller, 2010, p. 699). In closing this gap, Freeman (1993) suggests that we pay close attention to how narratives are socially constructed by identifying the various ways in which particular stories are valued and others sanctioned. Following Bishop, Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) shows that as a research tool, “story telling is a useful and culturally appropriate way of representing the ‘diversities of truth’ within which the story teller rather than the researcher retains control” (p. 146). Tuhiwai Smith’s book, Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, has inspired the development of innovative visual research methods and participatory approaches such as photovoice, autoethnography and storytelling (see, e.g. Adams,

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Dobles, Gómez, Kurtiş, & Molina, 2015; Botsis & Bradbury, 2018; Bradbury, 2017; Bradbury et al., 2012; Brannelly, 2016; Canham, Kotze, Nkomo, & Nkomo, 2020; Carolissen & Kiguwa, 2018; Chilisa, 2011; Cornell & Kessi, 2017; Fredericks & Adams, 2011; Kessi, 2011, 2017; Kiguwa, 2014; Kessi, Kaminer, Boonzaier, & Learmonth, 2019; Patel, 2015; Segalo, 2011, 2016; Segalo, Manoff, & Fine, 2015; Sonn, Stevens, & Duncan, 2013). For example, Puleng Segolo,  in her article,  “Using Cotton, Needles and Threads to Break the Women’s Silence: Embroideries as a Decolonising Framework (2016)”, asks how do Black South African women who grew up during apartheid “use artistic forms such as embroideries to re-stitch their lives and make meaning of their newly found ‘freedom’?” (p. 250). Segolo (2016) contends that artistic forms such as embroideries could be viewed as “mov[ing] towards decoloniality in that their work expresses the taken-for-granted everyday struggles” (p. 259). I have suggested that social locations and the practice of identification and emotional attachments to various collectivities and groupings hinge on narrative identity through which agents meaningfully reflect on and reposition themselves in alternative discourses through the narrative mechanism of emplotment. However, this re-positioning in alternative discourses occurs within conditions of impossibility because of the ways in which social constructions of self and identity are forced onto particular groupings and collectivities. Marginalised and excluded groupings have used the narrative mechanism of emplotment to forge a politics of resistance and a means through which to “[carve out and legitimise] alternate subjectivities not readily available to them in normative contexts such as higher education” (Carolissen & Kiguwa, 2018, p. 9). Narrative approaches offer a way of affirming and centring the life histories and stories of excluded groupings, whose narratives or knowledges have remained at the margins in the representation of reality. Ronelle Carolissen and Peace Kiguwa (2018) explain that storytelling does not merely transmit information, but rather people use narrative to construct individual and collective subjectivities: Narrative approaches offer us a framework for theorising how the much-­ talked-­ of “legacy of apartheid” surfaces in the “narrative unconscious” (Freeman 2010) and how the past may be deployed in reactionary or progressive ways, often entangled, in the formation of contemporary South African subjectivities in higher education. (p. 2)

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Narrative approaches allow us to work with an individuals’ accounts of being, becoming and belonging over a life course as well as interrogate the social, economic, cultural, political and historical contexts in which “small stories” are located (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008). Aesthetic forms organise patterns of people’s experiences just as people re-organise their experiences of patterns which refigure aesthetic forms. These refigured forms of networked meaning, which collide with dominant forms of hierarchal power, have the capacity to shift embedded knowledge. In other words, aesthetic and embodied forms do political work because they “shape what it is possible to think, say, and do in a given context” (Levine, 2015, p. 5). Carolissen and Kiguwa (2018) propose that recollecting, articulating and archiving collective memory of traumatic histories in the context of higher education offers “possibilities of restoring, erasing or re-imagining the past for joint productive futures (Bell, 2010; Bradbury et al., 2012)” (p. 2). Carolissen and Kiguwa (2018) write: “[it is] imperative that we find ways to mobilise these histories as symbolic resources for understanding the articulation of present-day narratives and projected developmental storylines that may offer different future narratives (Andrews et al., 2013)” (p. 2).

Research Questions The analytic framework of (non)being (space), (not)becoming (power) and (no)belonging (knowledge), outlined in this chapter, has informed the conceptualisation of five sets of research questions. These sets of questions will provide a framing for the empirical-conceptual project of collating and analysing the participants’ oral narratives in order to build on their knowledges in developing an empirical-conceptual framework that accounts for the psychosocial re-formations and trans-formations of (non)being, (not)becoming and (no)belonging to knowledge communities in “post”-apartheid South Africa. The following sets of questions are presented separately in Chaps. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Chapter 5 (pathway A). A discursive-circulatory system of (non)being a “science person”: The lived social life of institutional culture

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The following research questions focus on the social construction of a color-line and zones of nonbeing a “science person”: A1) What does the material-discursive re-formation of zones of  non-­ being a “science person” entail? A2) What lived material-discursive reality does the re-formation of zones of nonbeing a “science person” create? How is the principle logic of inclusion in and exclusion from normative entities of discursive knowledge produced and what does this form of excluding knowing-how do? A3) What are the social effects of the re-formation of this lived material-­ discursive reality? A4) How is this material-discursive reality, and its social effects masked and re-formed? Conversely, the following research questions focus on the social construction of rhythmic infinity threads of being a science person: A1) What would the material-discursive trans-formation of being a science person entail? A2) What lived material-discursive reality would the trans-formation of being a science person potentially create? How is belonging (as a state of being) to networks of discursive knowledge produced and what does the valuing of this knowing-how do? A3) What would the social effects of the trans-formation of this lived material-discursive reality potentially be? A4) How could this material-discursive reality, and its social effects be unmasked and trans-formed? Chapter 6 (pathway B). A storied-nervous system of (not)becoming “modern” scientists: The told psychic life of pedagogy The following research questions focus on the psychical construction of hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines of not-becoming “modern” scientists. B1) What does the storied re-formation of not-becoming “modern” scientists entail?

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B2) What told storied reality does the re-formation of not-becoming “modern” scientists create? How is the principle logic of inclusion in and exclusion from normative entities of cultural knowledge produced and what does this form of excluding knowing-why do? B3) What are the psychical effects of the re-formation of this told storied reality? B4) How is this told storied reality, and its psychical effects masked and re-formed? Conversely,  the following research questions focus on the psychical construction of whole infinity loops of becoming modern scientists: B1) What would the storied trans-formation of becoming modern scientists entail? B2) What told storied reality would the trans-formation of becoming modern scientists create? How is belonging (as a state of becoming) to networks of cultural values produced and what does the valuing of this knowing-why do? B3) What would the psychical effects of the trans-formation of this told storied reality potentially be? B4) How could this told storied reality and its psychical effects be unmasked and trans-formed? Chapter 7 (pathway C-entre). A narrative-respiratory system of (no) belonging to knowledge communities: The collective psychosocial life of social scientific research The following research questions focus on the psychosocial construction of (neo)liberal-lines of inclusion in and exclusion from classed entities of knowledge C1) What does the symbolic narrative re-formation of the principle logic of inclusion in and exclusion from classed entities of knowledge entail? C2) What symbolic narrative reality does the re-formation of the principle logic of inclusion in and exclusion from classed entities of knowledge create? How is the principle logic of inclusion in and exclusion from classed entities of knowledge produced and what does this form of excluding knowing-that do?

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C3) What are the psychosocial effects of the re-formation of this symbolic narrative reality? C4) How is this symbolic  narrative reality, and its psychosocial effects masked and re-formed? Conversely, the following research questions focus on the psychosocial construction of infinity networks of belonging to knowledge communities: C1) What would the symbolic narrative trans-formation of belonging to knowledge communities entail? C2) What symbolic  narrative reality would the trans-formation of belonging to knowledge communities create? How is belonging (as a state of being) to networks of symbolic knowledge produced and what does the valuing of this knowing-that do? C3) What would the psychosocial effects of the trans-formation of this symbolic narrative reality potentially be? C4) How could this symbolic narrative reality, and its psychosocial effects be unmasked and trans-formed? Chapter 8  Towards a complex-reproductive system of (re)pairing being, becoming and belonging to knowledge communities in South Africa Drawing on the symbolic narratives or knowledges of the women in this research project, how could we formulate a conceptual-empirical framework that provides an account of the multiple systems, processes and organising principles involved in the material-discursive, storied, and symbolic practices of (non)being, (not)becoming and (no)belonging to knowledge communities in “post”-apartheid South Africa? Chapter 9  The Toroidal-maze of tragic love in motion: Proposing a complex systems programme model for translating theoretical pathways into social praxis How could the regulative principles of disempowerment which govern the material-discursive, storied, and symbolic practices of reproducing zones of nonbeing a “person”, not-becoming “modern” people and no-­ belonging to knowledge communities help us understand the operating

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system of white logic models? Conversely, how could we utilise the guiding principles of empowerment  which govern the material-discursive, storied, and symbolic practices of being, becoming and belonging in order to develop a complex systems programme model or strategy which disrupts white logic and reinvents innovative pathways in the direction towards liberatory terrain? How could we translate this conceptual-­ empirical framework into social praxis collectively  or a workable programme that is governed by the guiding principles of empowerment and trans-formations?

The Women in This Research Project  he “Recruitment” into a STEM Scholarship T Programme at an HWU The racialised gender gap in STEM fields raises critical concerns around the continued marginalisation of Black women in higher education and society. Several South African universities have responded to the challenge of recruiting and retaining Black women in STEM subjects in higher education by providing scholarship programmes, such as the Oya scholarship programme on which this research project is based. In 2007, the HWU study site7 introduced the Oya scholarship programme, which was implemented by the Transformation Office and coincided with the university’s transformation strategies that focused on attaining demographic equity and diversity as the cornerstones of academic excellence and innovation. From 2007 to 2011, I was employed as a support staff member in the Transformation Office which implemented, monitored and evaluated the student equity programmes at the HWU study site. The goal of the Oya scholarship programme (2007–2012) was “to provide first-generation, academically talented young Black South African women [whose families have scarce financial resources] with the necessary academic, social and financial support to graduate with STEM degrees”. Educators and school principals were invited by the Transformation Office to nominate Grade 12 learners who resided in the geographical areas of Gauteng, Limpopo and Mpumalanga, were in the top 5% of

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their Grade 11 class and achieved a minimum of 65% in Mathematics, Science and English on higher grade in their Grade 11 final examinations. A total of 20 students entering the university in 2007 and 2008 were awarded the scholarships; 10 students registered in the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment and the remaining 10 students registered in the Faculty of Science. Ten students resided in the geographical areas of Gauteng, seven from Limpopo and three from Mpumalanga. The Oya scholarship provided funding for a maximum of four years (plus one repeat year of study for students registered in the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment). Regarding the throughput rate of the Oya scholarship programme, 14 (70%) students failed a year of study: Two students failed their first year, six failed their second year and six failed their third year, of which, nine were registered in the Faculty of Science and five in the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment. Of these 14 students, 5 students were academically excluded, and 1 student dropped out of university in her second year of study.

An Invitation to Participate in This Research Project A purposeful method of recruitment was adopted as the women who participated in this research project were recipients of the Oya scholarship programme and were former students, graduates or academically excluded from a variety of STEM degree programmes at an HWU. Although young Black South African women in STEM fields by no means have the same experiences of being and becoming scientists, the assumption is that by living in a matrix of domination (Collins, 2000)8 this particular group could represent collective standpoints of diverse experiences and voices. A year after resigning from my position as a support staff member at the Transformation Office, I invited 17 women who were recipients of the Oya scholarship programme to participate in this research project, of which 14 women agreed to participate. The demographic profiles for each of the women are briefly presented under the pseudonyms in Table 3.1. In Chap. 4, the women’s lived lives and told stories will be presented in greater detail in relation to my own reflections of being a support staff member of their scholarship

isiZulu and seSotho Venda

Gauteng

Limpopo

Gauteng

Gauteng

Gauteng

Mpumalanga English

Limpopo

Alala

Ambani

Amirah

Ethwasa

Itumeleng

Kaiya

Kgnaya

sePedi

isiZulu

isiZulu

English

Home language

Home Pseudonyms Province Mother (domestic worker) Mother (teacher) Father (teacher)

Mother (Grade 8)

Mother (nurse) Father (selfemployed)

Mother (clerk)

Mother Father (teacher) (University) Father (teacher) Mother (University)

-

Mother (Grade 12)

Mother Mother (University) (teacher) Mother (nurse)

Mother (Grade 12) Father (Grade 12)

Parental occupation

Parental education

Table 3.1  Profile of the women in this research project

-

Chemical Engineering

Former Biological Model C Sciences

Agricultural Studies (previously Electrical Engineering) Former Biological Model C Sciences Former Biological Model C Sciences Former Biological Model C Sciences

Village

Former Architecture Model C

Secondary school Field of study

(continued)

Completed Honours in 2011. Unemployed Completed Honours in 2011. Unemployed in her field of study Honours

Masters

Academically excluded in 2010. Unemployed Deregistered in 2009. BSc (Agricultural Studies at another HWU) Masters

Academic level in 2012 (time of interview conversations)

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Gauteng

Gauteng

Gauteng

Limpopo

Gauteng

Naila

Nosakhele

Odirile

Takalani

Welile

Mamoratwa Limpopo

Gauteng

isiZulu & English

Mother Mother (stay-at-­home-­ (Grade 11) mom) Father (Technikon) Father (IT technician) Mother seTonga Mother (teacher) (Diploma) Father Father (principal) (Grade 12) Mother English Mother (administrator) (Grade 11) Father Father (unemployed) (Matric) isiZulu Mother (factory worker) Dad (driver) Mother seTswana Mother (bookkeeper) (Diploma) & Father (deputy English Father principal) (Diploma) TshiVenda Mother Mother (Diploma) (teacher) Mother (clerk) isiZulu Mother (part-­time university student)

Parental occupation

Khanyisile

Parental education

Home language

Home Pseudonyms Province

Table 3.1  (continued)

Aeronautical Engineering Former Biological Model C Sciences

Village

Former Architecture Model C

Completed Honours in 2011. Unemployed

Honours

Masters

Masters

Township

Biological Sciences

Masters

Computational Completed Honours in 2011. and applied mathematics Employed

Master’s degree on a part-time basis

Former Civil Model C Engineering

Village

Former Computer Model C Science

Secondary school Field of study

Academic level in 2012 (time of interview conversations)

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programme. The women were all Black university students or young professionals from multiple linguistic and cultural backgrounds and registered for a variety of STEM degree programmes. Although parents of six of the students had post-secondary education, all the women were first-­ generation entrants to university study in STEM fields. It is likely that these students are part of the so-called missing middle (Merten, 2015). Their experiences of university and working life are therefore to be read from this positionality. Nine of the 14 women had attended relatively well-resourced former Model C9 secondary schools in urban areas, while the remaining five women had attended schools situated in townships and their home villages.

Biographic Visual-Narrative Interview Conversations The biographic-narrative interpretative and visual methodology foregrounds the historical context of a life through a “‘situated telling of a whole story’ by an equally-situated subjectivity” (Wengraf, 2011, p. 51). Narrāre is “to tell the particulars of an event or an act” (Partridge, 2006, p. 2097). The key features of narrative are to tell others the particularities of actions, events and experiences in space and with time. The telling of events as experienced in space and the reconfiguring of told events as experienced with time re-forms and trans-forms chronotopes as expressed through symbols within space-time. “What I am” is the telling of events as experienced in space. To tell what I am is to feel and to act. It is my lived life as being in space. “Who I am” is the reconfiguration of told events as experienced with time. To enstory who I am is to think and to question. It is my told story as becoming with power. “Where I belong” is the re-telling of told events as collectively experienced through symbols. To narrate where I belong is to connect and create history. It is our enstoried lives as belonging within knowledge. The biographic narrative interview conversations10 with the 14 young women were divided into three parts (i.e. the lived life, told story and symbolic objects) with the aim of facilitating a discussion which is centred on the women’s realities, knowledges and theorisations of their experiences.

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Part One: Told Story The first part was a non-interrupted initial narrative of the story of their lives, their being and becoming scientists in the context of South Africa. I asked the women if they could tell me about all the events and experiences that have been important to them personally, up until the time of the interview conversation. I believe that listening is the first step towards political action. Instead of imposing ready-made criteria or the “research aims” onto them, listening requires an abandonment of my self in a quest to understand another’s perspective (Andrews, 2007; Frankish, 2009). This distanciation from oneself and the relinquishment of a ready-made criterion is an important moment of appropriation as an act of “letting­go” (Ricoeur, 1984). During the first part of the biographic interviews, the 14 women spoke about the stories of their lives for a total of 12 hours.

Part Two: Symbolic “Objects” In the second part, the women spoke about particular “objects” which represented their past, their life as university students (and their workplace, if applicable) and where they desire or hope to be in the future. Segalo (2011) proposes that visual images provide “a useful tool that can be used to represent people’s stories of oppression, liberation and survival. Visual images can be used purposefully to mediate reality in a performative way, and furthermore, they allow for collective emotional response” (p.  230). Before the interview conversations, I posed the invitation to choose an object as follows: “If you like, you could bring something that is important to you that represents your past, something that represents your life as a university student (and your workplace, if applicable), and something that represents where you see yourself in the future. It could be an image, photograph or picture. It could be an object of some kind that you have made, found, seen or has been given to you. It could be something more symbolic, like a song, poem, piece of writing or music, painting or picture. You could choose three things that feel meaningful in terms of conveying something important about your past, your present (life as a university student or your workplace) and your future”. The

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women chose to talk about the following objects which were symbolic of particular aspects of their selves and lives: A tree metaphor, house metaphor, iPod, scarf, poetry book and poems, friends T-shirt, ointment, African beads, theatre itinerary, photos, a jacket, watch, name tags, shawl, birthstone, bonsai tree, aloe plant, library card, teddy bear, medicine bottle, degree certificates, academic transcripts, awards evening itinerary, and Matric CDs, blazers and badges.

 art Three: Particular Incident Narratives P in the “Lived Life” By the end of part one and two, I had created a list of particular incidences that the women had raised in their stories about their lives and symbolic “objects”. In part three, we had a conversation about whether they remembered anything about the time, period, situation, occasion, event, day or moment when the particular incident happened (Wengraf, 2011). Therefore, the third part of the interview conversations focused on the particular incidents arising from events, experiences, generalisations and feelings that were mentioned in the whole story in part one and prompted by the objects in part two. During the second and third parts of the biographic interview conversations, the 14 women spoke about their symbolic objects and particular incidences in their lived lives for a total of 34 hours.

 Multi-layered Narrative Analysis of Context A (Being/Space), Form (Becoming/Power) and Content (Belonging/Knowledge) I worked with the context, form or structure and content of meanings “within” and “across” the women’s life narratives (Mishler, 1986). Being in real space is connected with the context of a lived life, becoming as imaginary power is connected to the form of a told story and belonging to symbolic knowledge is connected to the thematic content of collective lived stories and “enstoried lives” (Fay, 1996). The lived life is expressed

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through “small stories” (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008) which focus on the context of socially orientated narratives, whereas the told story is expressed through “big stories” (Freeman, 2006; Ricoeur, 1991a) which focus on the narrative form or structure of emplotment. In addition, collective lived stories and “enstoried lives” (Fay, 1996) could be approached through stories about material and/or symbolic “objects” which convey the thematic content of psychosocially produced narratives. One of the primary ways in which we construct meaning is through the ordering of time and space in narrative forms which structure our perceptions of the world. I have suggested that social locations and the practice of identification and emotional attachments to various collectivities and groupings hinge on narrative identity through which agents meaningfully reflect on and re-position themselves within conditions of impossibility, in alternative discourses through the narrative mechanism of emplotment. Therefore, the layered narrative analysis will focus on the structure of the women’s “big stories” which grapples with the thematic content and context of socially orientated narratives. Part one of the narrative interviews focused on the told stories of their lived lives (i.e. narrative-set 1). Their told stories are expressed through “big stories” where the structural analysis focused on their stories of (not) becoming in relation to  hierarchical and holistic forms of imaginary power (as will be discussed in Chap. 6). Part two of the narrative interview conversations focused on their symbolic objects that were representative of their past, present and projected future (i.e. narrative-set 2). In other words, the symbolic objects are representative of collective lived stories and “enstoried lives” (Fay, 1996) where the  thematic analysis focused is on their stories of (no)belonging in relation to entity and networked forms of knowledge/s (as will be discussed in Chap. 7). Part three of the narrative interview conversations focused on the lived lives or “particular incident narratives” (Wengraf, 2011) of their told stories and symbolic objects (i.e. narrative-set 3). Their lived lives are expressed through “small stories” where the positioning analysis focused on their stories of (non)being in relation to dividing and rhythmical forms of space (as will be discussed in Chap. 5). The real-world knowledge of lived experiences, which is partly learned subconsciously, is too complex to summarise into text and “onto paper”

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(Housel, 2018)11. Therefore, in an attempt to express the nuances of the women’s lived lives and told stories on paper, I have designed various models of storymazes in the following 11 layers of analysis.

L ayer 1 (Textual Content): Active Listening During the Interview Conversations and Transcription of the Audio Recordings into Narrative Texts The narrative interview conversations, which were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim, are in itself an interpretative task. The women have little control in directing how the narrative interviews are fixed into text or to re-present themselves and re-tell their stories in the manner of their own choosing (Frankish, 2009). Interview transcripts as narrative texts are snapshots of a life that is constantly in motion. Textuality is a model for human action in which the interpretation of human action is similar to  the process of constructing meaning in reading (Ricoeur, 1981 as cited in Bradbury & Miller, 2010). The interview transcripts as a narrative text are constitutive of human action and act as a framework for meaning in which understanding is mediated through distanciation, explanation and appropriation. Ricoeur (1984) conceptualises two poles of hermeneutics (i.e. faith and suspicion) as the art of interpreting different layers of meanings within a text “that aims less at restoring the author’s intention behind the text than at making explicit the movement by which the text unfolds, as it were, a world in front of itself ” (p. 81). Hermeneutic phenomenology challenges the researcher to “lose” oneself in the narrative text and mediate our understandings through the appropriation of meaning at and through a distance (Ricoeur, 1981). The process of “letting-go” and getting “lost” in the life of another is “the creative potential of the interpretive act to cross this distance, to engage that which lies outside of the familiar or taken-for-granted” (Frankish, 2009, pp. 39–40).

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L ayer 2 (Context): Constructing Biographical Chronologies of the Lived Life Once the interview conversations were transcribed, I constructed “biographical chronologies” (Wengraf, 2011) from narrative-sets 1–3 in the form of a timeline which depicts a progression of significant events that happened in the lived life of each person.

L ayer 3 (Context and Form): Identifying Topical Flows of Events and Experiences The third layer of positioning and structural analysis was guided by the following questions: What is the thematic content of the stories and how is the content organised in the told stories? Who are the main characters in the told stories and what purpose do they serve? Once the biographical chronologies were constructed, I then focused on the told story pattern per transcript (narrative-set 1). The telling of the told story pattern was analysed through the “Text Structure Sequentialisation” which subsequently informed a “Thematic Field Analysis” (Wengraf, 2011). The thematic field comprises recurrent themes which are woven through the events and experiences across the told stories. The sequence of these mutually inter-related themes, which comprise a told story, forms a patterned network of interconnected cross-references. The Text Structure Sequentialisation examines the action sequences which emerge in the narrative texts as reported activities and is based on the assumption that in every situation, an action represents a choice between a range of possible alternatives (Rosenthal, 1993; Wengraf, 2011). Narrative provides a method of “recapitulating past experiences by matching a verbal sequence of clauses to the sequences of events that actually occurred” (Labov & Waletzky, 1997, p. 12). I divided the flow of the women’s told stories per transcript into segments according to topical shifts. Text segments are chunks of interview text about a particular topic. In other words, I did not rearrange the order in which the topics were raised by the women, rather I identified the topical shifts in the “telling of their told story” (Wengraf, 2011). The

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x-axis in the storymaze represents the lived life in chronological time (i.e. from their date of birth, to the interview date in 2012, to their projected future), while the y-axis in the storymaze represents the told story in the temporal flow of their told stories. I numbered each segmented topic and then plotted each topic onto the storymaze according to the year in which it took place (i.e. x-axis) and the time when it was mentioned during the told story (i.e. y-axis). For instance, if the told story began with the topic of a birthplace, this topic was allocated number “1” and plotted onto the y-axis according to the time this particular topic was mentioned in the interview and the x-axis according to the date of birth. Once all the topics were plotted onto the storymaze, I then joined the topics by drawing lines from one topic to the next which revealed the flow of a told story and the relative amounts of total time (and text) that was dedicated to particular events and experiences. For instance, the “step” and “zig-zag” patterns illustrate how the women continually jumped back and forth in time in the telling of their told stories. The emplotment of topical events and experiences provide a skeleton structure of the gestalt or whole story. Storymazes were constructed for each told story which will be presented in Chap. 4 (see Figs. 4.1–4.14).

L ayer 4 (Context): Identifying the Tone of Talk Within Each Topic and a Critical Analysis of the Positionalities of the Participants and the Researcher The fourth layer of positioning analysis was guided by the following questions: How are their stories told? How does my positionality influence the ways in which the  stories are told? What is the tone in which the stories are told? What does the tone tell us about the significance of particular events and experiences that constitute the narrated story? How does the tone of talk demonstrate the ways in which the narrator re-­ positions herself in relation to others and the socio-cultural context? I then documented the “textsort” or the tone in which each woman spoke about a particular topic, for instance, whether she reported on (REP), described (DES), argued (ARG), narrated (PIN or GIN), evaluated (EVAL) or reflected (REF) on particular topical events and

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experiences in her told story. Following Labov’s analytic method, Wengraf (2011) differentiates between the following “textsorts”: Report clauses (REP) contain facts about what happened in which the narrator is emotionally distant from the experience. Descriptive clauses (DES) and orientation clauses provide a setting (e.g. Who is the story about? When did it happen? Where did it happen?) for the events of the story (Patterson, 2013). General incident narrative (GINs) is a pseudo narrative about typical situations in which general images, events and feelings are presented. Conversely, particular incident narrative (PINs and in-PINs) provides detailed descriptions of a particular incident, as if the narrator is “reliving [the] original experience” (Wengraf, 2011, p. 935). The emotional meaning is depicted in the detailed descriptions of particular incident narratives (Phoenix & Bauer, 2012). The clauses that comprise argumentation (ARG) are particular issues which are argued for or theorised from a particular present perspective, thus revealing the positionality of the narrator. Evaluation or reflective (EVAL or REF) clauses justify the crucial point or motivation for selecting and telling a particular story, thus revealing the valued message of the story as well as the narrator’s emotional connection to particular events and experiences (Patterson, 2013). These evaluation clauses are of crucial importance because they provide insight into the intention or reason as to why the narrator believes a particular event or experience is significant. In this layer of analysis, I have also critically analysed my own positionality and positioning during the interview conversations.

L ayer 5 (Context): Analysing Particular Incident Narratives (PINS) from the Narrator’s Lived Lives and Symbolic “Objects” The fifth layer of positioning analysis was guided by the following questions: Where are the particular details of the stories told? What is the socio-cultural context in which their stories are told? How does the interview context influence the kinds of stories that the women choose to tell (and not to tell)? What discourses do the women draw on in their talk about their participation in STEM subjects in higher education in South

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Africa? I analysed the particular incident narratives of the women’s told stories and symbolic “objects” (narrative-set 1 and 3) according to Labov and Waletzky’s (1997) six elements of a fully formed narrative, as described by Andrews, Squire and Tamboukou (2013): the abstract (a summary of the subject of the narrative); the orientation (time, place, situation and participants); the complicating action (what actually happened); the evaluation (the meaning and significance of the action); the resolution (what finally happened); and lastly the coda, which returns the perspective to the present. (pp. 8–9)

These elements of particular incident narratives provide insight into the women’s simultaneous membership of two “outlier” groups which creates shifting senses of belonging and alienation in academic communities aligned with white, male and middle-class normative constructions of Science and scientists (on which the stock story about academic “excellence” is evaluated against). The focus on positionality reveals the power relations at work in the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion or recognition, nonrecognition and misrecognition. The analysis from layers 2 to 5 will be presented in Chap. 5 in which I will discuss the women’s lived lives through their small stories of (non)being in relation to dividing and rhythmical forms of space.

L ayer 6 (Textual Content): Identifying Symbolic Themes or Motifs Across Different Topics of Events and Experiences The sixth layer of thematic analysis was guided by the following question: What is the thematic content of the told stories? In this layer of analysis, I identified recurrent and interrelated themes and motifs across various topics. The motifs across the women’s life narratives are represented in the storymazes by the typographical symbols of triangles, diamonds, squares or circles. For example, the theme of recognition and misrecognition is represented by a red triangle, motherhood by a green diamond and so forth. The themes and motifs across various topical events and experiences include the following: Significant others, motherhood, language,

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real and/or perceived barriers, recognition and misrecognition, Oya scholarship, expectations and aspirations, academic studies and career, academic failure and exclusion, and personal characteristics. These motifs are personal and symbolic symbols that are continually reworked and retold by the narrator over periods of time. For a list of themes and motifs per topic within each storymaze and across the storymazes, see Figs. 4.1–4.14.

L ayer 7 (Visual Content): Identifying Symbolic Metaphors Across Different “Objects” The seventh layer of visual and thematic analysis was guided by the following questions: What is the symbolic content of the objects? What metaphors do the women draw on in talking about symbolic objects? How do symbolic objects facilitate fluidity, movement and relationality between the telling of their told stories and lived lives? The analysis from layers 6 to 7 will be presented in Chap. 7 in which I will discuss the women’s lived stories and “enstoried lives” (Fay, 1996) through their collective stories of (no)belonging in relation to entity and networked forms of knowledge/s.

L ayer 8 (Form): Identifying Stages of Biographical Turning Points The eighth layer of structural analysis was guided by the following questions: How are the stories told? What is the structure in which the stories are told? How could biographical turning points change the course of a person’s (and institution’s) life trajectory? Various sets of topical events and experiences were then grouped into stages of “biographical turning points” in narrative-set 1 (Elder & Conger, 2014). Biographical turning points could be defined as chance events or particular decisions that, under specific circumstances, can set in motion a cascade of favourable and/or unfavourable experiences which literally change the trajectory of a person’s life (Elder & Conger, 2014).

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Biographical or chronotopic turning points are “spaces waiting to happen” through the course of a person’s life trajectory. Turning points are the traces of time and time is a spatial marker of turning points. Temporal and spatial determinations in life, literature and art are inseparable from each other, and are complicated by emotions and values (Bakhtin, 1981). Spatial markers are temporal shifts in that “time is known and actualized in space, becoming social reality by virtue of spatial practice. Similarly, space is known only in and through time” (Lefebvre, [1974]1991, p.  219). The storymazes are representative of spatial-temporal frameworks of meaning, in which temporal markers (i.e. lines) and spatial marks (i.e. topics) are inseparable from one another. The process of tracing of biographical turning points provides greater insight into the dynamics of personal and social change. The stages of biographical turning points are depicted on the storymazes with a dotted horizontal line (see Figs. 4.1–4.14).

Layer 9 (Form): Formulating Particular Storymazes The ninth layer of structural analysis was guided by the following questions: If a life was lived in this way, then why was the story told that way? (Riessman, 1993). How is the story told? What is the structure of the told story? How is social action made meaningful through its position in the plot of life narrative? How is meaning created from the ordering of time and space in the form of a story as a whole? I then focused on how the women use linguistic and cultural resources to impose an order on the flow of their lived experiences which not only provides insight into the content but also the forms of telling and meaning about experience (Riessman, 1993). I explored the diverse mechanisms that the women used to reorder space and time in narrative forms of storymazes, as a way of making meaning of events and experiences in their lives across different moments in time. Drawing on the notions of emplotment, “progressive narratives”, “regressive narratives” and “stability narratives” (Gergen & Gergen, 1986), I analysed the ways in which each told story was structured in relation to the following four components (in narrative-set 1): (1) the developmental goal of themes or what the story is about; (2) the

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emplotment of the developmental goal or how the beginnings, middles and endings of the story reorders the past, present and future in linear and non-linear fashion; (3) the step and zig-zag rhythmic patterns of topical events and experiences and (4) the tensions between “concordant discordance” and “discordant concordance” which create dramatic effects and a gradual build-up of suspense within the narrated story.

L ayer 10 (Form): Relating Different Storymazes and Identifying Patterns of Connections The tenth layer of structural analysis was guided by the following question: What possibilities do different patterns of storymazes afford? The following four patterns of connections between the women’s lived lives and told stories were identified: (1) labyrinth story, (2) rhythmic storymaze, (3) loop storymaze and (4) network storymaze. These patterns of connections vary from least connected to most connected. (In Chap. 6, I will discuss the various features which increase the level of connectivity and complexity in a particular storymaze). The analysis from layers 8 to 10 will be presented in Chap. 6 in which I will discuss the women’s told stories through their “big stories” of (not)becoming in relation to hierarchical and holistic forms of imaginary power.

L ayer 11 (Context, Form and Content): Identifying the Relationship Between Storymazes and Dialectical Forms in the Cover Image The eleventh layer of analysis was guided by the following question: How are the storymazes related to the dialectical forms of rhythms, boundless wholes and networks? First, rhythmical flowing threads are related to the spatial topics and tone of experiences within the storymazes (i.e. layers 2–5 of analysis which will be presented in Chap. 5). Second, networks are related to the spatio-temporal themes and motifs across the storymazes (i.e. layers 6–7 of analysis which will be presented in Chap. 7). Third, the boundless wholes are related to the temporal connections of spatial topics

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in the storymazes (i.e. layers 8–10 of analysis which will be presented in Chap. 6).

Conclusion This chapter has used the concept of forms to think with and through the logic of oppression in the form of Manichean hierarchical entities in relation to the logic of resistance in the form of rhythmic whole infinity networks. By drawing on Yuval-Davis’s (2006) analytics for the politics of belonging, I have developed three claims: first, to answer the question, What am I? is to tell how we are positioned in the world by social discourses. Discourses function as a performative and communicative double-sided speech act in that people choose particular words and grammatical features to convey particular meanings and to present themselves in a particular way to particular audiences. Second, in addressing the question, Where do I belong?, we use abstract language to make meaning of our social locations and express a sense of belonging (Botsis, 2015). Symbolic narratives function as an abstract structural form which (in)forms the construction of subjects and subject positions in the social world. Third, to answer the question, Who am I? is to tell the story of a life in the form of narrative identity. Stories function as a cognitive tool or instrument of invention that individuals and groups of people use  to reflect on and make sense of their affective sense of belonging to particular social locations in relation to others and in particular socio-political contexts. By adapting Maldonado-Torres’s (2016) “analytics of coloniality” (p. 20) and “analytics of decoloniality” (p. 30), I have compared the following constituent elements with particular bodily systems and body components to explain how the interrelation between the discursive-­ circulatory system of space (zones of non/being) and storied-nervous system of power (not/becoming) produces the symbolic narrative system of knowledge as a site of breathlessness (no-belonging) that simultaneously holds the possibility of expelling new air (belonging).

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1) Pathway A as the discursive-circulatory system of zones of (non)being: Space (second skin), being (skin), social structure-agency (blood vessels) and discourses (blood) 2) Pathway B as the storied-nervous system (not)becoming: Time (third eye), becoming (eyes), cultural memory (spinal cord) and stories (brain) 3) Pathway C as the narrative-respiratory system of (no)belonging: Chronotopes as symbols (air), belonging (breath), knowledge (lungs) and symbolic narratives (heart). Phenomenological hermeneutics and biographic-narrative interpretative and visual methodology have been utilised in this book because the stories we tell ourselves and others to make sense of social action is not just a socio-political practice, but it is a practice in itself. Textuality is a model for human action (Ricoeur, 1981). The analytic framework of (non)being (space), (not)becoming (power) and (no)belonging (knowledge), outlined in this chapter, informed the conceptualisation of five sets of research questions. A purposeful method of recruitment was adopted as the 14 women who participated in this research project were recipients of the Oya scholarship programme and were former students, graduates in (or academically excluded from) a variety of STEM degree programmes at an HWU. Last, I worked with the context, structure and content of meanings within and across the women’s life narratives and developed various models of storymazes in 11 layers of analysis, which I will now present in Chap. 4.

Notes 1. Nonbeing, not-becoming and no-belonging take the form of Manichean hierarchical entities. 2. Being, becoming and  belonging take the  form of  rhythmical whole infinity networks. 3. My thanks to Peace Kiguwa for introducing me to María Lugones’s methodology of “world”-travel. 4. McGee and Warms (2013) note that for Bakhtin “communication is a double-sided act and the audience holds as much power as the author when it comes to shaping the meaning of a text” (p. 43).

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5. Drawing on the work of Ahmed (2004), Smith (1990) and Harding (1991). 6. The term people of colour which is used in the context of the United States could sometimes also refer to Black people. 7. The gendered pattern in the higher education sector is reflected at the HWU study site where 66% of the students in the Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment are males and 34% are females, whereas in the Humanities this pattern is reversed with females making up 71% and men 29% of the student body. 8. Patricia Hill Collins (2000) describes the matrix of domination as follows: “the overall organization of hierarchical power relations for any society. Any specific matrix of domination has (1) a particular arrangement of intersecting systems of oppression, e.g., race, social class, gender, sexuality, citizenship status, ethnicity and age; and (2) a particular organization of its domains of power, e.g., structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal” (p. 299). 9. Former Model C schools refer to well-resourced schools that were formally reserved for White learners in South Africa under apartheid and opened up to Black learners in a limited and conditional way in the early 1990s (Hofmeyr, 2000). The single education system of the democratic state post-1994 ostensibly deracialises education but most former Model C schools are now very expensive, excluding Black pupils whose families have scarce financial recourses, and township and schools situated in villages remain homogenously Black. 10. This book is based on the interview conversations from my PhD research project (see, Liccardo, 2015). However, in this book I have reinterpreted and rewritten most of the content from my PhD thesis. 11.  My thanks to Nafisa Cassimjee for sharing this newspaper article with me.

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4 The Lived Lives and Told Storymazes of Young Black South African Women in STEM Fields

Introduction As a way of introducing the women (as the participants and interlocutors in this research project) and myself (as the researcher of this project and a former support staff member of their scholarship programme), this chapter will present individual portraits of the women’s lived lives and told stories, as they were at the time of the research. The focus will be on particular biographical turning points or moments of crisis in their lived lives which set in motion a cascade of particular experiences that changed the trajectory of their life paths. The women’s narratives will be foregrounded in the chapters to come, during which more will be learnt about them, while others will make less of an appearance. In Chap. 6 (Sect. “B4) Stories as Our Brain”), there is a detailed discussion of the various ways the women give shape to their lives in a story form that resembles the structure of a labyrinth, rhythms, loops and networks. I will also explain the four particular features which add complexity to the level of connectivity within and across the storymazes. Their individual

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stories not only offer “truths” that relate to real-life situations and lessons in education, but also provide a “roadmap” for resolving conflicts along various pathways in the symbolic maze of life.

Labyrinth Story Kgnaya Lived Life Kgnaya was born in her home village in Limpopo into a SePedi-speaking family. Kgnaya and her two younger brothers were raised by her mother and father, who are both high school teachers. She excelled in chemistry and mathematics, maintained her position as the top academic performer in her school from Grade 8 until 12 and held several leadership positions. Once Kgnaya was awarded the Oya scholarship in 2008, she enrolled for a BSc degree in Chemical Engineering at the HWU study site. During her first year of study, she became a member of the Golden Key International Honour Society for being in the top 15% of academic achieving students from all disciplines. Kgnaya mentioned that her first year at university was particularly challenging due to the negative attitudes and stereotypes she believed her lecturers and peers held towards Limpopoians. For instance, she recalls an incident in which her lecturer asked her peer who was disrupting class, “like are you from Limpopo?” and then her classmates started laughing. In response to her lecturer’s comment and peer’s laughter, Kgnaya mentioned that she asked herself “but what’s wrong with Limpopo?” She turned this particular incident into a value for herself by “showing them” or proving them wrong, as she states. Kgnaya noted that her life changed after failing a prerequisite course and repeating a second year of study: “I failed that one course and my life has changed. I’m never sure of anything anymore”. In 2012, she was in the process of completing her fourth and final year of study.

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Told Story Kgnaya chose five significant events and experiences in the telling of her told story (see Fig. 4.1). She begins her story with the leadership positions she held during her high school career and ends with her honours degree, which is currently the most difficult year. In the middle of her story, Kgnaya recounts her experiences of moving from her home village to an urban city and failing a year of study. Kgnaya:

And then my first time … with people from different cultures, it was the first time that I was exposed to such things … it was the first time of being in the room with Zulus, Pedis and others.

These events and experiences, which draw on five motifs, are recounted in a linear fashion which creates a sense of stability and certainty about the evaluative endpoints of her story.

Ethwasa Lived Life Ethwasa was born in Johannesburg into an isiZulu-speaking family. Ethwasa and her five siblings were raised by her father and mother, who is a nurse. Ethwasa mentioned that she received several awards at her school for academics, drama, public speaking, youth choir and leadership. She continued to take part in these extracurricular activities during university. Once she was awarded the Oya scholarship in 2007, she enrolled for a BSc in Biological Sciences at the HWU study site. Ethwasa also became a member of the Golden Key International Honour Society during her first year of study. After completing her Honours degree, she enrolled for her Master’s degree in 2011. Ethwasa mentioned that during the same year of her Master’s degree, her father passed away, which was devastating for her.

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Spatio-temporal motifs Language (Mis)recognition Academic studies and career Academic failure Personal characteristics Spatial topics 1. Multiple leadership positions during high school(ARG) 2. Moving to an urban city(REP) 3. Being introverted doesn’t bother me (ARG) 4. Since academic failure, I’m never sure of anything anymore (EVAL) 5. Honours has been the most difficult year (REP)

Fig. 4.1  Lived life and told story of Kgnaya

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Told Story Ethwasa chose five significant events and experiences in the telling of her told story (see Fig. 4.2). At the beginning of her story, she spoke about her long-lasting friendship with Khanyisile (who was also offered the Oya scholarship) and she

Spatio-temporal motifs Significant others Academic studies and career Spatial topics 1. My long-lasting friendship with Khanyisile (ARG) 2. I reinvented myself at university (ARG, PIN) 3. Leadership positions(EVAL) 4. My graduations were family celebrations (PIN) 5. When my father died, I lost all motivation (EVAL)

Fig. 4.2  Lived life and told story of Ethwasa

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ended with how she had lost all motivation when her father passed away. In the middle of her story, Ethwasa discussed the leadership positions she held at university, how she had reinvented herself at university and her graduations from university. Ethwasa: I always felt that I was a bit shy. I always felt like I wasn’t outgoing enough. So, coming to [this university] it was initially difficult to do that because no one knew me, so I took the opportunity to be more outgoing and ja it worked out. These events and experiences, which draw on two motifs, are recounted in a linear way which creates a sense of stability in her told story. Ethwasa selected a particular jacket and a medicine bottle as objects which represented her past, present life as a university student and the projected future.

Itumeleng Lived Life Itumeleng was born in Soweto into a SeTswana-speaking family. She has an older brother, and she was raised by her mother who is a laboratory clerk. Itumeleng’s father passed away when she was 13 years old. Itumeleng was one of the top ten academic achievers in her high school in which she excelled in biology, science and languages. After being awarded the Oya scholarship in 2008, she enrolled for a BSc in Biological Sciences at the HWU study site. Once Itumeleng completed her Honours degree, she mentioned that she was struggling to find employment.

Told Story Itumeleng selected ten significant events and experiences in the telling of her told story (see Fig. 4.3). She begins her story by mentioning that her father passed away when she was 13 years old and she ends with how she is unemployed after completing her honours degree. In the middle of her story, Itumeleng spoke

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Spatio-temporal motifs Significant others Real or perceived barriers Oya Scholarship Academic studies and career Spatial topics 1. My father’s death(REP) 2. My friendships and feeling smart (ARG) 3. Awarded the Oya scholarship (PIN) 4. Experiences of living at university residence (ARG) 5. Academic support from Oya peers(REP) 6. Chose Biological Sciences (ARG) 7. My department is white-dominated(ARG) 8. The process of getting into the Honours (REP) 9. Demographic equity needs to be increased in my department (ARG) 10. Unemployment (ARG)

Fig. 4.3  Lived life and told story of Itumeleng

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about receiving academic awards in high school and the Oya scholarship, her experiences of living at the university residence and the need for racial redress in her department. Itumeleng: So high school was fun, I think that’s where I got to, it shaped me the person that I am right now … and that is where I felt I was smart. It showed me and it made me into who I am. These events and experiences, which draw on four motifs, are also recounted in a linear fashion which creates a stable narrative or pathway from the beginning (“entrance”) to the end (“exit”) of the told story. Itumeleng selected her award evening itinerary, matric badges and photos as objects which represent her past, present life and the projected future.

Khanyisile Lived Life Khanyisile was born in Johannesburg into an isiZulu-speaking family. She has a younger sister and was raised by her stay-at-home-mom and father whose profession as an IT technician initially sparked her interest in computers. In addition to being in the top ten of academically achieving learners in her primary and high schools, she particularly excelled in and developed a passion for mathematics. Khanyisile also received several awards for drama, public speaking and leadership which continued into university. Similar to Ethwasa, Khanyisile continued to take part in these extracurricular activities during university. After Khanyisile was awarded the Oya scholarship in 2007, she enrolled for a BSc degree in Computer Science at the HWU study site. During her university studies, she mentioned that she failed a programming course which she attributed to her high school not having offered Computer Science as a subject. After the completion of her Honours degree, she was offered a job as an engineer at a South African university. In 2012, she was raising her one-year-old son with her husband and pursuing her Master’s degree on a part-­ time basis.

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Told Story Khanyisile selects eleven significant events and experiences in the telling of her told story (see Fig. 4.4). At the beginning of her told story, she spoke about growing up in a close-knit family and she ended with the leadership positions she held during her studies. In the middle of her story, she provides an account of being what I am by recounting her experiences of receiving awards for academics, drama and public speaking, adjusting to a male and white-­ dominated field of study and the difficulty in juggling a full-time job, while completing a Master’s degree. She also spoke about significant events, such as her graduations, 21st birthday, wedding day and the birth of her son. She mentioned that her graduation was significant because it inspired members of her community and family. Khanyisile: I think the best part of it [graduation] was the fact that my whole community was there, and it was so inspiring for them. And once I was walking through the streets, I was going to the shop and this little boy came up to me and said, ‘you know, the fact that you’ve graduated from [this university] is so inspiring and for me, I can even see myself going to university … it makes me feel like I can do it’ and that was amazing, ja, that was beautiful … it inspired a lot of people, not just the community but my family and I think that was the most important thing for my little sisters to also feel like they can do it and it [this university] is not for a certain type of people and that’s and that’s great. These events and experiences, which draw on six motifs, are recounted in a linear fashion which creates a sense of stability and certainty about the evaluative endpoints of her story. Khanyisile selected a poem about motherhood, African beads and a theatre itinerary as “objects” which represent her past, present life as a student and a working professional and the projected future.

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Spatio-temporal motifs Significant others Motherhood Real or perceived barriers (Mis)recognition Academic studies and career Personal characteristics Spatial topics 1. Growing up in a close-knit family (REP) 2. Awards for drama and public speaking (ARG, PIN) 3. Adjusting to male and white dominated environments at university (ARG, EVAL) 4. My graduations inspired my community (EVAL, PIN) 5. Juggling a full-time job and Masters degree (REP) 6. Drama at school taught me to be out spoken (PIN, EVAL) 7. My 21st birthday celebration (PIN, EVAL) 8. My wedding day (PIN, EVAL) 9. The birth of my son (PIN, EVAL) 10. My graduations (ARG) 11. Leadership positions during university(ARG)

Fig. 4.4  Lived life and told story of Khanyisile

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Rhythmical Storymaze Ambani Lived Life Ambani was born in her home village in Limpopo into a TshiVenda-­ speaking family. Her grandparents and parents who are both high school teachers raised Ambani and her four siblings. She attended three different high schools in her home village. Ambani stated that although her schools did not have science labs, computers or libraries, “like we didn’t have tables, sat on chairs and we wrote in our laps [but] I didn’t really care much about that because that all we knew … we didn’t really mind much about that”. In addition to maintaining her position as the top academic performer in her school from Grades 8 until 12, she was also a finalist in the Mathematics Olympiad and the vice-captain of the soccer team. After being awarded the Oya scholarship in 2008, she enrolled for a BSc degree in Electrical Engineering at the HWU study site. During her second year of study, Ambani decided to deregister from her degree in Electrical Engineering, terminate the Oya scholarship and register for a BSc degree in Agricultural Economics at another HWU. Her parents paid for her first year of tuition, after which she obtained a two-year bursary to complete her degree. In 2012, she was completing her third year of study in Agricultural Economics.

Told Story Ambani selects 19 significant events and experiences in the telling of her told story (see Fig. 4.5). Ambani begins her story with the place in which she was raised, she states, “so pretty much what I thought about [growing up] was just going to school, coming back nothing outside my village, I guess. Life was just what I knew at that time, my village and everyone so that was all I knew”. She ends her story by reflecting on the role that  the Oya scholarship played in her self-development. In the middle of her story, in a linear

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Spatio-temporal motifs Significant others Language (Mis)recognition Oya Scholarship Academic studies and career Personal characteristics Spatial topics 1. Growing up in my village (REP) 2. There was no need to learn English (REP) 3. Recognised for my academic performance (EVAL, ARG) 4. The infrastructure at first high school (ARG, EVAL) 5. Selected for a science and maths camp for women (EVAL, ARG) 6. In the top three of academic achievers in the second high school (ARG)

7. Career guidance trip (REP) 8. My ‘cheating boyfriend’ and my father’s intervention (ARG) 9. I applied for bursaries at my third high school (EVAL, ARG, PIN) 10. Choosing a career (REP) 11. Awarded for the Oya scholarship (ARG. PIN) 12. I hated Electrical Engineering at university (REP) 13. I applied for Agricultural Economics a t another university (ARG) 14. I dropped out of this university to pursue my interest in Agricultural Economics at another university (PIN, EVAL) 15. I received a two-year bursary during my first year studying agricultural economics (PIN, ARG) 16. Passion doesn’t automatically lead to discipline (REF) 17. The first university still feels like home due to social bonds (REF) 18. My siblings have learnt from my mistakes (REP) 19. Self-development (EVAL)

Fig. 4.5  Lived life and told story of Ambani

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fashion Ambani recounts the significance of receiving academic awards during high school and her journey of making the difficult decision to pursue her passion for Agricultural Economics at another HWU, which meant that she needed to terminate her Oya scholarship. Ambani:

I remember my mom was like broken, she was crying and on the other side, I still had to tell [the Oya scholarship manager] that I was leaving and that was really hard. That was, that was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life because that scholarship gave me everything, the support, like it was one-of-a-kind, but I had to be true to myself at the end of the day. I had to be true to myself.

In addition, Ambani selects a tree metaphor as an object which represented her past, present life as a university student and the projected future.

Naila Lived Life Naila was born in Johannesburg into an English-speaking family who practiced Islam. Their mother, who worked as an administrator and father who was unemployed raised Naila and her older brother. Growing up, Naila’s interest in buildings and civil engineering was sparked by her father’s construction company, which he closed down because his health had deteriorated from diabetes. In addition to receiving full colours for academics at her high school, she also held a number of leadership positions and participated in extracurricular activities, such as swimming, drama, debutants, public speaking, hockey and cheerleading. After being awarded the Oya scholarship in 2008, she enrolled for a BSc degree in Civil Engineering at the HWU study site. Similar to Khanyisile, Naila also found the programming course challenging because her high school did not offer Computer Science as a subject. After repeating her third year of study in 2010, Naila completed her four-year degree and subsequently started an internship at an engineering firm.

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Told Story Naila selected 18 significant events and experiences in the telling of her told story (see Fig. 4.6). She begins her story at the point where she is employed at an engineering firm and ends with her grandmother’s advice for Naila to travel and explore the world while she is still young, instead of worrying about marriage. In the middle of her story, Naila recounts her experiences of being a trainee civil engineer and her aspirations of becoming a professional engineer as well as an entrepreneur. She also provides an account of how she has become “who I am” by reflecting on the meaning of her secondary and university education and how her family and friends have been her driving force. Naila:

I want to give back to the community and do ‘Engineering without Borders’ and go to countries where they are in need of water and sanitation. So, if I can get the experience and come up with ways, I will give back, that’s what I want to do. Because what I realised now that you are working, you just work day and night for a pay cheque.

These events and experiences, which draw on five motifs, are recounted linearly which creates a sense of stability about the evaluative endpoints of her story. Naila chooses her matriculation CD, blazer and a friends T-shirt as objects that represent her past, present life as a young working professional and the projected future.

Nosakhele Lived Life Nosakhele was born in Soweto into an isiZulu-speaking family. She mentioned that she grew up in a family house with her grandparents, parents, three younger brothers and thirteen family members. Her father worked as a driver for a motor company and her mother was a factory worker.

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Spatio-temporal motifs Significant others (Mis)recognition Oya Scholarship Expectations and aspirations Academic studies and career Spatial topics 1. Adapting to my current job (ARG) 2. Mentored by the CEO (ARG) 3. Support and assistance from colleagues (ARG) 4. The emotional intelligence of my managers (PIN, EVAL) 5. I miss my varsity friends (REP) 6. The importance of software development in contemporary South Africa (ARG, EVAL) 7. Received mentorship by women (ARG, EVAL)

Fig. 4.6  Lived life and told story of Naila

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8. Job applications (REP) 9. Aspiration to register as a professional engineer and a Masters degree (REP) 10. I could then sign off projects without supervision (REP) 11. Family life (REP) 12. Currently focused on my career but aspire to have a family one day (EVAL, ARG) 13. Entrepreneurship aspirations (REP) 14. Aspirations to join ‘Engineering without Borders’ (ARG, EVAL) 15. Benefits of attending a former Model C school (REP, ARG) 16. My dad is my driving force (EVAL) 17. The university space, diversity and friendships (EVAL, ARG) 18. Advice from my grandmother (TIN)

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She was one of the top academic achievers in her high school. Nosakhele declined two bursaries to study a BCom degree and instead she enrolled for a BSc degree in Biological Sciences at the HWU study site of which she obtained a merit scholarship that only paid for her registration fees. Her parents subsequently took out a loan in order to pay for her first year at university. By the end of her first year she was offered three bursaries that would cover her tuition fees for the duration of her degree. Unlike all the other women who were awarded the Oya scholarship from their first year of study, Nosakhele received the Oya scholarship during her Honours year of study. When Nosakhele’s Oya scholarship funding ended, she secured additional funds for her Master’s degree by drawing on the social networks that she had formed from the Oya programme. She was nominated for a national prize as the best researcher in her field. During her Master’s degree, she was offered two bursaries and she earned an additional income as a tutor in her department, a gym instructor and selling make-up products. Nosakhele is also passionate about entrepreneurship as she was in the process of registering her fitness programme as a company.

Told Story Nosakhele selected 26 significant events and experiences in the telling of her told story (see Fig. 4.7). At the beginning of her story, she spoke about growing up in a family house with 20 family members and she ends her story with a party to celebrate her family’s new house. In the middle of her story, Nosakhele recollects the significant events in the process of how she had earned the funds to buy her parents a house. She also spoke about her passion for entrepreneurship, how she secured bursaries to fund her university studies and why she was nominated for a national prize as the best researcher in her field. Nosakhele chooses a house, birthstone and bonsai tree as objects that represented her past, present life as a university student and the projected future.

4  The Lived Lives and Told Storymazes of Young Black South… 

Spatio-temporal motifs Significant others Real or perceived barriers (Mis)recognition Oya Scholarship Academic studies and career Academic failure Spatial topics 1. Growing up in a family house with 20 family members (DES) 2. Parents did not have the funds to pay for university fees (ARG, PIN) 3. Passion for genetics due to teacher’s encouragement (PIN, ARG, EVAL) 4. Declined two bursaries to study BCom due to my passion for science (ARG, EVAL) 5. Diversified my degree to increase job opportunities (REP) 6. Academic failure (EVAL) 7. Death of my favorite aunt (REP, PIN) 8. I lost a sense of connection with God (REP) 9. Distractions at university (EVAL) 10. Accepted into Honours (REP) 11. Awarded the Oya scholarship for Honours degree (REP)

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12. 21st birthday and graduation celebration (ARG) 13. The benefits of life coaching (REP) 14. Part-time jobs (ARG) 15. Being and becoming a scientist (ARG, EVAL) 16. Sourced funding for my Master’s degree (REP, ARG) 17. Bursaries and part-time jobs during Master’s degree (REP) 18. Saved for bond to buy my family a new house but bond rejected (REP) 19. Additional part-time jobs and bond approved (REP) 20. My family and I moved into our new house (ARG, EVAL) 21. A breakthrough discovery in my research (ARG) 22. Working on a proposed PhD project with my supervisor (ARG) 23. I was nominated for a science award in this province (ARG) 24. I’m trying to register my [exercise club] as a small business (REP) 25. Tutoring and giving back to the community (ARG) 26. A party to celebrate our new house (REP, EVAL)

Fig. 4.7  Lived life and told story of Nosakhele

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Looped Storymaze Takalani Lived Life Takalani was born in her home village in Limpopo into a TshiVenda-­ speaking family. Takalani and her two younger sisters were raised by her parents, both of them high school teachers. Takalani’s father passed away when she was seven years old. Her mother, 28 years old at the time, had three children. She was one of the three top academic achievers during her high school career. In Grade 11 and 12, she was also the best overall academic achiever and best learner for mathematics and science. After obtaining multiple distinctions in her matriculation examinations, she was the 21st best academic achiever in the Limpopo province. In addition to her academic work, she was also a member of the ANC Youth League, the secretary of a committee and participated in Olympiads for science and mathematics in which she won a silver medal at the provincial Minquiz competition. After being awarded the Oya scholarship in 2008, she enrolled for a BSc degree in Aeronautical Engineering at the HWU study site. Similar to Khanyisile and Naila, she found the technical drawing course in Engineering particularly challenging because her high school did not offer a technical drawing course as a subject. Takalani failed her second year of study but by the end of 2009, she had passed the four repeat courses and proceeded to third year. During this time, the Oya scholarship funding ended, but she was offered a bursary from an aircraft corporation for the duration of her studies. In 2012, she was working towards completing her honours degree.

Told Story Takalani selected 16 significant events and experiences in the telling of her told story (see Fig. 4.8). She begins her story by stating, “I think my life really started when I passed my matric [and] I decided to come here and study Aeronautical

4  The Lived Lives and Told Storymazes of Young Black South… 

Spatio-temporal motifs Significant others Real or perceived barriers Oya Scholarship Expectations and aspirations Academic studies and career Academic failure Spatial topics 1. Transition to university (ARG, REP) 2. Financial support from the Oya scholarship (ARG) 3. Homesickness (ARG) 4. First encounter with academic failure, disbelief and confusion (EVAL) 5. Second encounter with academic failure and “I was emotionally depressed” (PIN, EVAL) 6. Therapy, prayer and growth (EVAL) 7. My lecturer's distrust of my academic ability (PIN) 8. My peer’s refusal to work with me in a group setting (PIN) 9. Being trained at the best university in Africa (ARG) 10. I prioritised my studies over my relationships (ARG) 11. Gratitude for all the university funding that I received(REP) 12. I’m fortunate compared to my peers (ARG) 13. Aspirations to provide career guidance at high schools (ARG) 14. Expectations to buy houses and cars (ARG, GIN) 15. The emotional scars of failure (EVAL, ARG) 16. My therapist is my mother away from home (EVAL, ARG)

Fig. 4.8  Lived life and told story of Takalani

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Engineering”. At the end of her told story, Takalani explains why her therapist from the Student Counselling Unit was “like a mother far away from home”. In the middle of her story, she recounts particular incidences of covert discrimination at university, and she reflects on how her experiences of academic failure have moulded her into the person she has become. These events and experiences, which draw on six motifs, are recounted in a non-linear fashion which creates many retrospective and prospective pathways that loop back into present perspectives. The tension between “concordance” and “discordance” in her story is created by moments of crisis in the form of academic failure. Takalani chooses her academic transcripts as objects which represented her past, present life as a university student and the projected future.

Amirah Lived Life Amirah was born in Johannesburg into an English-speaking family who practices Islam. Her mother who is a high school teacher and her father who was an Islamic Teacher raised Amirah and her two younger brothers. She attended an Islamic school from Grade R until Grade 9, after which she moved to another high school to complete Grades 10 to 12. Amirah not only excelled in biology, mathematics and languages but she participated in volleyball and netball and she held several leadership positions. She continued to partake in these extracurricular activities during university in which she was a class representative, secretary of a council and a member of the Golden Key International Honour Society. She was awarded the Oya scholarship in 2007, and although she was initially interested in studying Medicine or Psychology; she enrolled for a BSc degree in Biological Sciences at the HWU study site. In her second year of study, she met her current boyfriend, Rudo, who expressed his feelings for her through poetry. Although Amirah felt that Rudo was very romantic, she also expressed a sense of apprehensive that “he’s not Muslim, I can’t. And I was very, you know, there was like that ‘boundary’. There was no way I’m crossing this ‘boundary’. So, I told him that we should just be

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friends and oh I was just so horrific”. Amirah mentioned that it was at that point when Rudo began learning more about and studying Islam in depth. She passed her third year with distinction and subsequently enrolled for an Honours degree in Pharmacology. It was during this time when her father passed away. Shortly after Amirah was diagnosed with arthritis which she believed was her body’s way of processing the grief and devastation of her father’s death. During her Master’s year of study, Amirah and Rudo reconnected again. It had been three years since they had last spoke. She mentioned that it was through her conversations with Rudo that she realised the invaluable lessons her father had taught her and the profound impact he had on the person she has become.

Told Story Although Amirah selects 20 significant experiences in the telling of her told story, she begins by framing these experiences around four particular events: the Oya scholarship, her graduations, the death of her father and her relationship with Rudo (see Fig. 4.9). At the end of her story, Amirah mentions that she and Rudo agreed that marriage “is a good idea at some point”. In the middle of her story, Amirah connects these four particular events in the form of a story which provides insight into how she understands the significance of these events. Amirah chooses a watch, her degree, name tags and a shawl as objects that represented her past, present life as a university student and the projected future.

Kaiya Lived Life Kaiya and her younger sister were born in Mpumalanga and raised by their father who is self-employed and mother whose profession as a nurse initially sparked Kaiya’s interest in biology. Kaiya mentioned that her parents are proficient in English, Afrikaans and a  number of African

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Spatio-temporal motifs Significant others Oya Scholarship Academic studies and career Spatial topics 1. Four significant life events (EVAL) 2. Oya ‘sisters’ defined my university life (EVAL, ARG) 3. My peers made me re-evaluate the significance of religious practices and it strengthened my spiritual beliefs (ARG) 4. Oya’s financial support introduced me to an unfamiliar world (ARG) 5. Giving back to the community (ARG, REP) 6. The ending of the Oya programme (EVAL) 7. Learning to be financially independent (REP)

Fig. 4.9  Lived life and told story of Amirah

8. Life lessons from the Oya programme (ARG) 9. Honours year broke me and healed me at the same time (ARG) 10. The death of my father (PIN) 11. Symptoms of arthritis (PIN) 12. Conversations with Rudo and reflecting on the valuable lessons my father taught me (EVAL) 13. Rudo asked for my number (PIN, ARG) 14. We remained friends because he was not Muslim, at that point he started learning more about Islam (PIN, ARG) 15. Rudo and I didn’t talk much for two years (PIN, ARG) 16. When Rudo and I started talking again (REP) 17. Our first two dates (PIN, TIN) 18. Three-month relationship ‘trial run’ (PIN) 19. ‘Crazy Stupid Love’ (PINs) 20. Marriage is in our future (PIN)

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languages. Kaiya’s first language was initially Afrikaans, but from Grade 1 onwards she attended English medium schools. As Kaiya did not speak an African language, she mentioned that it “created a problem because it was now as if I was trying to be white and it wasn’t the case”. Therefore, she did gymnastics outside of school because she was ill-treated by her peers during her primary and high school years. She was also voted captain of her Gymnastics Club and her commitment to Gymnastics over eleven years culminated in numerous certificates, medals, trophies and provincial colours. When Kaiya finished Grade 7, she decided to live with her aunt in another province to attend high school by the coast. Kaiya spoke about the various ways in which her aunt was selfish and neglectful, thus resulting in returning to her family in Mpumalanga where she had completed Grade 8. In Grade 12, she received the prestige trophy for Afrikaans poetry, and she was in the top 20 academic performers of her grade. She was awarded the Oya scholarship in 2008, and although she was initially interested in studying Medicine or Forensics, she enrolled for a BSc degree in Biological Sciences at the HWU study site. Kaiya proceeded to pass her first, second and third years of study and she completed her Honours degree in 2011. A year after completing her Honours degree, she mentioned that she was struggling to find employment. As a number of her job applications were unsuccessful, she decided to work at a government office in Mpumalanga which was not in her field of study.

Told Story Kaiya selects 16 significant events and experiences in the telling of her told story (see Fig. 4.10). At the beginning of her story, she explains why she decided to pursue a degree in science and in the end, she spoke about her experiences of working in a government office. In the middle of her story, the tension between “concordance” and “discordance” is created by moments of crisis. In particular, being ill-treated by her peers and aunt which not only moulded her into the person she has become but also provided the impetus to choose “a career where I could indirectly help people and do it in

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Spatio-temporal motifs Significant others Language Academic studies and career Spatial topics 1. My decision to pursue a degree in science (ARG) 2. Being nannied by a white lady(ARG) 3. I learnt Afrikaans in preschool and English in primary school (ARG) 4. Using my hands to communicate with my parents as a child (PIN) 5. Ill-treated by my peers in primary school for not speaking an African language (EVAL) 6. Ill-treated by my peers in high school (EVAL) 7. My relationship with my mother and father (REF, TIN) 8. University as a place to be free (ARG, EVAL) 9. Returned home after Honours graduation and struggling to find employment (ARG, EVAL) 10. I moved in with my aunt to attend Grade 8 by the coastline (PIN) 11. Ill-treated by my aunt and I went back to my parents (PIN, TIN) 12. My aunt became my drive to succeed (EVAL) 13. Aspirations to help people in a boundary set environment (EVAL) 14.The importance of social bonds (EVAL, PIN) 15. Reflecting on the patterns in my life(ARG, EVAL) 16. My experience of working in a government office (ARG)

Fig. 4.10  Lived life and told story of Kaiya

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the right way, do it in a boundary set environment”. These events and experiences, which draws on three motifs, are recounted in a non-linear fashion which creates a sense of instability and uncertainty about the evaluative endpoints of her story. Kaiya selects her matriculation CD, degree and teddy bears as objects which represent her past, present working life and the projected future.

Network Storymaze Odirile Lived Life Odirile was born in Soweto into a Tswana-speaking family. She was raised by her mother who is a bookkeeper and father, a deputy principal. Her grandparents also played a central part in her upbringing. She had two younger brothers; her first brother passed away at the age of two from a heart condition. In addition to being one of the top ten academic achievers throughout her high school career, she also held a number of leadership positions and participated in hockey, tennis, swimming, poetry and drama. She won numerous awards for art, mathematics and biology. During her high school career, she was faced with several disruptions at home in which she needed to move house a few times. She was awarded the Oya scholarship in 2007 and although she was interested in studying Medicine, she enrolled for a BSc degree in Architecture at the HWU study site. Odirile passed her first, second and third years of study and completed an internship at an Architectural firm. Once she obtained her Honours degree and completed an internship at an Architectural firm, she enrolled for a Master’s degree in 2012.

Told Story Odirile selects 26 significant events and experiences in the telling of her told story (see Fig. 4.11).

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Spatio-temporal motifs Significant others Real or perceived barriers (Mis)recognition Oya Scholarship Academic studies and career Personal characteristics Spatial topics 1. Moving house three times (REP) 2. Being hospitalised with meningitis (PIN) 3. I loved school (REF) 4. The birth of my brother (REP) 5. Family holidays (REP) 6. Attending a former Model C school and difficulties with school fees (REP) 7. The death of my aunt and younger brother (EVAL) 8. Grasping my high school spatial set-up (REP, ARG) 9. Difficulties with paying school fees on time (REP) 10. my mom was hospitalised (ARG, EVAL) 11. Disruptions at home (ARG, EVAL) 12. I stayed with my dad to attend same school (REP, ARG)

Fig. 4.11  Lived life and told story of Odirile

13. I went to the clinic for a sports injury (ARG) 14. Encouragement from my maths teacher (ARG) 15. Chosen to be a prefect (ARG, EVAL) 16. I went to hospital for a hockey injury and my mother’s concerned reaction (ARG, EVAL) 17. I moved in with mother (REP, ARG) 18. Accepted into architecture (REP, ARG) 19. Awarded the Oya scholarship (PIN, ARG, EVAL) 20. The financial difficulties during university as compared to white counterparts (PIN) 21. Assistance from lecturer helped improve my marks (ARG, PIN) 22. Discrimination in the department (PIN, ARG, EVAL) 23. Discrimination in the workplace (REP, ARG, PIN) 24. Introduction to Critical Race Theory and Black feminism only during postgraduate studies (EVAL) 25. My lecturer and mentor left the department because the politics was too heavy (REP, ARG, EVAL) 26. My love-hate relationship with architecture (EVAL, REF)

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She begins her story with how she moved back and forth between her parents’ house and grandparents’ house, and  ended with her love-hate relationship with architecture. In the middle of her story, Odirile recollects multiple disruptions during her upbringing and her experiences of covert discrimination in her department which left her with a sense of uncertainty about herself. Odirile continued to speak about her experiences of studying architecture through the objects of an iPod, scarf and poetry book.

Welile Lived Life Welile was born in Soweto into an isiZulu-speaking family and raised by her mother who works as a clerk and is a part-time student at university. Welile’s maternal family members also played a central part in her upbringing. She mentioned that while she was in primary school many of her maternal family members fell ill and passed away. Upon reflecting on the Model C schools that she had attended, Welile stated that “my mom always took me to schools that she couldn’t afford because she always believed that she needs to try and give me a better education”. In addition to being awarded a high school scholarship for being one of the top two academic performers in Grade 8, she also held several leadership positions. She recalls a time in which she won a national writing competition for her poem which was one of the ten poems selected out of thousands of entries. Her father contacted Welile for the first time when she was in Grade 11. She subsequently met her father and stepsisters. She was awarded the Oya scholarship in 2007 and although she had initially applied for an LLB degree at another university, she enrolled for a BSc degree in Biological Sciences at the HWU study site. Although Welile failed a prerequisite course twice and was academically excluded from university, she was given permission to proceed to third year, while repeating the prerequisite course. Once she had passed her third year of study and the prerequisite course, she enrolled for an Honours degree. Similar to Itumeleng and Kaiya, a year after completing her Honours degree, she

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mentioned that she was struggling to find employment within her field of study. During this time, she became a mother to a baby boy.

Told Story Welile selects 22 significant events and experiences in the telling of her told story (see Fig. 4.12). At the beginning of her story, she spoke about how she met her father and stepsisters for the first time when she was in Grade 11 and at the end of her story, she shared her experiences of giving birth. In the middle of her story, Welile reflects on her experiences of academic exclusion, her mother’s sacrifices and her journey of becoming a mother to a baby boy. Welile selected an Aloe plant, poetry book and library card as objects that represent her past, present life and the projected future.

Mamoratwa Lived Life Mamoratwa was born in her home village in Limpopo into a SePedi-­ speaking family. She was the second born in her family with two younger siblings and an older sister who passed away in 2012. Their father is a principal and mother a high school teacher. For the first five years of her life, Mamoratwa was raised by her father and grandparents because her mother went to college to do a teaching diploma. Mamoratwa attended a primary school in her home village but when Mamoratwa was in Grade 4, her parents wanted her to learn English, so they sent her to a primary boarding school in the town of Polokwane. As Mamoratwa missed her family, she returned home two years later and completed her schooling at her home village. Mamoratwa mentioned that she started dating her current boyfriend, Kgwerano and now father of their daughter when they were in Grade 9. Kgwerano was also one of the best academic performers in his grade, so they competed with and supported each other. During her primary and high school career she excelled in all her subjects,

4  The Lived Lives and Told Storymazes of Young Black South… 

Spatio-temporal motifs Significant others Motherhood Real or perceived barriers (Mis)recognition Expectations and aspirations Academic studies and career Academic failure Spatial topics 1. First meeting with my father who was absent growing up (PIN, EVAL) 2. A series of deaths in my family (REP) 3. The sacrifices my mother made for me (REP) 4. Three particular opportunities (PIN) 5. I chose science instead of law (REP) 6. Failure and disbelief (PIN) 7. From academic exclusion to re-admission (PIN, EVAL)

Fig. 4.12  Lived life and told story of Welile

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8. Belief in my potential by the HOD (ARG) 9. Set an example for my mentees (ARG) 10. Favoritism towards my white counterparts (ARG, EVAL) 11. Physical exhaustion (PIN) 12. Multiple roles as a woman (ARG) 13. Self-motivation (EVAL, ARG) 14. Acculturation to university life (EVAL) 15. Unemployment (REP) 16. Employment for two months (REP) 17. Volunteer work (REP) 18. Financial aspirations (PIN, EVAL) 19. My mother is my rock (EVAL) 20. The value of friendship (EVAL) 21. What is means to be a woman and a graduate (ARG) 22. My experience of giving birth was painful (EVAL)

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particularly in mathematics. In addition, she received many awards for maths Olympiad competitions and the Science and Technology Mintek Minquiz. She was the top academic performer in her school from Grades 8 until 12 and the second best matriculant in her district. Mamoratwa recalls that she was three months pregnant by the time she wrote her final matriculation examinations, but she had told nobody about her pregnancy, including Kgwerano because his mother had recently passed away. She was subsequently accepted into Actuarial Science at two HWUs and offered full scholarships by both universities, one of which was the Oya scholarship. When Mamoratwa’s parents became aware of her pregnancy, they asked her whether she wanted to stay at home to take care of her child or whether she wanted to go to university while they looked after their granddaughter. Mamoratwa accepted the Oya scholarship and she enrolled for a BSc degree in Computational and Applied Mathematics at the HWU study site. She gave birth to her daughter during her first-year examinations, all of which she passed, and she subsequently returned home to Limpopo regularly to spend time with her daughter. Mamoratwa mentioned that her first year at university was challenging because of the unfamiliarity with information technology. In addition, her high school did not provide sufficient information to make an informed career choice. Similar to Kgnaya, Mamoratwa also mentioned that she was appalled by the negative attitudes and stereotypes that her peers held towards Limpopoians. She passed her second and third years of study and subsequently enrolled for an Honours degree. After graduating as one of the top performers in her class, she accepted a job at a bank as a trader. During this time, her older sister passed away and she became the financial provider of her family.

Told Story Mamoratwa selects 18 significant events and experiences in the telling of her told story (see Fig. 4.13). She begins her story with how she was raised by her father and grandparents for the first five years of her life and her story ends with the death of her older sister. In the middle of her story, Mamoratwa spoke about

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Spatio-temporal motifs Significant others Motherhood Language (Mis)recognition Academic studies and career Personal characteristics Spatial topics 1. Raised by my father and grandparents for the first five years of my life (REP, DES) 2. I was too intelligent to stay in pre-school (REP) 3. My parents sent me to a boarding school in town to learn English, but I returned home two years later (REP) 4. I disappointed my father when I was the secondbest academic performer in my school (ARG, PIN) 5. Being perceived as the ‘good’ and ‘smart’ girl at home (ARG) 6. My 90% average did not seem good enough for my mother (EVAL, ARG)

7. Wrote my matriculation exams three months pregnant (ARG, PIN) 8. Parental support during pregnancy (PIN, ARG) 9. Support from Oya scholarship during pregnancy (ARG, PIN) 10. Registered for my second choice of study, Computational and Applied Maths, CAM (ARG, PIN) 11. Support from friends during pregnancy (ARG, GIN) 12. Giving birth to my daughter (PIN) 13. I lost hope in studying my first choice of study, Actuarial Science (REP) 14. Being faithful to my baby (EVAL) 15. Developed a passion for CAM (EVAL, ARG) 16. External reinforcement to study (REF, GIN) 17. Passionate about my job (ARG) 18. Death of my older sister and financial provider for my family (ARG)

Fig. 4.13  Lived life and told story of Mamoratwa

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the pressures of being a top academic achiever and her experiences of being pregnant during her final matriculation examinations and first year at university. She tells her story in a non-linear fashion which creates many retrospective and prospective pathways that loop back into present perspectives. Mamoratwa selected photos as objects that represent her past, present life as a young working professional and the projected future.

Alala Lived Life Alala was born in Johannesburg into an isiZulu and seSotho-speaking family. She has two older brothers and her older sister passed away at the age of 32. Alala was in her first year of study at the time. Her mother, who worked as a domestic worker raised Alala and her siblings. Their father passed away when Alala was nine years old. After receiving awards for her academic achievement in Grade 7, she was offered a bursary to attend a former Model C high school. In addition to being an academic achiever throughout her high school career, she also held several leadership positions and participated in public speaking and poetry, and as a writer for the school newspaper. She particularly excelled in art, mathematics, biology and languages. She was awarded the Oya scholarship in 2007 and although she was also interested in studying a BA in Fine Arts, she enrolled for a BSc degree in Architecture at the HWU study site. Four years later, Alala was academically excluded from university for failing her repeat third year. After completing an internship as a trainee architect at an architectural firm in 2011 and doing contract drawing work at the beginning of 2012, she mentioned that she was subsequently unemployed. As Alala was the only person who was academically excluded from university to voluntarily agree to participate in this study, her narratives and insights will be emphasised throughout the coming chapters.

Told Story Alala selects 24 significant events and experiences in the telling of her told story (see Fig. 4.14).

4  The Lived Lives and Told Storymazes of Young Black South… 

Spatio-temporal motifs Significant others Real or perceived barriers (Mis)recognition Academic studies and career Academic failure Personal characteristics Spatial topics 1. No awards at prize giving (PIN) 2. Won an art competition (PIN, GIN, EVAL) 3. Library and art studio are my sanctuary (ARG) 4. Found my voice through public speaking (ARG) 5. Awards are no longer important to me (ARG) 6. I would dream of saving the world (TIN, ARG) 7. Obtained a high school scholarship with the help of my teacher (REP) 8. A teacher became like a second parent to me (REP, GIN) 9. I lost touch with my creativity (EVAL) 10. I am my family’s retirement plan (ARG)

Fig. 4.14  Lived life and told story of Alala

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11. I chose architecture instead of fine arts (ARG) 12. My mother’s anxious dream (EVAL) 13. Worked hard but obtained average results at university (ARG) 14. No space for my background knowledge at this university (EVAL, ARG) 15. Eurocentric education in my department (EVAL, ARG) 16. Fighting to be heard strengthened my values (EVAL) 17. The importance of supportive friendships (ARG) 18. Music, poetry and creative writing (ARG) 19. My talent lies in translating imagery into words (EVAL) 20. The importance of supportive people (REF) 21. I fought, I worked hard. It’s sad that I didn’t make it through my entire degree. It hurts (EVAL) 22. I was underestimated as an intern (EVAL, ARG) 23. Unemployment is better than killing my passion at university (EVAL) 24. I aspire to be free, explore, learn, and grow (EVAL, REF)

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She begins her story with a particular incident from her childhood in which she received a handmade certificate from her art teacher, instead of a formal award at her school’s annual prize-giving. She explains that it was at this point when “my sense of … believing in myself in terms of creativity started”. At the end of her story, Alala referred back to “the early me, who hasn’t changed much. I mean, I still want to learn, just learn, find understanding, a fulfilled life”. In the middle of her story, Alala spoke about who she was at the beginning when creative artwork was “soul work” for her (i.e. point A or childhood) to why she almost lost touch with her sense of creativity in the end (i.e. point B or young adulthood). She states, “I lost, I don’t know—I didn’t, I didn’t lose it—but it’s hard to get back to that point”. By moving back and forth from point B to point A, she tells her story in a non-linear fashion which not only creates multiple retrospective and prospective pathways that loop back into present perspectives but also a sense of instability and uncertainty about the ending of her story. This tension between “concordance” and “discordance” in her told story is also reflected in the tree metaphor which Alala selected as an object to represent her past, present life and the projected future.

Sabrina Liccardo (the Researcher on This Project) Lived Life I was born in 1982, six years before the women in this project, in Johannesburg into an English and Italian-speaking family. My older brother and I, first in our family to attend university, were raised by our stay-at-home mom and our dad who  works as a cost accountant. My maternal grandparents immigrated to South  Africa  from Italy in the 1950s;  whereas  my father, who was born and raised in Naples immigrated to South Africa in the 1970s. I attended a former Model C school, located in the south of Johannesburg, where I was an average academic performer and received awards for leadership and “school spirit”. After completing my BA and BA Honour’s  degrees in Psychology at the University of Johannesburg, Master’s degree in Research Psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand and BCom degree in Management

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at the University of South Africa, I was employed as a staff member on the Oya scholarship at the Transformation Office in  an HWU. Five years later, I resigned from my position at the Transformation Office and enrolled for a PhD in Psychology. After obtaining the PhD, I completed two postdoctoral fellowships at the Department of Political and International Studies, Rhodes University, and the Department of Psychology, University of Pretoria, where I am currently employed as a lecturer.

Told Story What is the story of this research? How has this knowledge been produced? How did this book come into being and what is my intention for writing it? Why am I doing this research? Who does this research serve? How does my positionality as a white, middle-class South African woman affect the production of this research in ways which serve to preserve the modern/colonial knowledge system? And how is it possible for me to do this research in ways which could also serve to work against the  modern/colonial knowledge system? What does it mean for me to wrestle with the ghost of this bull? It is difficult to write about my reflections of this research project because it has been a living (disorderly) project that I have engaged with politically, emotionally, theoretically, and spiritually. It is a whirlwind of fragmented pieces that I have yet to fully grasp. It is also challenging to connect an intellectual project with one’s journey of self-maturation which requires constant self-interrogation and critical reflection, a willingness to be vulnerable and to sit with the discomfort caused by earlier hurts. I started to write this book in order to process and piece together various fragments of this journey.  In a sense, this book offers a narrative that restores a semblance of meaning and “resolution” in terms of how this book ends, that is with a proposed programme that is in direct response to the starting point for this journey. But this work is incomplete. There are many errors; questions and arguments that need to be refined; insights, contradictions and disruptive pieces that are left unexplored and; unjustly conferred privileges that have gone unquestioned. I created the artwork depicting the death and rebirth of narrative

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formations of relational selves in an attempt to connect these pieces and  move towards a vocabulary for writing about the  contradictions along  this journey.  This artwork is thus  a starting (or turning) point. Although there are many storylines which I will explore in an autoethnography elsewhere, in this section I will briefly focus on my educational route that led me to “cross paths” with the women in this project. I have chosen to do this because visual art plays a central role in my educational pathway, therefore, this route has a direct bearing on why I have predominantly developed a visual method for theory building in this book. However, throughout this book I will self-reflexively interrogate and concretely show how my positionality as a white, middle-class South African women affects the production of this research through my conversations with the women in this project. My educational pathway began when I failed Grade 3. At that age, I remember struggling to communicate so I had a speech therapist who encouraged me to express myself through art. But when I failed that grade, I also remember my well-meaning teacher telling me that although I was not academically inclined (like my brother who became an engineer), I was artistic. Although this was not significantly distressing event, I did grow up suppressing the creative or “less academic” part of myself, and instead I focused my energy on studying subjects in mathematics, accounting, economics and statistics. I mention this particular incident because it placed me on an educational pathway towards completing a Master’s degree in Research Psychology, during which I became interested in “theories of change” as an approach to designing and evaluating complex social programmes in education. This book proposes a conceptual-empirical framework for exploring forms of continuity and change along psychosocial pathways in South African universities. It illustrates how the psychosocial pathways are grounded in the symbolic narratives and knowledges of the young women who were recipients of the Oya scholarship programme (2007–2012) which was implemented by the Transformation Office. From 2007 to 2011, I was employed as a support staff member in the Transformation Office, therefore these pathways are also related to  my own knowledges and experiences of working with the women over the years, whom I came to know and care about.

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Our history influenced the kinds of stories they shared with me in this research project and the kinds of stories that I have told in this research. For instance, as an internal evaluator of their scholarship programme, they made me see my complicity with the modern/colonial knowledge system by how I had constructed the programme’s inclusion criteria in ways which perpetuated exceptionalist discourses in the academy. Without minimising the critical factors of financial access, I became increasingly aware of the wider implications of such programmes for transforming and reproducing existing institutional cultures. After resigning in 2011, I decided to embark on a PhD project on which this book is based. The PhD research project focused on the biographic narratives of the young women who were recipients of the Oya scholarship; their experiences of being science students, becoming graduates and professionals, and the various ways in which they navigated institutional and disciplinary spaces in South African universities that continue to be dominated by white men and specific privileged forms of knowledge production processes. In other words, the aim was to explore questions of material, discursive, and symbolic elements that emerged within their narratives across temporal shifts, how these came to reflect the multiplicities and complexities of subjectivities in changing worlds and what these collective stories may be able to tell us about new imagined communities (Anderson, 2006). I was also interested in questions of how the regulative  principles which govern the re-formations of nonbeing, not-becoming and no-­ belonging to knowledge communities could help us understand the operating system of white logic models on which many social programmes are based. Conversely, how could we utilise the  guiding principles which govern the trans-formations of being, becoming and belonging to knowledge communities in order to develop a complex systems programme model which disrupts white logic? I only came to understand the significance of these questions during the emergence of the Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall student movement (and at the Decoloniality Summer Schools, UNISA), where I began to process and piece together various fragments of this journey (and deconstruct my own discursive practice and accountability for these practices).

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In response to these questions and as a result of this journey, the concluding chapter in this book illustrates how the Minotaur’s labyrinth takes the form of Manichean hierarchical entities of shattering failure as paralysis, which maintains a closed system of white logic  through the regulative principles of nonbeing, not-becoming and no-belonging to knowledge communities. Conversely, the concluding chapter proposes a programme called the Toroidal-maze of tragic love in motion which takes the form of rhythmical flows of whole infinity networks as a complex adaptive system  that could potentially disrupt white logic through the guiding principles of being, becoming and belonging to knowledge communities. I present  an artwork as a narrative symbol for the proposed programme, which embodies the spirit of this work. Personally I might have created this artwork as a way of reconnecting art and science, along with other pieces, that had been separated along this journey and thus bringing this particular educational pathway in my life to a close (or a new turn).

Reference Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso books.

5 Pathway A: The Discursive-Circulatory System of (Non)being a Science Person—The Lived Social Life of Institutional Culture

Introduction This chapter will begin with a discussion of how institutional culture as the context of the hidden curriculum could be viewed as discursive formations in the dialectical interplay between dividing lines or zones of nonbeing a “person” and rhythmical flowing threads of being a person. I will explore what the material-discursive re-formation of zones of nonbeing a “person” entails, through the idea of “race” as an organising principle by which the perceived differences of social groups come to be positioned and fixed by a color-line (Du Bois, 2007[1903]). Dominant structures or patterns of oppressive power, such as racism and white supremacy, take the form of a color-line (Du Bois, 2007[1903]). In an effort to take four steps towards the centre of the Minotaur’s labyrinth, the following questions are posed: What does this discursive-­ circulatory system of zones of nonbeing a “science person” entail, how does this create a lived material-discursive reality with particular social effects, and what are the various ways in which this reality and its social effects are masked and re-formed? I will argue that the South African university’s skin (nonbeing) is wounded because its second skin (bounded © The Author(s) 2020 S. Liccardo, Psychosocial Pathways Towards Reinventing the South African University, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49036-2_5

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space) is tainted. Its blood (dominant discourses) is constricted because its blood vessels (social structure-agency) are clogged. In other words, the material-discursive re-formation of nonbeing a “science person” entails an absolute conception of bounded space which is attached to ideologically imposed identity categories. Bounded space is our tainted second skin. The re-formation of nonbeing a “science person” creates a lived material-discursive reality of a zone of being “human” and what Fanon (1967) calls a zone of nonbeing or not being “human” enough (Gordon, 2006; Maldonado-Torres, 2008; Wynter, 2003). Non­being is skin that is wounded. This lived material-discursive reality produces the social effects of nonmaterial social facts and real material social facts which thwart human needs through the possessive investment in whiteness (Lipsitz, 2006). Social structure is our clogged blood vessels. This material-discursive reality, and its social effects are masked through deficient constructions of Black students as “lacking” dominant Cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) and re-formed through Black students restricted financial access to university education and the ignorance contract (Steyn, 2012) as set by the white population with the aim of maintaining the size of their classed networks and the volume of their economic and cultural capital. Dominant two-dimensional is our constricted blood. Conversely, I will explore whether the organising principle of rhythmical flowing threads could be used to think  through what it would  mean to “puncture“ a color-line (Du Bois, 2007[1903]). What affordances do rhythms in the form of flowing infinity threads entail, and what are its implications for the material-discursive trans-formation of being a person? In an effort to take four steps away from and “out of” the Minotaur’s labyrinth, the following questions are posed: What does this discursive-circulatory system of being a science person entail, how does this create a lived material-­discursive reality with particular social effects, and what are the various ways in which this reality and its social effects are unmasked and trans-formed? In this chapter, I will develop the following counter argument or vision towards trans-forming the lived social life of institutional culture: The South African university’s skin (being) is sutured because its second skin (unbounded space) is open to infinite possibilities. Its blood (discourses) is fluid because its blood vessels (structure-agency) are unclogged. The material-discursive trans-formation of being a science person entails a

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relativist conceptualisation of space as constituted through human practices in which place is contested and fluid because its boundaries are always shifting as a result of power relations at play. Unbounded space is our open second skin. The trans-formation of being a “science person” creates a lived material-discursive reality of keeping one’s body open to the ongoing process of articulating questions (Maldonado-Torres, 2016). Being is our sutured skin. This lived material-discursive reality would produce the social effects of agents refusing to accept the set terms of recognition that define their sense of humanity, thus, positioning themselves in alternative discourses within conditions of impossibility and altering subjectivity and subject positionings (Vincent, 2015). Structure-­agency is our unclogged blood vessels. This material-discursive reality, and its social effects are unmasked and trans-formed by shifting the research lens away from a deficit view of Black students as “lacking” dominant cultural capital to learning from the value of their community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005). Multi-dimensional discourses are our fluid blood.

Research Questions The following research questions focus on the social construction of a color-line of zones of nonbeing a “science person”: A1) What does the material-discursive re-formation of zones of non­being a “science person” entail? A2) What lived material-discursive reality does the re-formation of zones of nonbeing a “science person” create? How is the principle logic of inclusion in and exclusion from normative entities of discursive knowledge produced and what does this form of excluding knowing-how do? A3) What are the social effects of the re-formation of this lived material-­ discursive reality? A4) How is this material-discursive reality and its social effects masked and re-formed? Conversely, the following research questions focus on the social construction of rhythmical flowing infinity threads of being a science person:

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A1) What would the material-discursive trans-formation of being a science person entail? A2) What lived material-discursive reality would the trans-formation of being a science person potentially create? How is belonging (as a state of being) to networks of discursive knowledge produced and what does the valuing of this knowing-how do? A3) What would the social effects of the trans-formation of this lived material-discursive reality potentially be? A4) How could this material-discursive reality, and its social effects be unmasked and trans-formed?

Institutional Culture as the Material-Discursive Context of the Hidden Curriculum In his paper, “Institutional Cultures/Environments”, Andre Keet (2015) provides a working definition of institutional culture as “the totality of regimes of praxes within universities that normalise the productions and distributions of patterns of recognitions and misrecognitions according to norms that construct subjectivities without these norms themselves being subjected to scrutiny” (as cited in Van der Westhuizen, 2018, p. 341). These subjectivities assume cultural identities which have particular histories that (in)form social categories of difference. As our ways of being have been inherited from practices of the Apartheid regime, universities need to constantly interrogate its traditions, customs and practices and reformulate its social ambience (Botman, 2008). People experience the culture of an institution through its traditions, values, shared understandings and customs which tend to support and reward particular practices and decision-making processes (Vincent, 2015). Specific conceptions of knowledge, power and being are normalised in institutional culture because the entire social ambience of the university has been shaped by the worldview of a particular cultural grouping (Botman, 2008). We could therefore grapple with the sets of norms and social practices that are constitutive of institutional culture not only through the concepts of systemic institutional racism, heterosexism and classism but also

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through the notions of normalisation, recognition and misrecognition (Van der Westhuizen, 2018). Through the endless acts of recognition, nonrecognition and misrecognition, racial power is reproduced in the form of what Pierre Bourdieu calls the “magical frontier between the dominant and the dominated” (Blackledge, 2006 as cited in Botsis, 2015, p. 33). The recognition of personhood is made on the basis of norms, as Butler (2001) explains in her article, “Giving an Account of Oneself ”, “no one can recognize another simply by virtue of special psychological or critical skills … there are norms that condition the possibility of recognition, it still matters that we feel more properly recognized by some people than we do by others” (p. 25). Norms generally work invisibly to assign values to social markers and reinforce standards of being, becoming and belonging within an institution. Whereas the ways of being for dominant groups are normalised within an institution, Christi Van der Westhuizen (2018, p. 341) explains that those “who are different (racialised, gendered, sexualised and other Others) are rendered inferior and in need of correction (p. 20), or may be denied recognition altogether”. A performative approach to narrative focuses on how subjects are constituted through discourse. Discourses operate through normalised truths which not only constitute subjects and determine whether subjects will be recognised or misrecognised, but these joined-up truth statements also reproduce micro cultures which are experienced on the level of everyday life (Vincent, 2015). In historically specific contexts there will be hegemonic discourses that dominate, and there will be marginalised discourses which are subordinated and suppressed (Vincent, 2015). These normalised taken-for-granted assumptions are continuities of injustice inherited from the colonial and apartheid past and exacerbated by neoliberal economic forces. It is thus critical to interrogate the experiences of covert discrimination and the mundane practices at play in the normalised micro-social experiences of what Philomena Essed (1991) calls everyday racism within institutions that continue to resist transformation at a primary level. Higgins (2007) argues that institutional culture is often “a shorthand reference to ‘race’, and in particular to whiteness” (as cited in Vincent, 2015, p. 27). As whiteness is privileged as being the invisible norm (Dyer, 1997), we need to constantly interrogate what

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counts as “normal” in an institutional culture and by implication what is either privileged or rendered illicit and “abnormal” (Vincent, 2015).

 he Context of the Hidden Curriculum T as Material-Discursive Formations in the Dialectical Interplay Between Dividing Lines or Zones of Nonbeing a “Person” and Rhythmical Flowing Infinity Threads of Being a Person The aim of this section is twofold: first, to explore what the material-­ discursive re-formation of nonbeing a “person” entails through the idea of race as an organising principle by which the perceived differences of social groups come to be positioned and fixed by a color-line (Du Bois, 2007[1903]). Second, to explore whether the organising principle of rhythms could be used to think through what it would mean to “puncture” the dividing color-line. What affordances do rhythms in the form of flowing infinity threads entail, and what are its implications for the material-discursive trans-formation of being a person? (See Fig. 5.1).

A1) SPACE Infinity open second skin

A1) SPACE Tainted second skin

A2) BEING Sutured skin

A2)NON-BEING NONBEING A2) Wounded skin

A3) STRUCTURE Clogged blood vessels A4) DISCOURSES Constricted blood

A3) STRUCTURE Unclogged blood vessels A4) DISCOURSES Fluid blood

Fig. 5.1  A color-line (Du Bois, 2007[1903]) of nonbeing a “person” and rhythmical infinity threads of being a person

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A Color-line Dividing Zones of Nonbeing a “Person” White Supremacy Scientific racism and the idea of race, as Maldonado-Torres (2007) explains, “were the most explicit expressions of a widespread and general attitude regarding the humanity of colonized and enslaved subjects in the Americas and Africa in the sixteenth century” (p. 244). Racism is a “global hierarchy of superiority/inferiority along the line of the human” which can be constructed and marked in various ways, as the Puerto Rican sociologist Ramón Grosfoguel (2016) notes: Westernized elites of the Third World (African, Asian or Latin American) reproduce racist practices against ethno/racial groups where, depending on the local/colonial history, those considered “inferior” below the line of the human can be defined or marked along religious, ethnic, cultural or color-­ lines”. (p. 10)1

Racism organises relations between humans through institutions along the  lines of “superiority”/“inferiority” of communities and not of individuals (Hira, 2017). “Racialization occurs through the marking of bodies”, as Grosfoguel (2016) notes, in which specific bodies are racialised as “superior” in relation to other bodies which are racialised as “inferior” (p. 11). Those subjects located on the “inferior” side of the line of the “human” live in what Frantz Fanon (1967) has called the zone of nonbeing, while subjects located on the “superior” side above the line of the “human” live in what Afro-Caribbean philosophers have called the zone of being (Gordon, 2006; Maldonado-Torres, 2008; Wynter, 2003). Grosfoguel (2016) adds that “racism is not just a question of prejudice or stereotypes, but above all an institutional/structural hierarchy related to the materiality of domination” (p. 11).  This definition of racism, as Grosfoguel (2016) explains, avoids reductionisms and enables the conceptualisation of various forms of racism. The “global hierarchy of superiority/inferiority along the line of the human” (p. 10) could be constructed through varying racial markers depending on the colonial histories in historically specific contexts. As Grosfoguel (2016) notes, “Racism can be marked by colour, ethnicity, language, culture and/or religion. Although since colonial times colour racism has been the dominant marker of racism in most parts of the world and this was also accompanied by physiognomy and craniometry, it is not the sole form of racism” (p. 10). 1

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One of the key stories of whiteness which pervades higher education institutions in South Africa does the work of fabricating a contradiction between blackness and excellence (Van der Westhuizen, 2018). Whiteness has relied on this trope since colonial times as it draws on relational equivalences, as Van der Westhuizen (2018) explains: “These sets of equivalences are black = incapacity, and therefore white = excellence. Ultimately black = inferiority and white = superiority” (p. 343). Whiteness is privileged as being the invisible norm or default standard from which all others are compared and measured (Dyer, 1997; Sue, 2006). The Afro-Jewish philosopher, public intellectual and activist Lewis R. Gordon (2015) argues that if the “conception of normality for whites” is constructed as being “human”, then the conception of normality for Black people does not exist. Lewis R. Gordon (2015) writes: Whereas there is a conception of normality for whites—that is, their being “human” by virtue of being white—there is no such thing for blacks. An adult black who is “well adjusted,” … is an “abnormal black.” An adult black who is not well adjusted—in fact, infantile—is a “normal black,” which ironically means an “abnormal person” or simply “abnormality.” To be abnormal for a black and abnormal for a human being is to be in a “Catch-22”. (p. 59)

These Eurocentric cultural frames and tropes such as “black = incapacity, and therefore white = excellence” prompt people to think in binary opposites which not only undergird affective forms of racism but also flatten and objectify the experiences, heterogeneity and complexity of Black peoples (Ioanide, 2018).

The Materiality of Ideology Since the 1970s, a great deal of attention has been paid to the ways in which political and cultural experience has been organised according to the logic of binarism such as masculinity and femininity, culture and nature, public and private, mapped onto mind and body (Levine, 2015). The binary division of mind/body has been associated with several other

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oppositional pairs (Grosz, 1994). The most pervasive of binary oppositions  or dialectical oppositions2,  which is central to the coloniality of power, have imposed their order across aesthetic and social experiences, from dramas to domestic spaces (Levine, 2015). Levine (2015) explains that as binary oppositions or language binaries appeared to be “neutral” for structuralists, the arrangement of human communities by certain “universal” structures was therefore inexorable. However, post-­ structuralists argued that the fabricated universality, neutrality and therefore inevitability of binary oppositions had justified inequality, brutality and violence for centuries (Levine, 2015). Binary oppositions, which are covertly hierarchical, exercise political power by imposing an artificial order on political life (Levine, 2015). Social forms shift from political life into a novel where it imposes its artificial order on aesthetic experience (Levine, 2015). The French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser (1971  [1969]) has conceptualised ideology as abstract systems of symbolic representations (e.g. languages) which are embedded and reproduced in the micro-­social interactions and lived experiences of everyday practice (as cited in Billington, Hockey, & Strawbridge, 1998). Post-structuralist thinkers asserted that Western thought, since the Greeks, had aspired to “ground transcendent truth in a single, foundational concept, such as reason, mind, man, or the public sphere” (Levine, 2015, p. 82). The identity of each fundamental concept was established through what it was not or the excluded term as the margin, thus defining mind against body, reason against madness, public against private and so on (Levine, 2015). Put differently, Elizabeth Grosz (1994) explains how dichotomous thinking “necessarily hierarchizes and ranks the two polarized terms so that one becomes the privileged term [represented as  The word “binary” derives from the Latin binarius, bini meaning “two together” or a duality, a pair and “opposition” means to “set against” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2018). A binary opposition is when two parts existing together are set against each other. In other words, a binary opposition is a system in language and thought where two divided terms constructed as opposite in meaning assume a role of dominance over the other. Language binaries can also be hierarchies, with the top half of the hierarchy dominating the bottom half of the hierarchy which comes to represent the “absence” of the top half. Furthermore, language  binary divisions support entities that exist independently and separately to other entities. The entities at the bottom half of the hierarchy come to represent the “absence” (i.e. non-entity) of the dominant entities at the top half of the hierarchy. 2

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the centre] and the other its suppressed, subordinated, ‘negative’ counterpart [represented as the margin or displaced part of the centre]” (as cited in Levine, 2015, p. 83). Racism, misogyny, homophobia, classism is a product of this split or dividing line. These terms are manifested, for example, in racist language, sexist language and theistic language. Toni Morrison (1993) in her lecture upon receiving the Nobel Prize for literature stated that: The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge … [A]ll are typical of the policing language of mastery, and cannot, do not, permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.

Many theorists and activists have attempted to puncture and dismantle racial hierarchies by exposing their conventionality and instability and the impossibility of policing the boundary between the foundational term and the second, abjected term (Levine, 2015).

Rhythmical Infinity Threads of Being a Person Rhythms The word “rhythm” (also rhyme) derives from French rhythme, “or via Latin from Greek rhuthmos [which is] related to rhein [which means] ‘to flow’” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2018). The term rhythm is used particularly to explain “how people’s bodies adapt to changing conditions” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2018). Unlike rigid boundaries of binary oppositions, rhythmical forms are embodied with time; the rhythms of people’s bodies live through time just as the rhythms of time pattern people’s bodies. Space, as our second skin, is like a circadian rhythm. Rhythmical forms are pulsating flows of space in motion. The notion of rhythms is compared to the movement of flowing threads in the infinity symbol (see Fig. 5.1). Rhythmical forms as flowing infinity

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threads facilitate repetitive flows of space as patterns of time. Similar to the entirety of a circle, patterns of time evolve in the cycle of “coming full circle”. As the infinity threads follow different paths of trajectories, the ebb and flow of rising and falling are never repeated in exactly the same ways. The slightest variances or smallest collision between dividing lines  and rhythmical threads may amplify and cause an extensive impact with the passing of time. Similar to Barad (2007) who draws on the metaphor of “flow” in discussing her framework of “ontoepistemology” which she calls “agential realism”, I use the metaphor of rhythms to think through the notion of agency as an enactment (rather than entities of divisions) in which “intra-actions” take place in the “making/marking of spacetime.” In Barad’s (2007) words: “Difference patterns do not merely change in time and space; spacetime is an enactment of differentness, a way of making/ marking here and now” (p. 137). In Chap. 9, the notion of agency and spacetime as enacting pluralist ways of “making/marking here and now” is depicted by the rhythmical ebb and flow of whole infinity networks as a complex adaptive system that hovers or oscillates on the border of chaos. Although rhythms have the potential to create communal solidarity and seem to be as effortless as the beating of our hearts, Levine (2015) reminds us that rhythmic form can also be a means of exerting control and subjugation, as “the shackles of an imposed metrical or musical form” (p.  49). Rhythmical forms do significant political work because of its potential to produce both solidarity and subjugation (Levine, 2015). Similarly, in his book, The Logic of Practice, the French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher Pierre  Bourdieu (1990) writes: “the whole social order imposes itself at the deepest level of bodily dispositions through a particular way of regulating the use of time, the temporal distribution of collective and individual activities and the appropriate rhythm with which to perform them” (p. 75).

The Margins of Hegemonic Discourse as a Space of Resistance Binarism reduces the potential of difference into polar opposites by organising the varied possibilities of meaning within abstract language into fixed and static dichotomies (Rutherford, 1990). It is this stasis and

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congealment of meaning which not only regulates the emergence of new or alternate subjectivities but also establishes the margin (Rutherford, 1990). Rutherford (1990) explains how the margin is a supplement to and displaced part of the centre: Binarism operates in the same way as splitting and projection: the centre expels its anxieties, contradictions and irrationalities onto the subordinate term, filling it with the antithesis of its own identity; the Other, in its very alienness, simply mirrors and represents what is deeply familiar to the centre, but projected outside of itself ”. (p. 22)

The violence and antagonisms which are at the core or centre of dominant discourses and structure of identities are manifested through these representations and processes of marginality (Rutherford, 1990). The margin as a supplement to the centre is also a place of disruption and resistance3 which holds the possibility of puncturing, dismantling and decentring the hegemonic forms of knowledge that constitute dominant discourses and structures of identities (Rutherford, 1990). In this way, language4 becomes a site of struggle because dominant discourses and power relations have assembled the possibilities of meaning into dialectical oppositions (Rutherford, 1990). When marginalised and excluded groupings attempt to break the logic of binarism, new terms, subjectivities and social groupings are produced on the margins because dominant discourses try to omit and silence them from fully articulating their multiple experiences (Rutherford, 1990). In his chapter, “Structures of Feeling”, Raymond Williams (1977) describes this struggle for a voice as being “at the very edge of semantic availability” (as cited in Rutherford, 1990, p. 22).  For instance, by engaging with the artistic forms such as embroideries created by Black South African women who grew up during apartheid, Segalo, Manoff, and Fine (2015) argue that, “to decolonize, is to look within and undo/rework the colonizing oppressive structures from the inside-­ out and then look again from the outside-in” (p. 343). 4  Zimitri Erasmus (2017) uses the metaphor of an arabesque to think about changing “radicalised ways of coming to know the world” (p. xxv). In her book, Race Otherwise: Forging a New Humanism for South Africa, she argues that, “Metaphorically, humaning involved lines of thought and journeys that curve towards, wrap around, lean against and hold onto each other in their movement towards a vocabulary for (re-)thinking race” (p. xxv). 3

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A1) Space as Our Second Skin Space derives from the old French espace meaning spacious and the Latin spatium which is analogous with spatiate, expatiate and interspace. Spatiate or spatiation is a derivative of patēre which means “to be or lie open” (Partridge, 2006, p. 2246). In other words, space is the “quality of being large and empty, allowing [one] to move freely” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2018). Expatiate means to “walk, or go, far and wide” (Partridge, 2006, p. 3147) or to “move beyond one’s usual bounds” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2018). Interspace or interspatial implies that space is a period of time. Social scientists’ conceptions of space have been influenced by Albert Einstein’s understanding of space as relativist in relation to absolutist (Ritzer, 2005). The absolute conception of space, which derives from a Euclidean dualistic view of space, posits that space exists as a contextual background condition that is independent from and separate to human perceptions, bodies and social action. In this way, space is like a fixed and unmovable container within which social action takes place (Ritzer, 2005). This absolute understanding of space has served the ideological function of enclosing and rendering particular places as bounded and relating them with ideologically imposed identity categories (Tamboukou, 2003). The French Marxist philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre (1976) explains that space is not a scientific object but rather it is political, strategic and ideological: “Space has been shaped and moulded from historical and natural elements, but this has always been a political process … It is literally filled with ideologies” (p. 31). A relative conception of space, on the other hand, conceives of space as constituted by the relative positions of the bodies and materials in relation to each other (Ritzer, 2005). Social action flows into the production, formation, institutionalisation of spaces (Ritzer, 2005). We are born into space. Being in space is a social relation. Space is being positioned in relation to another. A position is the place where a body is located. Bodies can be read as space and space can be read through bodies. The social character of space is produced through past and present activities, social relationships and lives of people (Knowles, 2005). In his book, The

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Production of Space, Lefebvre (1991) refers to the interplay between the ways in which we shape space that shapes us: [There is] a dialectic relationship between the ways in which we shape and produce the material, spatial, everyday world and the ways in which that world shapes and produces us, our practices, interests, identities and discourses … This process plays itself out at multiple levels: in our subjective experience of ourselves in imagined space as expressed in art and poetry, in our ordering and codification of conceived space as expressed in plans and maps, and in the bodily movements and routines through which we perceive space. (pp. 38–39)

A relativist conception of space holds the ambivalence of spaces as sites of both presence and absence, and power and resistance (Ritzer, 2005). Spaces moves with time as time moves through space. Whereas space is viewed as the interrelationship between social forces, place is conceptualised as the expression of particular social relations of the spatial at a specific moment in time (Tamboukou, 2003). Linda McDowell (1999) defines place as “the grounded intersections of a whole variety of flows and interactions that operate over a range of spatial scales” (as cited in Tamboukou, 2003, p. 54). Places are spaces suspended in periods of time. Places are thus fluid and contested because their boundaries are always shifting as a result of the power relations at play (Tamboukou, 2003). Exclusion is a technology of power in that it demarcates “spatial and platial notions, practices and boundaries” (Tamboukou, 2003, p. 56). Put differently, “Space is fundamental in any form of community life;  space is fundamental in any exercise of power” (Foucault, 1986, p. 252). If being is the organ of sense (skin), then space is the organ of feeling (second skin). Just as our bodies act out space, space acts on our bodies. Space, as our second skin, feels second nature to us. Our second skin (space) could be understood as a material-discursive phenomenon in that material objects keep one’s sense of being (skin) in place (or out-of-place). If skin is the substance that holds our bodies in space, then material-­ discursive space is the second skin that holds our being in place. What does the material-discursive re-formation of zones of nonbeing a “science person” entail?

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a) “You don’t even remember my name” (Alala): Whiteness and the dominance associated with being named the invisible norm (Dyer, 1997). In the following excerpt, Alala explains why she believes that white (and male) students received preferential treatment from the lecturers: Alala:

And you know how Sabrina they give you your marks, they go like, ‘let me see, uhm, I’ll give you 45’ and that’s how they give you your marks, there is no, there is no criteria there was no, ‘okay fine you handed in, you presented, your door widths are correct, your windows are correct, there won’t be water in your house’, it was, ‘uhm, let me see what shall I give you.’ Sabrina: Was everyone experiencing the same thing? Alala: Everyone. Sabrina: So, who was, uhm, I also don’t like to talk about race, but it plays a role, like for the whites or you know Alala: I know, I also struggle. Sabrina: Were they able to fit in better, would, did they also struggle because like you said you come from a different background, you walk around the house instead of the front door, because the curriculum is catered for, it’s Eurocentric and Westernised, so do think it was easier for them? Alala: I don’t know Sabrina, you know I don’t, I don’t like to take away from other people’s experiences. Sabrina: I know but if it’s a picture of a leopard and it’s ugly, it’s ugly, I don’t care how wonderful it is to that person. Alala: [Laughter]. Like on face value and if I had to be judging, I would say that they [white students] had it way better than we [Black students] did, obviously it was rough for them as well because I mean the whole, ‘I’m going to give you a 60% thing’ it’s not nice for anyone, but they had it better … I mean Sabrina, I use to watch their interaction [between the lecturer and white male students], maybe this will help clear up, I used to watch the interaction with—maybe it’s us Black students that we weren’t friendly enough or whatever—but some, some students when they got greeted [by the lecturers] they got handshakes, like ‘hi Donald, hi Peter, how you doing? How

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was your weekend? Did your father fix that?’ What work he needed to fix and I’m like, I’m thinking ‘you don’t even remember my name but you remembering his father’s things’ and, that’s, that’s the type of thing, at times I mean it wasn’t, it wasn’t nice. Sabrina: Was it just with the men or the women as well? Alala: Oh no, the women they would buy coffee for the lecturers and that’s just awful, that was just disgusting and I was like, ‘whatever, just go and buy the coffee and the muffin or whatever just go’, that was upsetting … the whole class is there and you know we are all there. My discomfort with talking about race with Alala is made evident at the beginning of our conversation when I say, “I also don’t like to talk about race, but it plays a role, like for the whites or you know”. As a white person and a support staff member, I occupy a similar social location to the white students and lecturer that Alala is referring to in her story. Therefore, my question “Where they [white students] able to fit in better” places Alala in an awkward position in that I am asking her to explain to me, a white staff member, whether she believes that white students experienced the same difficulties as Black students. My discomfort is also attributed to not knowing how to talk about social categories of difference in a way that does not misrepresent, entrench and essentialise perceived differences between groups of people. In an attempt to find productive ways of working with identity categories and its lived material realities as well as speaking against its reification, I also struggle to sit with the ambivalence of knowing that I will often fail or make the error of essentialising group differences onto individuals. My discomfort is caused by anticipating the consequences of making such errors; it would require the emotional labour of working through criticisms and coming to see my blind spots and its hurtful effects on my relation to others. Alala implies that her struggle with talking about race is that she does not want to devalue the personal experiences of an individual human being. In response to her concern of “tak[ing] away from other people’s experiences”, I referred back to a similar response Alala made during our conversation about art in which I asked her “when you look at these

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paintings of like leopards in trees, do you find that meaningful?” to which she responded, “ah no Sabrina that’s not a fair question, I don’t like judging people”. Therefore, I made the comment that “if it’s a picture of a leopard and it’s ugly, it’s ugly, I don’t care how wonderful it is to that person” to allude to the fact that white students or lecturers do not necessarily collude with one another to exclude certain groups and maintain their positions of power; instead, individuals tend to conform to normative practices (i.e. create typical paintings of leopards in trees) that “contribute to both the accumulation of field specific capital and to the reproduction of the structure of ‘social space’” (Naidoo, 2004, p. 460). In response to my question about whether white students experienced the same difficulties as Black students, Alala states: “Like on face value and if I had to be judging, I would say that they [white students] had it way better than we [Black students] did”. This illustrates the privilege which is associated with being the invisible norm (Dyer, 1997) because our attempt to pin-down or name this invisible norm would involve speculation or making judgements. We form opinions and judgements about what inheres in the practices of whiteness based on our observations, but whether this information actually constitutes whiteness is unclear or difficult to portray (Vincent, 2015). In other words, it is often specified that prevailing mindsets in and of our institutions need to be transformed but “what exactly these prevailing mindsets are remains subterranean” (Vincent, 2015, p. 22). In this instance, the practices of whiteness are made visible through the interaction between lecturers and students. Alala states that the interaction between her white (and male) peers who “got greeted [with] handshakes [by the lecturers], like ‘hi Donald, hi Peter, how you doing?” made her feel invisible because “you [the lecturer] don’t even remember my name but you’re remembering his [students’] father’s things”. This illustrates how whiteness as a default standard “is considered to be normative and ideal, it automatically confers dominance on fair-skinned people in our society” (Sue, 2006, p. 14). The norm is that which is named. If a name is that which something is known by, then to know of something is to recognise or be familiar with its name. Donald and Peter, as somatically “normal” embodied subjects, “masquerade[s] as the universal”, while Alala is circumscribed as being “out-of-place” and rendered with no name

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(Puwar, 2004, p. 8). Being the somatic norm is that which is known, visible or recognisable as an individual with an “identity”. A person’s name connects one’s self to one’s identity and individuality. As norms affect how space and bodies are imagined, Donald and Peter are deemed as having the right to belong in the lecture-room and science community. Donald and Peter as the somatic norm of reason, mind, man, the public sphere emerge as respected in relation to the excluded other, nameless women who were degraded to “buy[ing] coffee for the lecturers”. b) “I had a terrible breakdown … it was the dynamics of my spaces” (Odirile): One’s sense of being is kept in place or out-of-place in the “intra-action” of one’s body with material-discursive spaces (Barad, 2007). Itumeleng mentions that it was challenging to “find yourself in the class and make friends” because her discipline was dominated by white lecturers and students: Itumeleng: That School [at my university] is very white dominated, I don’t know, I can’t even remember like exactly how many Black people there were in class but it was very difficult because you felt that, okay not very, it was a bit difficult because you need to find yourself in the class and make friends. Well obviously, Welile [fellow Oya student] and I stuck together as we had similar classes. Coming from all-girls schools, Khanyisile adds that the transition to a male-dominated field of study was “a bit overwhelming”: Khanyisile: Computer science at [my university], firstly it was a very different environment, a very different atmosphere and especially because I was in all girls schools my whole life and I went to a field that was male-dominated and my computer science class there was a few females, and so, that was the hardest part, I think it was getting used to class with males, getting used to being surrounded by so many of them … I’m a friendly person and I find it easy to make friends easily but at [my university], but like in class I didn’t have many friends which is strange for me, I didn’t have

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many friends in class, I think it’s because, it was a bit overwhelming to be in class with so many different people but after a while it became easier to cope with the diversity … but I think [I adapted] because there was a group that was formed beforehand, being part of the [Oya] scholarship. Khanyisile and Itumeleng mention that their entry into male- and white-dominated fields of study was “a bit overwhelming” because they needed to carve out a space for themselves in class, which they could do through the social support of other scholarship students. Itumeleng adds that her entry into male- and white-dominated fields of study was “a battle” because she couldn’t remember being taught by a Black lecturer and there were no role models in science with whom she could identify. Odirile explains how the “issue of colour” in her department and classroom setting created spatial dynamics that were psychologically distressing for her: Odirile: So ja I had that one incident that I didn’t know how I was going to get through the year. I had a terrible breakdown at the end of my review at Construction last year and it was the dynamics of my spaces, you could see even the class setting, with one lecturer he divided the ‘nonwhites’ and the whites one side. I am a very analytical person so I will see and I will look how you do things and why you do things, maybe for him it was subconscious, it wasn’t conscious, but we could all see, we talked about it outside of class, as Black students we talked about it. Odirile is kept out-of-place through this intra-action, in spaces between bodies, chairs, walls and narratives of the classroom setting (Barad, 2007). The dynamics of Odirile’s spaces was psychologically distressing and led to a terrible breakdown because her sense of being emerges in “intra-­ action” with this incident of racial segregation in the classroom. The dynamics of material-discursive spaces feels like a second skin. Odirile also felt that Black students did not have a formal platform to publicly “[raise] the whole black and white issue”:

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Odirile: And then actually there was this thing people can’t raise their voices and raising the whole black and white issue but most of us who were so scared to talk about it … even if they [lecturers or department] gave us a platform like, like it wasn’t an appropriate platform for us to voice ours or the issues that were really happening at the time. So, third year was the biggest realisation for me dealing with the issue of colour in the architectural department, and it was difficult it was very, very difficult, it was tough. The fear of exposing incidences of racism, as Odirile notes, made “dealing with the issue of colour” in her department particularly difficult. Odirile mentions that confronting racism was difficult because she believed there wasn’t a formal platform for Black students to publicly voice their experiences of everyday racism in the institution. Numerous research studies which have reported on the various ways in which Black students at historically white universities experience covert discrimination in the micro-social day-to-day classroom practices which are difficult to unmask and contest (Erasmus & de Wet, 2003; Jansen, 2002, 2019; Luke & Gore, 2014). A number of scholars have focused on whiteness, as an institutional form and a structural position, to understand the workings of normalised micro-social experiences of everyday racism within universities (Higgins, 2007; Van der Westhuizen, 2018; Van der Merwe & Van Reenen, 2016). c) “even the, I mustn’t, white students [agreed that my] work is good enough” (Alala): Whiteness is normalised as the standard of achievement. Alala expresses her bewilderment for receiving a fail mark on her model assignment because “even the, I mustn’t, white students [agreed that my] work is good enough”. Alala: I was so scared to speak out, and I mean it was so obvious we all agreed, even the, I mustn’t, the white students were like, ‘no, but your work is good enough’. I mean, I mean Donald [white counterpart] at my oral, he came and he saw my model and he was like, ‘wow, your model’, and he was like, ‘what did they give you?’ and I was like ‘they failed me Donald’, and he was like

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‘that’s not fair’, he was like ‘to me that’s not fair’ like ‘that [her model] is amazing’ he said that to me and I was like you know, and then Alice this girl, she’s got a family in, I don’t know, high places, and she was like, ‘we are going to fight, we are going to fight’, but she, she was scared there was nothing she could do, there were letters and I think it’s worse in architecture because it’s so subjective.’ Naidoo (2004) has noted that, in South Africa, academic excellence is evaluated against the “intrinsic” dispositions of those “typical” students from the white schooling system (i.e. those individuals who attended private schools and former Model C schools). If whiteness, as a default standard of what is considered to be “good enough” or “excellent”, automatically confers dominance on white people in society, then Alala questions why she received a fail mark if “even the—I mustn’t—the white students [agreed my] work is good enough”. According to a “Catch-22 logic” within this institutional culture, one would need to be considered to be “white” before one’s work is considered to be “good enough” but one’s work cannot be considered “good enough” before one is considered to be “white”. Alala is also hesitant not to reinstate this insidious standard by saying “I mustn’t”. Whether white students agree if Alala’s work is “good enough” is inconsequential because whiteness is privileged as the invisible norm (Dyer, 1997). The uncertainty about what inheres in the practices of whiteness also contributes to Alala and Alice’s hesitancy in voicing their concerns with assessment practices in architecture “because it’s so subjective” as Alala mentions. What would the material-discursive trans-formation of being a science person entail? a) I’ve always had it [my iPod] in my hand. I’ve always had the sound system of the future in my hand … this is how you want your life to go, you can tune it (Odirile): Sensing the rising and falling intonation of existence as musicality and reinventing a sense of self-worth. Instead of moving with the conventional metrical and temporal forms of the world, Odirile’s iPod is symbolic of her musicality to tune or align her life with her vision of the future.

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Odirile: My iPod is a symbol of me in terms of, in terms of where I’m going, in terms of where I am right now. I feel that a part of it is, I am in control. I’ve always had it in my hand. I’ve always had the sound system of the future in my hand, I just didn’t know that I had it, you know. I think over the past couple of years, I think I’ve forgotten. Like actually listen, this is my life and I control when to press play, when to press pause, when to press fast forward, you know. I need to understand when things happen. Some of it is out of my control, some of it is fate and how things are supposed to be … the way things are tuned in my life, the way things happen in my life is ultimately, is just a point of me being reminded that listen, you can just put on earphones and remember that, listen this is how you want your life to go, you can tune it. So, the iPod is a bit of my life now in terms of me listening to myself and understanding myself in different contexts, who I am and asserting my self-worth and not to go and revert back to underselling myself, selling myself short. So, it’s all this. A constant reminder that, listen you need to play your tunes and put your chords appropriately when things feel like you’re not in control or your chords are not sounding like the way you want them to. When the intonation of her being in the world falls out of tune and into self-doubt, Odirile mentions that “you need to [listen and] play your tunes and put your chords appropriately”. By taking control of when to press play, pause, fast-forward, or rewind, Odirile might be referring to the importance of unpredictability, spontaneity and intuitive creativity in reinventing one’s sense of self-worth that bends itself to the musicality of existence. b) “it’s [architecture] a human thing, it is so important in our lives, it’s a social art” (Alala): Conceptions of space as a social art that shape humanity’s image of itself. Alala alludes to how one’s subjective sense of self is experienced in relation to one’s physical settings that define and structure day-to-day life.

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Alala: If I go back, I will still, I believe I will still fail because I believe in this, it’s, it’s [architecture] a human thing, it is so important in our lives, it’s a social art … but then I think the way you shape the spaces shapes society … And I think, it’s, it’s important, we don’t even realise what spaces do to us … as people, we are, we are, we are blind to it, like we go through spaces but they affect us, they do, they have to, it’s sort of our third skin … And it’s so important, as a social art, and I think it’s about the human, for me about the human and about humanity and about people and I think the way architecture is going, it’s just about monuments and creating things about your ego and I didn’t want to do that. Alala refers to the dialectic relationship between the ways in which we shape and produce the spatial and material world that in turn shapes and produces us. People are affected by space because of the various ways in which meaning is attributed to geographical place and in turn how people become attached to these meanings (Stedman, 2002). In this way, human relations and activities create the social character of space which becomes “sort of our third skin” as Alala notes. Alala proposes that “we are blind to” what “spaces do to us” in that our subjective sense of self emerges in “intra-action” with the varying conceptions of material-­ discursive space (Barad, 2007). Instead of conceiving space as monuments that reflect one’s ego, Alala advocates for an understanding of space that is a “social art [in service of ] humanity” which would facilitate the power of flows of capital instead of the flows of capital power (Castells, 2011). In his book, Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression, Hussein Abdilahi Bulhan (1985) proposes that, “Man is part of nature, but he also humanizes nature. With his activity, he creates and is created. Capitalism divides society into private property and owner, on the one hand, and wage labor and worker, on the other” (p.  187). Therefore, the fourth aspect of alienation in the Marxian formulation of “alienated labor” refers to the “estrangement of man from other men” in which “this antagonistic opposition of man against man, with the violence and degradation it entails” (p. 187).

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 2) Being as Our Skin: Spatiality A as the Material-Discursive Body of Social Structure-Agency If space is the organ of feeling (second skin), then being is the organ of sense (skin). One’s sense of being (skin) is kept in place or out-of-place in intra-action (Barad, 2007) with material-discursive spaces (second skin). Breathing space into life is a visceral experience of being me. What is “me”? What am I? I am my skin. Skin is my social fingerprint. I am my body. Being what I am is the flesh and blood of my body. It is from the place of my body where I perceive my space in the world. Skin is the perishable substance that holds our bodies in place. Skin embodies the space where I am and what I am is the space that I embody. If I were to peel away my skin, space would be my second skin. Space is second nature to us. Being is the organ of sense. Being in my body is a present-­ tensed self; a sense of self that is inter-spatial and inter-temporal. What I am is being an interstitial body in between space-time. Being is the spatiality of the lived visceral life; our rhythms of breathing and attitudinal movements of feeling. As discussed in Chap. 2, Yuval-Davis (2006) suggests that belonging is constituted along three analytical levels: “social locations, identifications and emotional attachments and, ethical and political values” (p.  199). This section will focus on social locations which refer not only to the materiality of a subject’s position but also to the positionality of social categories along an axis of power in society which changes with historically specific contexts. To answer the question, What am I is to tell how we are positioned in the world by social discourses or as Hall notes (1996) it is the “‘chaining’ of the subject into the flow of the discourse”. If human beings generally have the same body components, then how are bodies marked in a such a way that makes us different or similar, accepted or excluded, liked or reviled? (Probyn, 2005). The multiple ways in which the body has been studied could be grouped under two broad thematics: (1) “the body as inscription of power” and (2) “the body as screen upon which the social is projected” (Probyn, 2005, p.  62). Through his metaphor of “bio-power”, the French philosopher, and social theorist Michel Foucault

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(1977) demonstrates that power operates through rendering particular bodies visible or inert, and in this process, categories of bodies are produced through different orders of knowledge. It is through discourses where individual bodies are viewed and analysed “as a palimpsest or screen upon which orders of knowledge could be read” (Probyn, 2005, p. 63). In her article, “A Phenomenology of Whiteness”, the feminist writer and scholar Sara Ahmed (2007) proposes that a body is a “meeting point” between “intersecting” relations of power: Given that relationships of power ‘intersect’, how we inhabit a given category depends on how we inhabit others (Lorde, 1984: 114–23; Brewer, 1993; Collins, 1998; Smith, 1998). There are ‘points’ in such intersections, as the ‘points’ where lines meet. A body is such a meeting point”. (p. 159)

In this way, the social relations of lived space are experienced and interpreted in different ways by people who are located in a multiplicity of social categories which themselves intersect in an infinite variety of ways (Tamboukou, 2003). For a particular worldview to persist and remain undisturbed, “the subject is a field of struggle and a site that must be controlled and dominated” (Maldonado-Torres, 2016, p. 19). MaldonadoTorres (2008) refers to metaphysical catastrophe as the production of the zone of being “human” (Gordon, 2006; Maldonado-Torres, 2008; Wynter, 2003) and the zone of nonbeing (Fanon, 1967) or not being “human” enough.  Metaphysical catastrophe produces “a zone below the zones of being and nonbeing” (Maldonado-Torres, 2016, p. 13, emphasis in original) in which the persisting “line of differentiation [and ‘its logic and organizing framework’] tends to be anchored on specific peoples and bodies” (Maldonado-Torres, 2016, p. 18). The skin, as the surface of the body, can be an instant identifier (Maldonado-Torres, 2016). For example, the country-wide student fallist movement calls attention to the devastating effects of institutional racial hierarchies (Mbembe, 2015). The Movement for Black Lives (2016) calls for an end to the war against Black people clearly demonstrates that Black people continue to be “of the most consistent references to maintain the line of differentiation between the human and the sub-human” (Maldonado-­Torres, 2016, p. 16). From this position, Maldonado-Torres (2016), following Fanon (1963), explains that

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formulating and communicating questions from an open body provides the anchor for decolonial critique: “When the damné communicates the critical questions that are grounded on the lived experience of the open body we have the emergence of an-­other speech and an-other way of thinking” (p. 25). What lived material-discursive reality does the re-formation of zones of nonbeing a “science person” create? How is the principle logic of inclusion into and exclusion from normative entities of discursive knowledge produced and what does this form of excluding knowing-­how do? a) “sometimes you just, you do need that same love that the others get” (Welile): Black student’s bids for love and recognition disrupted by race. As illustrated in the excerpt below, Welile alludes to how exclusionary practices in the classroom setting are taken for granted as “those dynamics … to get used to”. Welile: and then there is also the whole black and white, so they only choose, they choose twenty Honours students but like five Black people … the sciences from first year you can see that racial segregation. I had the pressure to pass chemistry and to actually get 65% and above everyone … and Honours was also hard and I think a lot of the times they make this whole race thing like a very petty issue but it’s not because it’s very real you know, I think Being black and in the sciences is very hard, it needs you to have a tough skin. My supervisor and my cosupervisor, you know, I love and I appreciate them and you know they have taught me a lot but I think they want us to push a little harder. I don’t know how to put it that like all the white counterparts get all the help and all the assistance and then you need to just do things yourself and it’s a good thing, because it helps you to be independent but sometimes you just, you do need that same love that the others get … the relationship between lecturers and [white] students became more intimate so you can see that there was that difference … But I’m glad that I went through it, and I guess that’s how life is you know, that there are always, just will always be those dynamics you know, you just have to get used to them.

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Welile refers to normalised practices of exclusion in the form of her “white counterparts [getting] all the help and all the assistance” from the lecturers and how the “relationship between lecturers and [white] students became more intimate”. Although these practices are taken for granted as “those dynamics [that one] just have to get used to”, Welile converts these dynamics into a value for herself by stating, “it needs you to have a tough skin … it helps you to be independent”. Welile’s bids for love and recognition from her lecturers are disrupted by race because she does not feel as valued as her white counterparts, as evident in her statement “but sometimes you, just you do need that the same love that the others get”. b) “[The lecturer] would keep his eyes on me and he’ll always ask if I understand” (Takalani): Normalisation, misrecognition and delegitimisation of Black women’s membership to science communities. In the following excerpt, it is evident that Takalani is subjected to overt racism and sexism through misrecognition as her lecturer and peers do not view Takalani as a competent engineering student but rather as a Black woman ‘incapable’ of understanding engineering work: Takalani: Being the only Black lady [in my third- and fourth-year class] I think—I don’t know if I saw this wrong—but I think lecturers lack to trust me. They didn’t trust me and also because the lecturers couldn’t trust me the kids in class also couldn’t because the thing is while he’s busy lecturing there, he would keep his eyes on me and he’ll always ask if I understand—he’ll never ask the whole class if they understand— he’ll just bring it to me like, ‘do you understand?’. And then after the class, he’ll be like [call my surname and say] ‘please stay behind’, then I would stay behind and he would be like ‘did you really get that?’ and I was like, ‘yes, I got it’, ‘you can come to my office if you need more lessons and stuff’ and it was like ‘why me?’ I got what you’re saying even if I didn’t get it, I’ll just go back and study. Takalani explains that her lecturer’s distrust of her competence as an engineering student negatively influenced her peers’ perception of her academic ability as they were reluctant to work with her in group setting.

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Takalani: and also I think that also started creating that the other kids starting seeing that I was the only Black lady in class, so when we had to do groups, because there were assignments where we had to work in groups, it was I think 19 of us, so they would just pair up like two- two-two-two-two and I would be there left with no one and then the Black guys as well would be like reluctant to work with me as well. So sometimes I find myself with no group and I’d just go to the lecturer and then he’ll ask some people to just like put me in and some would even say ‘no’ like just say ‘no’, ‘we can’t work with her’, we’re like, just working, just the two of us, so it was like ‘what?’. I just told myself, I had to be strong and then we started to mingle … I remember, I worked with this other project with like two whites, I was the only Black in the group and it really went well, so I was like yeah, so I think that was the, that was one of the challenges. It is evident that Takalani becomes a subject of misrecognition or “disrupted recognition” because her race and gender obstructed her lecturer and peers from recognising and trusting her academic abilities (Carlone & Johnson, 2007). These kinds of everyday incidents of racism and sexism become vehicles through which lecturers, in positions of power and influence, reject Black women’s bid to be recognised as legitimate students in STEM fields. As a result, Takalani fights against her lecturer’s sexist and racist stereotypes because she is placed in a position in which she needs to convince her peers that she will not be an “incapable” team member. This incident illustrates the various ways in which institutionalised racism, which work through class and gender relations, are structured into the mindsets and systems of universities (Steyn & Van Zyl, 2011; Van der Westhuizen, 2018). c) “I need to be quiet and probably learn how they speak [English] … so you could fit in” (Takalani): Whiteness is conflated with English and associated with mind and rationality (Dyer, 1997). As illustrated in the excerpt below, Takalani explains why she believes her peers embodied “proper [or] fluent English” through their socialisation in urban areas and former Model C schools.

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Takalani: So now we’re forced to speak in English [after moving to a former Model C high school in Grade 10] … So, the other thing was like most of my peers were from like a private school so they would speak in English, like ‘pure’ English and you would go there with your own English and sometimes they’d laugh. Sabrina: But what is ‘pure’ English and your own English? Takalani: No it’s like, you know, English has terms and with English it’s about getting your terms right … when I was like just learning the basics and sometimes I would just like keep quiet because I would know, I would know what to say and sometimes I’d be like, if you allow me to speak in Venda, I would speak what it is that I want to say but now that it’s English I’d have to like put my sentences right and if I’m not getting it right I’d rather not say …. it was so traumatising when I got here [HWU], I was very traumatised when I got here, ah! like and, and, and I’m normally a quiet person, I don’t talk a lot unless I’m like with my friends and family, my friends and family think I talk too much [laughing] but I don’t, I don’t think I really talk a lot but I think it even got worse when I got here because now you have to speak in English. So I think it got, I had to keep quiet like I’d only speak if I was requested to, like I wouldn’t just speak … but now I have to speak in front of all these people (peers at university) that are listening: what if I make a mistake? What if I don’t say it right? What if, like my friends used to laugh at me at school, now they’re laughing at me here and this is university, it’s not even school. So, they would feel like I was unfit to come here, so there was this, a lot of fears, like it was, it was bad and eventually I learned, but I got to be a very quiet person, when I am here at [this HWU] and now, now I think I can speak English. I’m confident about how I speak now but still. Sabrina: So not speaking English as well as you wanted to, it made you more of a quiet person so it affected your personality?

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Takalani: I think, I think it did, I think it did, like, I think it did and the thing is, you know when I speak English with the people that came from, with the people that I came with [from Limpopo], people with the same background [who speak Venda], it wouldn’t have been as bad but now you’re coming here, meeting with people who are very, they speak like fluent English … because sometimes I’d just get amazed at how they speak, ‘like what, she speaks like that, wow’ you know and you think like no and sometimes they even mention words that you don’t even know the meaning of, like they will use ‘humongous’ and you’re thinking, what do they mean and you had to quickly go back to your room to check the meaning of ‘humongous’ and ah it means big. [Sabrina: But why not just say big]. [Laughing]. You see, so that’s what I’m talking about because the thing is, you’d also, you’d also feel like it’s not proper to say ‘big’ at some point and you feel like if you say ‘big’ then ‘ah no probably you don’t know English and stuff’. So that’s, that’s how it affected me. Sometimes I just felt like I needed to be quiet and probably learn how they speak, how they interact and how and what words they use so you could fit in and stuff. So, I had to be a very quiet person I think”. It is evident that one’s inclusion into the dominant culture at an HWU involves the knowledge of how to speak “proper [or] fluent English”, as Takalani notes: “I need to be quiet and probably learn how they speak, how they interact and how and what words they use so you could fit in”. The knowledge of “how [to] speak [English], how and what words [to] use so you could fit in” is tied to and acts as a signifier for race (Soudien & Botsis, 2011). Soudien and Botsis (2011) argue that speaking English well (i.e. knowing how to speak English and which words to use) continues to be a form of prestige which is associated with access to institutions of higher learning, whiteness and desirability. Based on the portraits and narratives of the participants in her research study, Botsis (2015) reports that English was constructed as the norm through its conflation with whiteness, “while the African language was seen as occupying the

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intimate language of body and home” (p. 217). Takalani also expresses her concern that if she did not speak “proper [or] fluent English” people would think that she was “unfit to come [to university]”. She explains that the possibility of people misrecognising her as being unfit for university studies is accompanied with “a lot of fears” that they would question her intelligence and academic ability. This illustrates how the histories of Cartesian mind/body dualism, modernity/coloniality and racial ideologies are present in our daily lives, where whiteness is conflated with English and associated with mind, rationality, intelligence and a disembodied universal humanity (Dyer, 1997; Weedon, 2004). d) “[The lecturers] always made you feel like inferior and just put, put you down” (Odirile): Restricted “epistemological access” (Morrow, 2007), “symbolic violence” (Bulhan, 1985) and socially induced feelings of nonexistence for Black students. Odirile explains that her third year of study was a “reality check” because she became aware of how her department’s exclusionary practices or “the way things are run” operated according to dominant norms of the institution. Odirile:

[Third year] was difficult for me, it was the first true reality check of the issues, of the way things are run in the architectural department and specifically, but I just felt a lot of discrimination as I picked up certain things because my first and second year I didn’t speak up about how different people treated me and how people treated my white counterparts … one incident that happened to me was my white counterpart had the same mistake and he was given a chance to say what he wanted to say and I was questioning like, you know, ‘why am I here?’ I feel like this is so unfair.

She discusses a particular incident of unfair treatment in which a white fellow student, who had made the same error as her in a class project, was given the opportunity to “say what he wanted to say” whereas she was not given the same opportunity. Similar to Welile, whose bids for love and recognition from her lecturers were disrupted by race, Odirile explains that her department’s exclusionary practices were evident in “how

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different people treated [her] and how people treated [her] white counterparts”. As a result, Odirile questions her place at university by stating “why am I here?” Odirile’s experience of her department’s discriminatory and exclusionary practices had a harmful impact on her sense of self-worth. Odirile: and it was a sort of lecturers that didn’t, that always made you feel like inferior and just put, put you down and just make you feel like you’re not supposed to be there, or you’re not worth you being there, you know and there are other lecturers who are willing to help just the same as everywhere else. What I’m saying is that all I wanted is a fair chance and fair treatment, don’t discriminate against me because of me being female, me being Black or anything else you know, and just because of the quality of the way I do things, I’m trying to do the best as I can with the resources I have but if I try this and I understand it, why can’t you look at it and give me appropriate credits and give me the chance. If I get a 50% or 40%, why can’t they fully explain to me why I got a 40% so that I don’t make the same mistake? But they don’t give me a chance to explain myself or you don’t explain to me, how am I supposed to learn? How is Odirile supposed to learn and develop her knowledge as an aspiring architect if she is not given a chance to explain herself and if lecturers don’t explain to her how to further develop her architectural skills? Instead, Odirile felt that “the way I do things” or her knowing how to apply knowledge and to think through questions was not valued or recognised. Odirile is faced with restricted epistemological access (Morrow, 2007) to her discipline because she is not given an induction into the “epistemological activities underpinning a systematized form of inquiry” (Slonimsky & Shalem, 2006, p. 37). For students to learn and perform well, they must not only gain access to established bodies of knowledge but also become inculcated within the institutional and disciplinary culture of learning. The inclusion-exclusion logic to normative entities of knowledge is a form of “symbolic violence” (Bulhan, 1985) in that it not only provides

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Odirile access into a system that rewards those who possess particular forms of cultural capital (i.e. predominantly white men) but also blocks her progression within this system which creates ancillary feelings of nonexistence for Odirile and other young Black women in STEM disciplines. The discrimination that Odirile experienced in her department made her feel that she was treated as if what I am is “inferior … like you’re not supposed to be there, or not worth you being there”. This illustrates that being treated as if ‘what I am’ is not knowing how or not “worth” being an  aspiring architect may have inflicted a “socially induced inferiority complex” (Hook, 2004, p.  99), or rather a socially induced sense of nonexistence. What lived material-discursive reality would the trans-formation of being a science person potentially create? How is belonging (as a state of being) to networks of discursive knowledge produced and what does the valuing of this knowing-how do? a) “the little things that paint you is a horrible weapon” (Kaiya): Identification of the subject with ideological categories is “a process of articulation, a suturing, an over-determination not a subsumption” (Hall, 1996, p. 3). Kaiya reflects on what it means for her to be a Black African person who does not speak an African language: Sabrina: So, you say people say, ‘why are you African, you don’t speak an African language?’ So, what do you tell them? Kaiya: That is why people do ask me, ‘aren’t you proud [to be African]’? I question what would make you feel proud, is it your culture or being proud of who you are as is now? Do you know what I mean, that is why I feel that people have their own [ideas] about what makes them proud of something or for something. You feel very passionate about something, and my feeling passionate about South Africa because I love my country and I want to bring back something to my country. The fact that I’m willing to learn other languages is the sign that I, I love being African, you know. The inner being, the colour that I have, the uniqueness of my face, I am proud of all those things, it’s just me speaking English does not necessarily define anything, it’s

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what is in my heart that I try make people understand … It’s not about the little things that paint you, I think if you throw all of that away, and just look at me like a clean canvas, you will really understand what potential is there along the way. So very few people get that, others are curious enough to want to know, then there are those who find it [not ­speaking an African language] sickening, you know because it’s very easy to tell by their facial expression, you tend to find they have this look, others stop befriending me because of something like that. Kaiya believes that people assume she is not proud of being African because she does not speak an African language. The way in which she identifies with being African is through “feeling passionate about South Africa” and “want[ing] to bring something back to my country”. Her “willingness to learn other languages” points to how she positions herself in relation to the dominant English ideology in which English is given universalism. Kaiya questions whether “others [should] stop befriending me” because she does not speak an African language and instead, she believes that she should not be defined by the “little things that paint you” but rather “what is in my heart”. Kaiya seems to be adopting an uncritical approach to not acknowledging the significant historical weight of English language imperialism in which English continues to be legitimated, while African languages across the continent continue to be stigmatised (Phillipson, 1996). Language, and the particular way in which one speaks a language in South Africa, is inextricably tied to race and class, as Botsis (2015) notes: “language, politics, race, and class are viscerally compacted in the spoken, material/real/actual/audible voice” (p. 15). Although it seems that Kaiya is adopting an uncritical approach to the historical weight of the “little things that paint you”, she does, however, go on to provide a critique of the ways in which mass media use these “little things [or labels] that paint you [as] a horrible weapon [in that] the adjectives that describe these labels [thus, essentialising and flattening differences between groups of people] can tear the person apart for life”. In this way, the media inscribes power on to the body through painting or inflicting labels onto people which could “tear [them] apart for life” as Kaiya notes. In response, she explains that if people “just look at me like

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a ‘clean canvas’, you will really understand what potential is there along the way”. In this sense, Kaiya is comparing her body and mind to a “clean canvas” in which the “canvas” could represent the potential for “cleaning” or momentarily ‘freeing’ oneself from harmful substances (i.e. the adjectives that flatten and essentialise differences between groups of people in the form of labels). Mbembe (2020) proposes that in the “age of the algorithm”, domination and exploitation which targets the human body is becoming increasingly abstract: “As a repository of our desires and emotions, dreams, fears and fantasies, our mind and psychic life have become the main raw material which digital capitalism aims at capturing and commodifying” (para. 5). Kaiya could thus be referring to how “the adjectives that describe these labels” not only captures one’s mind and psychic life but also commodifies and “tear[s] the person apart for life”. The process of “cleaning” or momentarily “freeing” oneself from “adjectives that describe these [essentialised] labels” (Kaiya) could be compared to Freud’s metaphor of the Mystic Writing Pad, as Sampson explains: [By peeling away each wax layer], The surface layer is open and permeable to the reception of incoming materials; it remains forever fresh however, only by virtue of the erasure that occurs each time the surface is lifted from its wax underbase. Derrida sees it to be significant that the virgin status of the first layer is assured only through its being erased so that a fresh surface can remain exposed: the erasure of presence is thus essential to the continuing awareness of presence. The inner surface of the pad consists of the underlying wax layer. While it does not receive fresh imprints, it records imprints as permanent traces inscribed in its surface. (Sampson, 1989, as cited by Botsis, 2015, p. 68)

Similarly, Kaiya may be suggesting that she views people as a “canvas” in which they “clean” their wounds by peeling away each layer of “the little things [labels] that paint you”, thus, leaving a visible trace of the scars from being torn apart by the infliction of “adjectives that describe these labels”. In other words, Kaiya implies that the canvas of her “identity” is not static but always “under erasure” (Hall, 1996, p. 1) because identification with ideological categories is “a process of articulation, a

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suturing, an over-determination not a subsumption. There is always ‘too much’ or ‘too little’—an over-determination or a lack, but never a proper fit, a totality” (Hall, 1996, p. 3). By peeling away layers of labels that mass media have used to paint her, it seems that Kaiya strives to create the possibility, within conditions of impossibility, of ‘re-painting’ and creating her sense of belonging through which being and becoming as the canvas of her ‘identity’ is always “under erasure” (Hall, 1996, p. 1). b) “It was honestly never about being a Black woman in science. It was about what I as, just as Kaiya, wanted to bring in science” (Kaiya): Stepping with the colonial inventions of race and gender and against their reification. In the following exchange, Kaiya explains why it is unfortunate that I, in this research project, have focused on “Black women scientists”: Sabrina: So, then what it means to be Black to you, you are redefining that? Kaiya: Sabrina, it’s a deep question, it’s a very deep question, that’s why I feel that at some point, race truly shouldn’t be a question any more Sabrina, the fact that you are Black or Asian I don’t even think that that should be in a sentence in a vocal. Because then again you are reintroducing those things that we are fighting against in the past even though it may not be as violent anymore, it’s still going to bring about those emotions, and that is why, and that is why when people do ask me ‘what am I’, others question if I’m even a South African to begin with, and what I am doesn’t really even matter anymore, the fact that I am a human being, I care for other human beings and I want to see them succeed in whatever that is they succeed in. I want to see them happy. What colour I am, what hair I have, I don’t think that’s of any relevance, that shouldn’t define what my passions are, it shouldn’t define what my goals are, so I think that’s when you want to link it to science, it is a bit unfortunate that you are talking about Black women in the science community but I think at some point, even when it comes to gender, I think at some point, I wish all that it should never even be in the context of any conversation. There

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should be honestly a sense of equality and that is something I wish before I ever die, you know, even if it doesn’t change and that there is this seed that we are all, that we are all the same … I think wanting to be in science, even all these factors come into play, it was honestly never about being a ‘Black woman in science’. It was about what I as, just as Kaiya, wanted to bring to science. It seemed to be the best field to, you know, work on that passion, to work on what I do know, what makes me happy. Kaiya questions why I, through this research, am labelling her as a “Black woman scientist” instead of recognising her as a scientist. She questions why I see the skin colour of her being a scientist before I see her, Kaiya, as an individual and what she wants to bring to science. She questions why I recognise her race and gender before I recognise her, Kaiya, as an individual person who has a passion for science. If Black women in STEM disciplines occupy “outlier” positionalities in South African universities through their crossing of multiple social locations, then they might be in a position to articulate a new conjuncture in the cultural politics of difference and potentially shift the entrenched ways in which the categories of race, gender and class exist as axes of power in society. But Kaiya asserts that by labelling her a “Black woman scientist”, this research is reifying notions of difference. I will attempt to interpret Kaiya’s argument by using a metaphor of stepping up an escalator which is moving in the opposite direction. Social reproduction and transformation could be viewed as the tension between form, content and context: The form as representative of people standing on the escalator, the content as representative of the stairs which position our standing on the escalator in relation to each other and the context as representative of institutional culture. On the one hand, social reproduction could be compared to standing firm in our positions on the escalator that effortlessly moves us from the top point of the escalator to the bottom point in a linear direction. In other words, the given content is doing the moving, not ourselves. On the other hand, social transformation could be compared to stepping up the escalator which is moving in the

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opposite direction. In this way, our-selves are doing the meaning-making and not the given content. As whiteness is privileged as being the invisible norm or default standard from which all others are compared and measured (Dyer, 1997; Sue, 2006), it is imperative that we constantly interrogate what counts as normal and make whiteness visible through critique. What do we do when our words become wedged into this critique? Kaiya proposes that “race truly shouldn’t be a question any more … the fact that you are Black or Asian, I don’t even think that that should be in a sentence in a vocal”. It is imperative, however, to recognise the ways in which racial categories influence our daily lived material realities of asymmetrical power relations. Perhaps what Kaiya is proposing is that if the stairs of the escalator are representative of the content of concepts, then how do we break the impasse of stepping with and against the colonial inventions of race and gender? How do we create new forms, contexts and concepts of change? How can we articulate a new language of change? Kaiya suggests that we might be able to articulate a new language of change by collectively sharing and listening to each other’s stories and learning to see the chaotic complex humanity in one another. Without losing sight of the ways in which racial categories influence our material realities of asymmetrical power relations, Kaiya proposes “the fact that I am a human being, I care for other human beings … what colour I am, what hair I have, I don’t think that’s of any relevance, that shouldn’t define what my passions are … there is this seed that we are all, are all the same”. Kaiya’s reference to “this seed that we are … all the same” is not an erasure of differences but rather it is symbolic of how our collective humanity with its differences and diverse perspective always hold multiple possibilities of being more powerful than oppressive structures which use difference to include or exclude, reward or punish, and elevate or oppress. However, these possibilities can only be realised through concrete institutional actions of undoing the countless ways in which white wealth directly depends on Black poverty. For instance, Milazzo (2015) reminds us that “dismantling of racial regimes requires concrete institutional actions, not arguments about the commonness of humanity that disregard collective advantages” (p. 12).

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 3) Social Structure-Agency as Our A Blood Vessels System and structure form part of a subgroup of words that are represented by the heading stand (Partridge, 2006). The Latin stāre and statūra means “upright, fixed, secure”, “a place of standing” and “the way one stands, attitude, hence condition, position” (Partridge, 2006, p. 3219). The Latin extendere refers to the “accepted criterion or measure”, “to be upright, to remain, to endure”, to standardise and to regularise (Partridge, 2006, p.  3220). The social structure, as the evaluative standard, constructs places of standing or structural positions. As society is structured, groups of people are assigned structured positions. Structure is related to the words instructive, instrument, instrumentation, and industry or economy. The Latin instruere means to teach, instruct or “build in-or into … to furnish someone with knowledge” (Partridge, 2006, p. 3275). The stem instru forms the word instrūmentum, which refers to “something that serves to equip or furnish, a tool” or an instrument (Partridge, 2006, p. 3275). Émile Durkheim conceptualises social structure as a system in which each component of the structure functions as an integrated whole with the purpose of maintaining the equilibrium of a  structure (Billington et  al., 1998). Social structures are organised around systems of knowledges which create values and norms or ideas and expectations that function as an instrument to instruct and guide people’s behaviour. Following Durkheim, Ritzer (2005) explains that social structures are “real material social facts that are external to and coercive over actors” (p. 763). Thus, social structures do not only exist in the realm of ideas as nonmaterial social facts (e.g., values, norms, social institutions) but also in real existence as material social facts. Max Weber’s notion of “social stratification” refers to the hierarchical organisation of society in which particular kinds of capital (e.g. level of education) provide individuals and groups with social and economic advantages (Billington et al., 1998). While occupational categories have been used as an indicator of social class, these occupational categories are stratified by gender and race. Categories of social divisions do not operate

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in isolation with the concept of class. Rendering social divisions visible and recognising social power axes is thus of critical emancipatory importance (Yuval-Davis, 2006). What social divisions across multiple contexts have in common is that they are economic in character, as Lipsitz (2006) explains: Race is a cultural construct, but one with deadly social causes and consequences. Conscious and deliberate choices have institutionalised group identity in the United States [and South Africa], not just through the dissemination of cultural stories, but also through the creation of social structures that generate economic advantages for European Americans through the possessive investment in whiteness. Studies of racial culture too far removed from studies of social structure leave us with inadequate explanations for understanding and combating racism. (As cited in Milazzo, 2016, p. 569)

Bulhan (1985) explains that Fanon viewed the dynamism and potency of social structure as not only a result of collective praxis but also a determinant of human psychology. For Fanon, as Bulhan (1985) notes, the primary task for psychology and psychiatry is to disentangle the relations between the psyche to the social structure, to rehabilitate marginalised and excluded groupings, and to dismantle social structures that thwart human needs. When psychological theories do not emphasise the importance of the social order, it thus places blame on the victim and also negates people’s agency to transform the social order and (non)real material social facts (Bulhan, 1985). This implies that while social structure is constantly reproduced by those who act within them, these structures can also be changed by those who reproduce them (Haug, 1992). In other words, identification is not a static object, but rather a transforming process through dialectical interplay between agents and social structure (Hay, 2002; Jessop, 1996; Rutherford, 1990). Social structures thus need to be discussed in relation to agents who simultaneously reproduce and alter structures. In her chapter, “‘Tell us a new story’: A Proposal for the Transformatory Potential of Collective Memory Projects”, Louise Vincent (2015) proposes that as subject

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positions are overlapping and changing, agency arises from the possibilities of altering subjective positionings: While we cannot ‘escape’ as a group or as individuals our material position in the social structure, our ideological and discursive position relates not only to our structural location but also to the discursive construction of our subjectivity which we can change. (p. 37, emphasis in original)

Through our blood vessels (veins and arteries), the circulatory system functions to deliver blood around our bodies in order to distribute oxygen, food and other chemicals to our cells that are protected by our skin. Similarly, through structure-agency, the discursive-circulatory system functions to deliver discourses around our psychosocial body which functions as a communicative speech act to convey particular meanings in a particular way to particular audiences. Structure-agency is the blood vessels which circulate discourses (blood) to and from symbolic narratives (heart). What are the social effects of the re-formation of this lived material-­ discursive reality? a) “[Art was] soul work for me … but it’s hard to get back to that point” (Alala): Structures of dehumanisation are materialised into prison houses of epistemic “correctness” which alienate Black students from  productions of their own meanings (Bulhan, 1985). In the excerpt below, Alala comments on her struggle to get back to a particular point or sense in which artwork is soul work for her. Alala: When I was in high school, I really did like art, I still do, it was, it’s, I do know it’s soul work for me when I do it’s, it’s, it’s, I go into a trance. And it’s sort of, it’s sort of like a calling, you just have to sit down and do it. And I’m sad that I have, when I came in did architecture, you have to draw a certain way, you have to do, to do things a certain way, things have to be in straight lines so through that, I lost, I don’t know—I didn’t, I didn’t lose it— but it’s hard to get back to that point because I had to, because it just took up so much of my time, so much of, of me. Like I had to throw myself, put myself, everything I had into it and things have to be done a certain way.

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She continues to explain that she felt “confined to a particular box” because her discipline required that she do things in a certain way which left little room for creativity or to “put myself into it”. Alala:

You know Sabrina, like I went in with my whole creative, I’m going to draw like this and even though it was, I understood that it had to be done a certain way, I thought I could bring something else to it, so I did what I had to do but I put myself into it, you know, but architecture doesn’t want that, they want straight lines. Sabrina: I remember a long time ago you once said how you were told to draw ‘architectural people’ and you were like ‘what are architectural people?’ Alala: You know architectural people and I had to learn that, I mean it is a skill, it’s an art, but it’s not for me, I want to draw, I want to be free, I want to draw free things and not to be constrained to a box, and I, and I lost that because I had spent so much time drawing you know. I’ll get back to it, it’s in me, I have the time now. Alala recognises that architectural drawings need “to be done a certain way” which shows the balancing act in how an architect is an unusual kind of artist who needs to stay within specific disciplinary boundaries (Cuff, 1992). However, new pathways of knowledge are created through diverse and innovative ways of knowing how to approach a problem from different angles, as demonstrated by Alala’s attempt “to put myself into [a project]” in order to “bring something else to it”. Through the process of education, students learn to develop their creative potential through the interplay of episteme, phronesis and reflective judgement. The aim of a university education is not to encourage students to memorise bits of information but rather to assist them to develop their cognitive structures and reflective judgement so that they can offer novel interpretations of the world. A computer metaphor illustrates this point: our minds are not only loaded with ‘data files’ (or knowledge-that) “but also sets of regulations or programs [knowledge-how] that determine how we operate on

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the world of our experience and how we experience the world we operate on” (Miller, 1989, p. 157). If students are disciplined on how to “do things [in] a certain way” without allowing for the possibility of them putting their selves, spirit or creative energy into it, as Alala notes, then it would perpetuate what Essed and Goldberg (2002) call cultural cloning or the reproduction of sameness (p.  1067) within scientific communities of practice. Alala explains that her creativity is an expression of her freedom and humanity: “I want to be free, I want to draw free things and not to be constrained to a box [or a prison house]”. She advocates for a university education that provides a framework for students to develop their problem-solving skills and ability to ‘think out of the box’. The reproduction of sameness (Essed & Goldberg, 2002, p. 1067) in “knowing how” to do things in a certain (same) way, in effect, materialises structures of dehumanisation. Put differently, this creates a material reality of economic and social constraints in that people in positions of dominance hold the power to impose their ideas and ways of doing things onto others through various means, not only including control of the mass media but also the education system (Billington et al., 1998). As being is a state of becoming, the social effects of materialising structural dehumanisation legitimise cultural subjugation of Black peoples. In the end, Alala was academically excluded from university for failing her repeat third year. She attributes her academic exclusion to not “expressing myself properly regardless of the hours of work that I put in, I put in a lot of work, I, I didn’t sleep … I wasn’t able to find a way, hmm, to find a different way to convey my ideas”. She concludes that she needed “to find a different way to convey [her] ideas [‘properly’]” because her knowing how to apply knowledge and to think through questions was “improper”, “incorrect” or not in compliance with the prevailing Eurocentric norms and values of the institutional (and disciplinary) culture. In other words, the ways in which Alala expressed her creativity in architecture was not recognised as meeting the accepted criteria of epistemic “correctness”. The multiple possibilities of knowing how to approach a problem from different and diverse perspectives is fixed into polar opposites of “right” and “wrong”, or “proper” and “improper”, or “acceptable” and “unacceptable” ways of constructing knowledge. These

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structures of dehumanisation materialise into prison houses of epistemic “correctness” which alienates Alala from her own social reality and constitutes a form of social and ideological oppression (Bulhan, 1985). What would the social effects of the trans-formation of this lived material-discursive reality potentially be? a) “I know what I’m doing … this is my way and let it be my way” (Takalani): Refusing to accept the terms of recognition that define humanity through the rapid lucrative value of university degrees. In the following excerpt, Takalani discusses how she came to devalue the importance which is placed on the lucrative market value of obtaining one’s degree in the shortest timeframe possible: Takalani: I’ve realised over these years, it’s, okay I think among my friends, like the ones that I came with from high school and home and stuff, okay, most of them did not come here, they went to other universities, and the thing is with them they found it easy and they finished quickly and now they’re buying houses and they’re buying cars and they’re getting married and stuff. So, it gets very, okay, you know what you’re doing, you know I’m doing aero [aeronautical engineering] and it’s like this big breakthrough, like I really like this and stuff. Sometimes it puts you in a very awkward position where you’re comparing yourself with others and sometimes you feel very small and you even lose focus because the thing is you’re in the library and they are coming to see you and they are driving this very big car, you’re like, ‘Oh my word, you got a car already’ and they are like, ‘we are working’ and you know sometimes it just puts you in a very, not a bad position but it, it would, like you’ll find yourself being very depressed because you’re thinking, ‘hey, now I’m wasting my life, I’ve wasted two years already [due to failing two years of study], how am I going to regain these two years and stuff? People are succeeding and they are doing things and yet, you’re here [‘still’ at university], you know … I think that was one thing I had to face [­ falling ’behind’ due to failure], but I was like, ‘I know what I’m doing, they are not doing

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what I’m doing so this is my way and let it be my way’. I think, yeah, because I think if you’re not very strong, you’ll end up even switching universities so that you go to an easier one and finish and do whatever and like lose out on what you want for yourself. So I think that was one of the things that I kind of learned the hard way and the thing is with us, like at home I think, not my mom though my mom is very supportive, like she understands, she doesn’t expect me to finish and to start working and then to support her or whatsoever. I remember the other time she said to me, ‘don’t get too pressurised, I don’t expect you to support me, like I’m your mom and I will support you in whatever way. Takalani implies that conforming to nonmaterial social facts (i.e. norms, values, and knowledges) of an institution manifests into material social facts of “buying houses … buying cars [etc.]” in a short timeframe. She explains that not transitioning from nonmaterial to material social facts fast enough “puts you in a very awkward position where you’re comparing yourself with others and sometimes you feel very small and you even lose focus”. Takalani describes her experience of failing two years of study as “depressing” or “wasting my life” because it interrupted the process of converting her degree into capital in the shortest timeframe possible: “how am I going to regain these two years and stuff, people are succeeding … and yet, you’re here [‘still’ at university]”. However, Takalani decides to fulfil what she wants for herself instead of what society wants from her, that is, to convert her degree into capital in the shortest timeframe possible even if that means taking an “easier” route. She espoused her way or vision of being and becoming an engineer by stating; “I know what I’m doing, they are not doing what I’m doing so this is my way and let it be my way”. In this way, Takalani resigns from searching for recognition from structures of dehumanisation which validate the rapid lucrative market value of her degree and thus, she alters these structures by refusing to accept the terms of how recognition takes place through defining humanity by the lucrative value of university degrees (Maldonado-Torres, 2016). For example, in her paper, “Transforming Historically White Universities: Students and the Politics

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of Racial Representation”, Kessi (2013) notes that “racialising representations have the effect of putting the responsibility for transformation onto black students by locating the problem of underperformance in their characteristics as individuals while exonerating the role of institutional practices” (p. 55).

A4) Discourses as Our Blood The word course in discourse derives from the French cours or “course of ” and Latin cursus or “a place for running” (Partridge, 2006, p. 655). The Latin discursus or discourse means to literally “run to-and-fro” in which social structure provides the “place for running” (Partridge, 2006, p. 655). Discourse is thus understood as practices of language which “run to-and-fro” with specific social actions under consideration, as Ritzer (2005) explains, “a discursive practice goes forward-and-back over the subjects of social theoretical work” (p. 204). Just as blood is the body’s delivery system, discourse systemically “delivers” and communicate a set of beliefs, knowledge and practices that are specific to particular situations. To address the objectivist/subjectivist dichotomy, Bourdieu (1986) distinguishes between habitus and field in order to emphasise the materiality of social life through the various ways in which practices position an agent within a field. Bourdieu’s work demonstrates how social structures are incorporated as part of the body. Bourdieu (1986, p. 243) posits that cultural capital can exist in three interrelated forms: in the “embodied state” (i.e. attitudes, preferences, and behaviour), the “objectified state” (i.e. cultural goods or resources) and the “institutionalised state” (i.e. educational qualifications). Habitus or cultural capital in the embodied state is accumulated through “a labor of inculcation and assimilation [which] costs time, time which must be invested personally by the investor” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 244). Bourdieu (1990) defines habitus as: [s]ystems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively

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adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. (p. 53)

The relation between structured habitus in the structure of a field results in the present structuring of practices. Practice, as the interplay between one’s habitus and forms of capital, positions an agent and/or institution within the field of power (Bourdieu, 1986). Habitus is inscribed in the bodies of social agents by their socialisation and lived experiences. These ongoing practices materialise or mould bodies in line with particular norms (Botsis, 2015). Habitus and capital determine which strategies an agent is likely to adopt in manoeuvring symbolic power in a field, which is structured by implicit rules that serve the economic interests of the dominant/normative group. Social capital is the acquisition of resources and benefits linked to institutionalised networks of mutual familiarity and recognition (Bourdieu, 1986). In other words, we could define social capital could be defined as “features of social life—networks, norms and trust—that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives” (Putnam, 1995, pp.  664–645). It is likely that agents with cultural capital entering the university field would already have established networks from which they could make capital withdrawals to better position themselves within the field of play (Booi, 2015). Bourdieu (1986) posits that networks of relationships are maintained through exchange processes (of words, scarce information, favours, etc.) that reproduce mutual familiarity and recognition. Durable networks that foster relationships of mutual familiarity and trust enable agents to strategically position themselves within the field of play. Trust is “a particular level of the subjective probability with which an agent assesses that another agent or group of agents will perform a particular action” that maintains the identity of a network (Gambetta, 1988, p. 217). Conversely, it is perceived to be a “social risk” to form social relations with people outside the class networks because they are perceived to be ‘untrustworthy’ or unlikely to perform particular actions that would reproduce the cultures of dominant/normative social groups.

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Bourdieu (1986) draws on the elements of a “game”, based on a competitive model, to explain how dominant values, norms and practices in education come to be reproduced through naturalised cultural processes. In this way, the material-discursive system of (non)being could be viewed as the positions at play, the storied system of (not)becoming could represent the field of play and the symbolic narrative system of (no)belonging could be viewed as the “regulative principles” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) that set the terms for recognition in play. In addition to investigating how the transmission and accumulation of cultural capital reproduces social inequalities, it is equally important to explore how individuals and groups of people, at different times, have resisted dominant discourses and re-positioned themselves in alternative discourses within conditions of impossibility. According to Foucault, power lies within discourses and not the structural arrangements of society (as cited in Billington et al., 1998). Discourses function as a performative and communicative speech act in that people choose particular words and grammatical features to convey particular meanings and practices that are specific to particular situations. Discourses are thus sites of contestation and struggle because the notion of discourses not only recognises the multiplicity of meaning systems in society, but also the contestability of that meaning (Billington et al., 1998). In her article, “Whose Culture has Culture? A Critical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth”, the critical race theory scholar Tara Yosso (2005) provides a critique of Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital by utilising Critical Race Theory (CRT) to focus on the cultural wealth of Communities of Colour: CRT shifts the research lens away from a deficit view of Communities of Color as places full of cultural poverty disadvantages, and instead focuses on and learns from the array of cultural knowledge, skills, abilities and contacts possessed by socially marginalized groups that often go unrecognized and unacknowledged”. (p. 69)

Yosso (2005) proposes the concept of community cultural wealth which comprises the following forms of capital: “aspirational”,

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“familial”, “social”, “resistant”, “linguistic” and “navigational” capital. Linguistic capital refers to  the multiple communicative, intellectual and social skills that have been developed by communities of colour through conversing in more than one language (Yosso, 2005).5 The skills required to strategise how to manoeuvre oneself through institutional structures is what Yosso (2005) describes as navigational capital. Similarly, social capital as networks of connections with significant others provides the constructive and emotional support needed to navigate through institutional structures (Yosso, 2005). Familial capital also provides a model for “caring, coping and providing (educación), which inform our emotional, moral, educational and occupational consciousness” (Yosso, 2005, p. 79). By engaging with oppositional behaviour which challenges inequality, communities of colour have developed particular knowledges and skills which Yosso refers to as resistant capital. Aspirational capital refers to the resiliency “to dream of possibilities beyond their present circumstances, often without the objective means to attain those goals” (Yosso, 2005, p. 78). For example, Carolissen, van Wyk, and Pick-Cornelius’s (2012) conducted case study focus group interviews with a group of  young Coloured adolescent girls (aged 13–15) who grew up in a democratic South Africa, and their collective standpoints “reflects a story that is contrary to the inclusionary discourse associated with rainbowism” (p. 39). How is this material-discursive reality, and its social effects masked? a) “you’d be like, ‘oh probably I’m not meant to be here [at university]’” (Takalani): The so-called lack of dominant institutionalised capital in the form of background knowledge. Naila likens her former Model C high school to a private school in terms of the resources her school provided, for example, laboratory equipment, scholarship opportunities, extramural activities and career guidance. She believes that her exposure to these learning resources provided her with sufficient background knowledge that prepared her for academic demands at university.  My thanks to Ronelle Carolissen for introducing me to Tara Yosso’s scholarship.

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Naila: It’s a really good school and it might not be a private school but we had everything in terms of how the chemistry lab was full, if you didn’t have clothes, she [the  principal] would give you clothes. We had extramural activities and we were competing with private schools in terms of debating and public speaking so we were exposed to what I feel private schools are exposed to, we might not have had everything, but we had it was awesome. So I did a lot of things at school, and from academics and you know cultural activities to sports, I did dancing modelling, so you see at [this] high you really get to explore everything, and I mean modelling [laughing] but you see that’s the thing, they give you confidence you can do anything, so that was my school, and I’m glad that I went to that school … it does help that you know you can do so many things, you get awards for, its motivation. Naila’s former Model C high school provided her with the opportunities “to explore everything … from academics [to] cultural activities to sports” which translated into transferable skills and the recognition she received for her academic work instilled the “confidence that [she] can do anything”. The women who attended high schools in townships and their home villages reported particular challenges in obtaining learning resources, the unavailability of particular subjects, and gaining the “proper background [knowledge]” as Takalani notes. However, Ambani mentioned that she “didn’t really care” that her school had poor infrastructure: Ambani: Let me just mention the infrastructure in that school because it was really bad like we didn’t have tables, we sat on chairs, we wrote on our laps, ja, so, so the infrastructure was really poor. I didn’t really care much about that because that’s all we knew, we didn’t know … we didn’t really mind much about that. Takalani believes that her high school did not provide her with the “proper background [knowledge]” in preparation for studying

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aeronautical engineering at university, as she states “it’s, very hard if you don’t have like a proper background”. She explains that the main obstacle during her first year of study was technical drawing. Takalani: Studies wise, in first year, it was much easier I think, or probably it was because of the excitement like yes, so I got through my first year very easy, though I had problems with my drawing, there was this other drawing course that was like very tricky and all that, that was the main problem but everything else was fine. As her high school did not offer drawing courses, Takalani experienced difficulties in adjusting to her first year at university because she was not taught how to do technical drawing. This finding is consistent with Potter, Van Der Merwe, Kaufman, and Delacour’s (2006) research which shows that first-year female Engineering students reported difficulties in Engineering graphics as they did not do drawing courses in their secondary schooling. Whereas Naila believed her former Model C high school gave her the confidence to do anything, Takalani explains that not having a “proper background [knowledge]” had a negative impact on her confidence in her academic ability. Takalani: You end up asking very stupid questions in class and you end up answering very stupid answers and the lecturer will come back and be like, ‘guess what I saw? [laughing], someone wrote this on their paper and like what is ‘what?’ And you’re thinking ‘ah, that is me!’ [laughing]. I’m very thankful you [the lecturer] didn’t mention the name but that is me right there, so like yeah and sometimes it would like, it would really put you down, you’d be like, oh probably I’m not meant to be here, you know. Mamoratwa maintains that she did not have access to sufficient information about possible career options.

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Mamoratwa: There aren’t people to tell you about or who actually give you career guidance. They, you know, you just get assumptions from people, you never get told the real thing. And still even in Applied Maths, I was probably the first one in my entire village who has ever done such a degree, and I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. … and I was getting worried, now to me, I didn’t want, I’m no academic. The diverse educational and socio-economic backgrounds that Takalani, Nalila, Ambani and Mamoratwa come from manifest in unequal and different kinds of background knowledge (of knowledge-­ that and knowledge-how) in preparation for university. Students who are situated in middle-classed positions (i.e. those who come from private schools and former Model C high schools) have developed the kind of academic habitus (particularly knowledge-how), which facilitates their epistemological access (Morrow, 2007) to the dominant institutionalised capital in historically white universities (Liccardo, Botsis, & DominguezWhitehead, 2015). These different experiences of attending former Model C schools and schools in townships and villages do not demonstrate that Takalani, for example, struggles to “keep up” or “lacks” dominant institutionalised capital in the form of background knowledge but rather it demonstrates how class and racialised structures continue to create inequalities within the schooling system. Kessi (2013) argues that the deficient terms used to describe black students as “disadvantaged” or “under-prepared” “underpin the more deep-seated beliefs that black students lack the necessary competencies to embark on a university education as they “struggle to keep up” (Newling 2012) with the rest of the (white) student population” (p. 55). b) “I’d only speak [English] if I was requested to … what if I make a mistake? What if I don’t say it right?” (Takalani): The so-called lack of dominant embodied cultural capital in the form of linguistic capital. Mamoratwa explains that her parents sent her to a boarding school because they were concerned that  she would not learn how to speak English.

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Mamoratwa: So I went to boarding school from Grade 4, at a private school, that was in Polokwane, there I did my Grade 4 and Grade 5 there but then I couldn’t survive the b­ oarding school life at that age, I just couldn’t and I just told them [my parents] that I want to go back home and I couldn’t care whether I was going to be, studying everything in my home language. I wasn’t going to be speaking English no more, I just wanted to go back home. The motivation to send Mamoratwa to a  boarding school to learn English could have stemmed from her parents’ concern for her prospective education and employment. Blackledge and Pavlenko (2002) mention that although multilingual societies seem to promote multilingualism and heterogeneity, in reality the linguistic diversity of their population is undervalued. Botsis (2015) explains that this is clear in many parents concerns about the quality of mother-tongue education and prospective education and employment, therefore, parents demand that children be educated in English instead of their mother-tongue, as is the case for Mamoratwa (Banda, 2000; Granville et al., 1998). In South Africa, English is cypher for class. English proficiency is associated with whiteness in South Africa and is the most highly valued form of linguistic and cultural capital (Mckinney, 2007), particularly in the context of the university, as articulated by Takalani: Takalani: So, I think it got, I had to keep quiet like I’d only speak [English] if I was requested to, like I wouldn’t just speak … what if I make a mistake? What if I don’t say it right? … when I speak English with the people that came from, with the people that I came with [from Limpopo], people with the same background [who speak Venda], it wouldn’t have been as bad but now you’re coming here, meeting with people who are very, they speak like fluent English and it seems like they’ve been speaking this English for a very long time, they are comfortable, they don’t make any mistakes, they don’t mumble, they speak and you’re thinking, I’m among these people and you know … So I think, I think, it’s like the

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same people on my [Oya] scholarship, like most of them they grew up here [Gauteng], I think about six of them were from Gauteng and they went to like good schools, I think so like they could speak English very well and there was only three of us from Limpopo and one of us from Mpumalanga … So it was, it was hard, like when I was with them, when I was with, with them, with the two [peers from Limpopo], I’d speak a lot like but when we got to the [Oya] group it was like, ‘ah cut’ [laughing] … So, if [this university] was in Venda, I don’t think I would’ve been quiet [laughing], I don’t think I would have been quiet, so yeah, yeah, I think it affected me. The knowledge of how to speak “proper [or] fluent English” (Takalani) is a highly valued form of linguistic capital which becomes embodied through the process of socialisation, as Takalani notes, her peers who grew up in an urban area and attended former Model C schools “are comfortable, they don’t make any mistakes, they don’t mumble”. How is this material-discursive reality and its social effects re-formed? c) “[I am my family’s] retirement plan” (Alala): Black students’ restricted financial access to university education. The Oya scholarship programme provided the women with the necessary financial support for the duration of their undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. Takalani believes that she would have not been able to attend university if she had not received funding for her studies: “now, I’m going to work and I don’t owe anyone, seeing the fees here at [this university] they are really expensive and like I can’t, my mom can’t afford it so, I was very fortunate”. Similarly, Nosakhele adds, “[my parents] couldn’t promise to bring me to varsity. So even though I was working hard in high school, getting good grades, I was forever worried about who was going to take me to school”. For first-generation students whose families have scarce financial resources, Alala explains that choosing to pursue a particular degree was influenced by whether it would enable her to support her family.

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Alala: But then, but then looking at your background and where you come from, you don’t come from the most, wealthy, wealthiest family, you know and when you, when you choose your degree, you choose that according to, ‘okay fine so do I like it [degree] enough? Can I do it? And can it, can it help me to support, to support, to support people. I don’t know what I was watching but oh yes it was the Ellen DeGeneres Show [laughing] and this guy helped this other guy, but the point is, he, hmm, his father started this car shop, and hmm … And now, he’s running, this son is running the shop and he was saying to Ellen, that he is his father’s ‘retirement plan’. So, it sort of feels that way for us, for me as well. In addition to achieving her academic goals, Alala notes that she had the added pressure of being her family’s retirement plan: “You have your school to worry about, you have your passion to worry about, you have your dreams to worry about, but you also have your family and people”. The Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall movement in response to an increase in fees at South African universities in 2015 was led by Black student activists whose families have scarce financial resources and brought urgent debates about free higher education to the national consciousness. Several frameworks have been proposed in working toward fee-free higher education and widening access to higher education, particularly for students whose families have scarce financial resources (see, e.g. Motala, Vally, & Maharajh, 2016). d) “[Donald] let’s just acknowledge it for what it is, don’t, don’t wear a face for us” (Alala): Deliberately signing the ignorance contract (Steyn, 2012) to maintain the size of one’s classed networks and volume of economic and cultural capital. Alala believes that her white colleague and prior classmate, Donald, pretended that he was not receiving preferential treatment by the directors of the Architectural Firm. Alala: So basically, we [Busisiwe and I] got different treatment to Donald. He got to go to sites, but for me, for me, I wasn’t, I wasn’t mad at how, at the fact that Donald, whatever, was treated, I felt that—oh my gosh, I never told you, I didn’t tell you, this is

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awful—but okay I wasn’t mad with Donald, because Donald is my friend, we went to school together, but uhm I wasn’t, what infuriated me about him is that, he knew that this was happening and that he was getting greater responsibility, and he pretended that it wasn’t happening, and for me that is just not cool. I mean it’s happening, say it ‘okay guys you know, I know that this is what’s going on’, it doesn’t matter if you’re happy about it or not, let’s just acknowledge it for what it is, don’t, don’t wear a face for us, just say this is what it is, this is what it is. And for me that’s when Donald made me mad, I was like, ‘Donald get out of my face man’. I mean it’s things like that. Donald’s apparent pretence that he was not receiving preferential treatment is likened to wearing a face, as noted by Alala, “let’s just acknowledge it for what it is, don’t, don’t wear a face for us”. By wearing a face, it seems that Donald is a signatory of what Steyn (2012) has called the ignorance contract which is “the tacit agreement to entertain ignorance [and functions as] a social achievement with strategic value” (p. 8). This demonstrates how “ignorance functions as social regulation through forming subjectivities” in which white (and male) subjects in privileged positions become “appropriate performers of ignorance” by wearing a face (Steyn, 2012, p. 8). Donald’s vested interest in maintaining his privileged positions as a white and male subject, through receiving preferential treatment and greater responsibility, illustrates the interrelation between ignorance and domination, in that ignorance is often constituted through aspects of power (Feenan, 2007; Steyn, 2012) The volume of social capital accrued by agents, particularly in the academic and corporate fields, is determined by the size of their classed networks and volume of economic and cultural capital. As masculine whiteness is dominant in South Africa, a society that is structured by a racial hierarchy, Donald possesses large volumes of capital, which enables him to preserve old existing normalised traditional practices in a field by “wearing a face” or “pretend[ing] that it wasn’t happening”. Donald utilises his networks of connections as an investment strategy aimed at maintaining social relationships that can produce profits in the short or long term (Bourdieu, 1986).

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This finding alerts us to the fact that dominant–subordinate positions are dependent on one’s volume of capital that shape and maintain specific rules of the field. Agents use the rules of the field, consciously or unconsciously, to transform or preserve practices within an institution. The possession of or access to privileged networks of social capital is a powerful resource for realising these aims. How could this material-discursive reality, and its social effects be unmasked? a) “There’s no Welile without her mother” (Welile): The value of their “familial capital” in the form of their mother’s strength, courage, resilience, sacrifice, joyfulness, unwavering support and unconditional love. Having recently become a mother herself, Welile mentions that she feels a deep sense of disappointment and resentment toward her absent father when reflecting on her mother’s sacrifices. Welile: I didn’t realise that we are not a rich family, but when you have everything, just having three meals a day, even though the meals aren’t you know an English breakfast, my needs were always met. My mom made sure, I don’t know how she did that, you know … And going to primary and high schools, my mom always took me to schools that she couldn’t afford because she always believed that she needs to try and give me a better education … she even planned by 21st birthday and I didn’t want a 21st because I knew that she couldn’t afford, agh, but my mom being my mom, she just gives so much … I think sometimes I do resent my father because he’s actually very wealthy because I think that I haven’t kept in contact with them because when I met him in Grade 11, he gave me a sad story of how he was just ashamed of knowing me because you can’t provide for me … I thought that was the story, but when he actually took me to his house, I was like oh my goodness this man is actually living in luxury, his girls have gone to private schools, they’ve got laptops, I remember my mom was saving the whole of my first-year to get me a laptop”.

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Welile concludes by expressing the amount of love she feels for her mother, who has been a continuous source of strength to her. Welile: My mom has been, yo my rock, yo, my rock. I love that woman you know, whenever I pray, I just, I asked the Lord to keep my mom around so that I can do things you know. To show her what life is about … [I want to] do things for her because she’s done so much for me, she really has done so much, ja, I’m getting all teary, I love her, love her, love her … there’s no Welile without her mother, definitely not. Mamoratwa also spoke about the sacrifices her mother made when she was pregnant during her final year in high school. Mamoratwa mentioned that her mother took care of her child while she obtained her degree at a university which was in another province to her hometown. Nosakhele adds that although she had a strong familial support system of friends during her university studies, “still I wouldn’t open up to anyone except my mom”. Takalani explains that when her father passed away when she was seven years old, her mother was 28 years old with three children. Takalani mentions that it was only during her university studies when she realised that her mother had dedicated her life to her children. In the following excerpt, she details how her mother took care of her children with unwavering support and unconditional love. Takalani: I have the best mom, I have the best mom in the world, like my mom has gone through a lot! … So, like I think she gave up her life for us … she would have done so many things, but it was like us first. When I was a kid, I thought it was like her responsibility, it’s a responsibility to take care of us but not to give up her own life for us. So I think that’s where she went a bit extreme like sometimes you know, she’d bring so many clothes at home and you wouldn’t see a single item that belonged to her, you’d see her wearing the same clothes to work and then you go out on weekends and everybody is like ‘ah, you look beautiful, you look beautiful!’. But the thing is

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by then I was too young to like realise until, when I grew up and realised this woman, the thing is that it has turned out to be her life, like she lives for us … I’m like oh my word she doesn’t even get to that point where she feels like she’s tired now of taking care of me … She’s been the best, like she’s been the best, she’s been the best mom ever and I’ve never heard her complaining about me not finishing school and stuff … she’ll just be like ‘study hard, you’ll finish, I know you’ll finish’. Yes she’s like, I can’t remember a single day when she was mad just because I failed or got mad because I’m not finishing. Takalani believes that she is a strong person because of her mother’s resilience and joyfulness. Takalani:

My mom, I think I’m strong and why I’m strong is what I get from my mom, just to see what she has been through and still she smiles, she is a very happy … I don’t feel that there is anything I can’t do; I don’t feel like I’ve gone through what she’s gone through like I’m still far from it. So, if she pulled through that, I can pull through those little things that I’m going through.

Further, Takalani mentions how her mother’s emotional and financial support had alleviated the pressure to provide for her family. Takalani:

The thing is with us like at home I think, not my mom though, my mom is very supportive like she, she understands, like she doesn’t expect me to finish and to start working when then to support her and whatsoever. I remember the other time she said to me ‘don’t get too pressurised, I don’t expect you to support me like I’m your mom and I will support you in whatever way’ but you find your, your sisters and it’s probably because they are young and they not matured sometimes they expect things from you because you’re their big sister.

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b) “It’s like people holding your hand even when you’re in the dark” (Alala): The value of their social capital in the form of women’s support. This section explores where, when, whether, and with whom, do the women feel ‘at home’ in the institutional culture. Ambani mentions that the friendships she developed with the women in the Oya scholarship programme created a sense of home at the university, “the friends I’ve made here at this place, it feels like home, whenever, I come back here [the university], it feels like home”. Similarly, Amirah attributes her personal growth not only to the friendships that were formed with the women in the programme but also from having to interact with those with whom she did not get along with: Amirah: I think a lot of the changes that I see when I look back and I’m like how did I change, how did I grow as a person? A lot of it is owed to [the  Oya programme] and maybe because firstly [Oya] started my social experience. Because that’s when I met the people who eventually I consider them my sisters. So that’s when everything started [also] learning how to deal with people and interacting with people that you might not get along with especially, I mean the [Oya] girls, we were a very diverse group of girls … we were forced to interact and it’s like listen you are going to be in this group, you are going to interact and you are going to make it right … you see that if you interact in a certain way, then you get certain results and that’s a life teaching so that was very important. Similarly, Ambani reflects on the social skills she gained from learning how to deal with ‘elephants in the room’: Ambani: Maybe I did not walk out with a degree, but the experiences like with the scholarship … and we had warm relationships amongst ourselves. It was hard. There were elephants sometimes in the room and we learned to deal with it. So those are the kind of things you cannot learn them anywhere else. You can only learn through experience.

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In reflecting on her pregnancy during her first year of study, Mamoratwa states that, “I think it all depends on support, like I don’t know, support got me through my rough first times, I forgot about everything, the support from my friends … I mean we are all girls, sometimes we had our own wild fights, but they would never involve me, like it was one of those things, they just respected me and I never told them [of my pregnancy], but I could see that they know”. The support that Alala gained from significant others fuelled her drive to persevere and provided her with the platform to voice important matters: Alala: I enjoyed being with my friends, I enjoyed sitting on the lawn and having a conversation that mattered, that we felt would be heard, talking about things that, you know that we found were important and it was a platform where you were heard, for me, that was nice … when people support you … it’s them lighting your fire. So, for me that has been very important, and it has kept me going and throughout from primary school, and high school, at home, I’ve had people that supported me, and varsity, the [Oya programme], the friends. In addition to the friendships that developed between the women, Alala, Welile and Khanyisile propose that the support provided by the Oya programme staff contributed to creating “safe” spaces or a homeplace (hooks, 2015) at the university which stabilised their sense of self. For example, Khanyisile noted that when “we come [to the scholarship programme office] and you have these big smiles and it makes me feel better, so that helps. Like I know if I am stranded, I can go there”. Alala reflects on how the support from the Oya programme inspired her to persevere in the face of the unknown, as she states “but for me it was [Oya], I mean you [Oya programme] believed in us and you were investing in us and that meant something that keeps me going … it’s like people holding your hand even when you’re in the dark”. Welile discusses the moral support that she received from the programme when she was academically excluded:

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Welile: I told [the project manager] that I didn’t want to come back, that they must give the scholarship to somebody else who is more deserving because I am just a failure, and [the project manager] being the person that she is, she was like; ‘no, you’re not a failure, you are going to ask to be brought back to the University’. Furthermore, Alala spoke about how her support system, in particular how her teachers “kept [her] going through the difficult times”: Alala: Sabrina: Alala: Sabrina: Alala:

That’s. I’m stuck [laughing]. No, silence is good. You’re doing very well. I know it’s difficult. Ja, to just, just talk about yourself [laughing]. Well, I love listening, especially to you. And ja, and people have always been important. I’ve always had support. I remember, oh wow, I remember, how can I forget, from primary school, there has always been people that have believed in me. I don’t know what they saw but those people, they have kept me going through the difficult times, through, whatever, they’ve kept me encouraged and uhm and in primary school, I remember, uhm, my father had just passed away, I was nine I think, and my mom couldn’t afford to pay school fees anymore and then there was this teacher, that’s, I do know she believed in me, or she saw something, and she organised for me so that I could, I could, we could work out a payment plan that my mom could—my mom had just lost her job in 1998—so, so she, she found a way for a payment plan to work out.

Odirile also noted that if it were not for her colleagues’ moral support, she would have not survived her internship at an architectural firm as she was subjected to sexism. Odirile:

This one woman was, gosh, if she wasn’t there, I would have never survived. She’s an architect, she did extremely well in her last year as an architectural student, she was top of the

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class, she won this prize and she was always saying to me, ’It’s okay, I’ve been here for four years now, things work, you’ll be fine, just do what you need to do and don’t compromise on the way you do things, do what you are here to do, produce the best you can produce and here, that’s the way he [the boss] runs things, he’s going to realise later in life when we are gone and his company has lost the people that work for him’. And so, she was the one that was always keeping me up, reminding me that I mustn’t compromise my standards and just push forward, you know. Odirile’s colleague alludes to how their boss has set the tone for how things are run in the firm and her advice to Odirile is not to “compromise on the way you do things” which implies that the way in which their boss “runs things” could undermine Odirile’s knowing how to do her job. Similar to Takalani who espoused her way of being and becoming an engineer by stating, “this is my way and let it be my way”, Odirile explains that she would maintain her personal standards by not “compromis[ing] on [her] way” of doing architectural work. c) “But when I got to second year, I still felt like, ‘okay who is going to hire me?’” (Nosakhele): The value of their “navigational capital” in the form of proactivity and resourcefulness. Nosakhele explains that she did a second major to increase the likelihood of securing a job after graduation. Nosakhele: But when I got to second year, I still felt like, ‘okay who is going to hire me?’ But obviously then I communicated with a lot of seniors in the school and with my lecturers but they kept saying, ‘well, with genetics in South Africa you can’t do much’ … that’s when like I decided ‘Okay, maybe I must take another major to diversify my degree, so I ended up doing microbiology also and biotechnology … and that’s when I actually noticed that there is a lot of job opportunities in South Africa and that actually kept me going, because it’s always safe to study knowing that at the end you have a job.

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When Nosakhele’s Oya scholarship funding came to an end, she discussed how she managed to secure additional funds for her postgraduate studies by drawing on the social networks that she had formed from the Oya programme. In this way, Nosakhele acted within the institutional constraints of limited funding by connecting to social networks that facilitated her navigation through university spaces and the prospective job market. d) “I will give back, that’s what I want to do” (Takalani): The value of their “aspirational capital” in the form of being of service to humanity. Takalani mentions how she aspires to prepare high school learners for university studies. Takalani: When, when I start working and I have time and stuff, I think I’ll, I’ll go to schools, to like schools especially the school from where I come from because there have been a couple of kids who are coming from my school to do Aeronautical Engineering and I see them failing, going through the same struggle that I went through. Takalani views her engineering skills, knowledge and life experiences as inseparable from her altruistic ambitions and desire to be of service to humanity. Similarly, Naila also aspires to be of service to humanity by joining Engineering without Borders. Naila:

I was telling my dad, like, I feel like you have to give back and it’s not, not a lot of, a lot of people just say this, but I feel like I’m working … I want to give back to the community and do ‘Engineering without Borders’ and go to countries where they are in need of water and sanitation, so if I can get the experience and come up with ways, I will give back, that’s what I want to do. Because what I realised now that when you’re working, you’re just work day and night … for a pay cheque … so I really want to do that, that’s my future goal.

Through the cultural production of science, these young women are able to begin creating new “imagined communities” (Anderson, 2006) by re-appropriating what it means to be Black women and scientists in

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“post”-apartheid South Africa. In addition, the category of scientist is also shifted and reinterpreted. How could this material-discursive reality, and its social effects be trans-formed? e) “The word [‘disadvantage’] has got a little ghost hanging around it” (Alala): The value of their “linguistic capital” and “resistant capital” in challenging deep-seated racialised beliefs and attitudes that are masked through misrepresentations and deficient constructions of Black students. In the following exchange, Alala speaks about the dehumanising effect that deficient terms have on Black communities. Alala:

I don’t like it [the word ‘disadvantaged’] because you always get people saying that we offering scholarships for people that are coming from disadvantaged communities. I think that we are very lucky to come from where we come from because we learn, you know, stuff and we are not disadvantaged, we have talents, we have things, we are people, we are human. I just don’t like the word, it’s the word, the other word ‘poor’, you know because it’s not money that defines richness, yes, it can make you drive your nice cars, but you know I’m happy. There we go again that word ‘happy’ [laughing] … it’s sort of, you know, also it takes away something from you, from us, those people come from disadvantage because you’re [i.e. the Oya programme and me, as a past staff of the programme] giving us that name, you’re really taking away taking away light from us, you’re taking light from us saying we are ‘disadvantaged’. We are not, we don’t have huge houses, we are struggling to pay full fees, everyone is struggling. We are not disadvantaged. It’s making us less human and now you come here, and you have to, to, Sabrina: to prove that you are not ‘disadvantaged’? Alala: to prove that you are not ‘disadvantaged’. I don’t like the word. You have to compete with your peers who don’t come from ‘disadvantaged’ environments and what you have, you have, psychologically you already have this piece of you taken away, so that justified extra hard to show that you are not ‘disadvantaged’ …

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Sabrina: in the programme documents we always used the word ‘disadvantage’ and something in me was like ‘err’ [expression of unease]. Alala: there’s just something about the word. It has got a little ghost hanging around it, and also you say, ‘previously disadvantaged’. Okay, what are you saying here? Sabrina: Oh gosh, yes, I think we did that for the funders. Alala: the funders must stop this. Sabrina: I hear you. I’ll change it in this research. Alala explains that deficient terms, such as “disadvantaged” or “poor” which are used to describe Black communities are dehumanising because it “takes away something from you, from us [it] tak[es] away light from us”. She resists the idea that wealth is defined by the possession of economic capital in the form of “driv[ing] nice cars” and “hav[ing] huge houses”. Instead, she defines wealth as substance in the form of communities which are rich in diversity and humanity; “I think that we are very lucky to come from where we come from because we learn you know stuff and we are not disadvantaged we have talents, we have things, we are people, we are human”. Alala shifts the deficit analytical lens on Black communities as places of cultural poverty ‘disadvantages’ to focus on the multiplicity of their cultural knowledges, cultural resources, talents, abilities, skills and networks which go unacknowledged (Yosso, 2005). Alala explains that in addition to “psychologically … hav[ing] this piece of you [or your humanity] taken away” by being viewed through a deficit analytical lens, it also places Black people in a position where they need to “compete with [their] peers who don’t come from ‘disadvantaged’ environments” and work extra hard to “show that you are not ‘disadvantaged’” but also to show that “we are people, we are human”. Kessi (2013) explains that deficient terms used to describe Black students as “disadvantaged” is underpinned by deep-seated attitudes and beliefs that Black students “struggle” to “keep up” with the white student population for  their apparent  “lack” of skills and competencies needed for university studies. Such representations not only are stigmatising, as Kessi (2013) notes, but also contribute to pervasive discourses

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that equate the increasing Black student population with lowering the academic standards at university. These discriminatory processes in effect continues to exclude Black students from access to and successful performance at university (Kessi, 2013). Alala proposes that the word “disadvantage” “has got a little ghost hanging around it” which is made evident by my avoidance in addressing her question, “also you say ‘previously disadvantaged’. Okay, what are you saying here?” Instead of sitting with and working through the discomfort that Alala’s question causes me, I attempt to vindicate myself by agreeing that when “[I used or didn’t change] the word ‘disadvantage’ [in the programme documentation] … something in me was like ‘err’” and then I shift the blame to the funders by saying, “Oh gosh, yes, I think we did that for the funders”. It is my familiarity with these kinds of deficient terminologies that manifest as “little ghosts” in the form of my wilful blindness to the detrimental effects caused by my uncritical and neglectful usage of such terms.

Conclusion This chapter has provided evidence for the argument that the material-­ discursive re-formation of nonbeing a “science person” entails an absolute conception of bounded space which is attached to ideologically imposed identity categories. Whiteness is privileged as being the invisible norm of a “science person” against which all others are measured (Dyer, 1997), and it is normalised invisibly as the standard of achievement. The re-­ formation of nonbeing a “science person” creates a lived material-­ discursive reality of  a zone of nonbeing (Fanon, 1967) or not being “human” enough and a zone of being “human” (Gordon, 2006; Maldonado-Torres, 2008; Wynter, 2003). The reality of this institutional culture is restricted epistemological access (Morrow, 2007) and symbolic violence (Bulhan,  1985) in that it creates socially induced feelings of nonexistence for Black students. This lived material-discursive reality produces the social effects of structures of dehumanisation, which are materialised into prison houses of epistemic “correctness” that alienate Black students from productions of their own meanings (Bulhan, 1985).

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These social effects are generated by nonmaterial social facts and real material social facts which thwart human needs through the possessive investment in whiteness (Lipsitz, 2006). This material-discursive reality and its social effects are masked through deficient constructions of Black students as “lacking” dominant cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) and reformed through Black students restricted financial access to university education and the ignorance contract (Steyn, 2012) as deliberately set by the white population. This chapter has also provided evidence for the counter-argument that the material-discursive trans-formation of being a science person entails a relativist conceptualisation of space as constituted through human practices in which space is conceptualised as a social art that shapes humanity’s image of itself. The trans-formation of being a “science person” creates a lived material-discursive reality in which people step with the colonial inventions of race and gender and against their reification. In this sense, identification of a subject with ideological categories is “a process of articulation, a suturing, an over-determination not a subsumption” (Hall, 1996b, p.  3). This lived material-discursive reality would produce the social effects of agents altering the discursive constructions of subjectivity and subject positionings (Vincent, 2015). This material-discursive reality, and its social effects are unmasked and trans-formed by shifting the research lens away from a deficit view of Black students as “lacking” dominant cultural capital to learning from the value of their “community cultural wealth” in the form of familial, social, navigational, aspirational, linguistic and resistant capital (Yosso, 2005).

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6 Pathway B: The Storied-Nervous System of (Not)Becoming Modern Scientists— The Told Psychic Life of Pedagogy

Introduction This chapter begins with a discussion of how pedagogy as the form of the hidden curriculum could be viewed as storied formations in the dialectical interplay between hierarchies of not-becoming “modern” people and whole infinity loops of becoming modern peoples. I will explore what the storied re-formation of not-becoming “modern” people entails, through the categories of gender and sexuality as an organising principle by which the perceived differences of social groups come to be positioned and fixed in racial and heteropatriarchal hierarchies. Sedimented cultural memory or patterns of oppressive power, such as heteropatriarchy and masculine whiteness, takes the form of hierarchies. In an effort to take another four steps towards the centre of the Minotaur’s labyrinth, the following questions are posed: What does this told storied system of not becoming “modern” scientists entail, how does this create a told storied reality with particular psychical effects and what are the various ways in which this reality and its psychical effects are masked and re-formed? I will argue that the South African university’s eyes (not-becoming) are wilfully short-sighted because its third eye © The Author(s) 2020 S. Liccardo, Psychosocial Pathways Towards Reinventing the South African University, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49036-2_6

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(linear time) is tunnel-visioned. Its brain (single story scripts) is narrow-­ minded because its spinal cord (cultural memory) is unmalleable. In other words, the storied re-formation of not-becoming “modern” scientists entails a conception of temporality which draws on the reductionist approach of Newton’s theorisation of time for whom time functions like a spatial coordinate. Linear time is our tunnel-visioned third eye. The re-formation of not-becoming “modern” scientists creates a told storied reality of “[b]ecoming white as an institutional line [that] is closely related to the vertical promise of class mobility” (Ahmed, 2007, p. 160). Not-becoming is our wilfully short-sighted eyes. The psychical effects of the re-formation of this told storied reality is that cultural definitions of humanity become instruments of structural power that are used to create cultural boundaries defined along the lines of racial, national, geographical or linguistic divisions (Payne, 2010). Sedimented cultural memory is our unmalleable spinal cord. This told storied reality and psychical effects are masked and re-formed through preforming or acting out deeply entrenched and sedimented ideological “scripts” (Appiah, 1994), “story lines” (Bonilla-Silva, Lewis, & Embrick, 2004) or “story stock” (Linde, 2009, p. 4). Single story scripts is our narrow-minded brain. Conversely, I will explore whether the organising principle of boundless wholes could be used to think through what it might mean to dismantle Manichean hierarchies. What affordances do boundless wholes in the form of infinity loops entail and what are the implications for the storied trans-formation of becoming modern peoples? In an effort to take another four steps out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth, the following questions are posed: What does this told storied system of becoming modern scientists entail, how could this create a told storied reality with particular psychical effects and what are the various ways in which this reality and its psychical effects could be unmasked and trans-formed? This chapter will develop the following counter-argument or vision towards trans-­ forming the told psychic life of pedagogy: The South African university’s eyes (becoming) are farsighted because its third eye (cyclical time) is visionary. Its brain (plurality of stories) is broad-minded because its spinal cord (cultural memory) is malleable. In other words, the storied trans-formation of becoming modern scientists entails a conception of temporality which draws on Einstein’s theorisation of relativity in which space and time are twin siblings.

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Circular time is our visionary third eye. The trans-formation of becoming modern scientists would create a told storied reality of the “body as narratively unruly” which resists semantic patterns and narrative closure (Punday, 2003, p.  94). Becoming is our farsighted eyes. The psychical effects of the trans-formation of this told storied reality is that human beings would be understood through communities and as co-creators of dialectically evolving set of values (Gordon, 2008). (R)evolving cultural memory is our malleable spinal cord. This told storied reality, and its psychical effects are unmasked through sitting with fragmented pieces of our shattered selves and trans-formed by (re)pairing fragments of our-­ selves through critical psychosocial mnemonics (Duncan, Stevens, & Canham, 2014) and collective memory work (Haug, 1992). Plurality of stories is our broad-minded brain.

Research Questions The following research questions focus on the psychical construction of hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines of not-becoming “modern” scientists. B1) What does the storied re-formation of not-becoming “modern” scientists entail? B2) What told storied reality does the re-formation of not-becoming “modern” scientists create? How is the principle logic of inclusion in and exclusion from normative entities of cultural knowledge produced and what does this form of excluding knowing-why do? B3) What are the psychical effects of the re-formation of this told storied reality? B4) How is this told storied reality, and its psychical effects masked and re-formed? Conversely, the following research questions focus on the psychical construction of whole infinity loops of becoming modern scientists: B1) What would the storied trans-formation of becoming modern scientists entail?

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B2) What told storied reality would the trans-formation of becoming modern scientists create? How is belonging (as a state of becoming) to networks of cultural values produced and what does the valuing of this knowing-why do? B3) What would the psychical effects of the trans-formation of this told storied reality potentially be? B4) How could this told storied reality, and its psychical effects be unmasked and trans-formed?

 edagogy as the Storied Form P of the Hidden Curriculum The culture of an institution could be understood at a discursive level through the stories we tell about the institution in relation to ourselves and the stories that the institution itself chooses to tell, authorise, propagate, negate, omit and suppress (Vincent, 2015). Individuals are narrated by prevalent institutional stories as much as individuals narrate stories of an institution. We thus use stories as a sense-making or cognitive tool for identity-formation by both individuals and institutions (Vincent, 2015). Stories, which are provided by interpretive frameworks of institutional or systemic racism and heteropatriarchy, manufacture individual identities and institutional identities that make up an institutional culture in interactive, repetitive processes (Van der Westhuizen, 2018). Similarly, Bonilla-­Silva et  al. (2004) argue that ideological categories function as “story lines” which could be described as “socially shared tales that incorporate a common scheme and wording” (p. 556). Linde (2009) also notes that every institution has a “story stock” (p. 4). Whiteness is entangled with heteropatriarchal hierarchies and middle-class privilege and is normalised as the standard of achievement at the apex of a hierarchy (Van der Westhuizen, 2018). Therefore, whiteness is indistinguishable from its material effects because heteropatriarchal hierarchies and (neo)liberal entities function to position dominant/normative subjectivities as being automatically deserving of material benefits (Van der Westhuizen, 2018). We reproduce the existing story stock of an institution through our complicity in unthinkingly re-narrating common institutional stories

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instead of consciously challenging the normative assumptions embedded in how these stories assign values to social markers (Vincent, 2015). As a result, identity categories are valued and judged differently and disproportionately by institutional culture. However, if we find new and innovative ways of altering the common stock of institutional scripts and storylines, we could potentially reshape institutional culture (Vincent, 2015). The common stock of institutional stories could be altered in classrooms (and laboratories) which, as Njabulo Ndebele (2005) notes, is at the heart of institutional practices that have not only been handed down but are also being actively challenged by historic change. The feminist theorist, cultural critic, and activist bell hooks, in her book, Teaching to Transgress, Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994), asserts that classrooms are “the most radical space of possibility in the academy” (p. 12) because teaching is “a practice of freedom” (p. 13) from oppressive systems that “confine each pupil to a rote, assembly-line approach to learning” (p. 13). We expose normative assumptions that pertain to various forms of Othering through curricular interventions, such as a critical pedagogical practice of self-reflection (Fernández-Balboa, 1998; Van der Westhuizen, 2018). Fernández-Balboa (1998) explains that this pedagogical practice of critical reflection “reaches true effectiveness when it lies between excessive rumination and superfluous thought, when it looks not only backward and forward (connecting us to the world) but also inward (i.e. self-questioning and reflection) in a constant cycle of coming back to our starting point and purpose” (as cited in Van der Westhuizen, 2018, p. 349). This backward-, forward- and inward-looking reflection involves how one’s self as inextricably connected with an other. This reflection of oneself as another and the possibility of social bonds is imbued with emotions, as Van der Westhuizen (2018) explains, “The affective dimension speaks to meaning-making through the mobilisation of identity markers, which is indeed shot through with emotion, to the extent that affect is generative of identity’s inclusions and exclusions (Ahmed, 2012)” (p. 349). Confronting the effects that identity markers have one’s own relation to others involves emotional work because subverting the processes of normalisation is discomforting. It is subjectively destabilising when taken for granted normalised inequalities are disturbed (Van der Westhuizen, 2018).

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Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s notion of repressed strangeness as “the hidden face of our identity”, Louise Vincent (2015) explains that the emotional work of making our own sense of normalcy strange is important to the enlargement of psychosocial imagination. Stories not only do the work of reproducing injustice but can also disrupt social reproduction by making normal strange (Vincent, 2015). The process of building “a practical community of inquiry” (Torbert, 1991, p.  232) involves a backward-, forward- and inward-looking reflection, discussion and theorisation of our lived experiences within historically specific contexts. Similarly, in his paper, “The African University”, Mahmood Mamdani (2018) asserts that the alternative to the application of theories from Western tradition is to theorise from our own  realities, and in so doing find a balance between the local and the global. Storytelling and consciousness raising allows one to work with an individual’s personal and affective accounts of a life as well as interrogate the socio-political, cultural, material and historical contexts in which stories are located. For instance, in their article, “Living Through the Legacy: The Apartheid Archive Project and the Possibilities for Psychosocial Transformation”, Duncan et al. (2014) explain that the Apartheid Archive Project, as an ongoing research project, aims to record and theoretically engage with the accounts of South Africans about their experiences of racism during apartheid. Duncan et al. (2014) characterise the methodology of this project as a decolonising praxis because it foregrounds “the subaltern voice as a means of avoiding how silences can often relegate the experiences of the marginalised to the shadows of consent in matrices of social inequality (Sonn, Stevens, & Duncan, 2013)” (p. 286). This commitment to interrogating personal and collective remembering as expressed through stories is the cornerstone of the project which, as Duncan et al. (2014) explain, aims to contribute a critical psychosocial mnemonics which is described as follows: a terrain in which memory is invoked and utilised to craft stories of the past, but in which the story itself is constantly transformed as a function of the narrational context of the present; where stories can tell us more about our past, but simultaneously about our present and a future that is yet to unfold; and also where memories and stories can tell us as much about personal experiences as about the social world in which they are situated (Stevens, Duncan, & Hook, 2013). (pp. 285–286)

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The study of critical psychosocial mnemonics could therefore be understood as a form of collective memory work. The notion of collective memory work could overcome the drawback of the politics of consciousness raising and storytelling as largely located in the individual’s psychological journey of emancipation which is bereft of theory (Vincent, 2015).

 he Form of the Hidden Curriculum as Storied T Formations in the Dialectical Interplay Between Hierarchies of Not-Becoming “Modern” People and Whole Infinity Loops of Becoming Modern Peoples The aim of this section is twofold: first, I will examine what the storied re-formation of not-becoming “modern” people entails through the categories of gender and sexuality as an organising principle by which the perceived differences of social groups come to be positioned and fixed in racial and heteropatriarchal hierarchies. Second, I will examine whether the organising principle of boundless wholes could  be used to think through what it might mean to dismantle Manichean hierarchies. What affordances do boundless wholes in the form of infinity loops entail and what are the implications for the storied trans-formation of becoming modern peoples? (see Fig. 6.1).

 ierarchical-Heteropatriarchal Lines of Not-Becoming H “Modern” People Hierarchies The word “hierarchy” comes from the Greek hierarkhēs, which means “sacred ruler” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2018). “Hier” is from the Old English hīgian, which means “to strive, to hasten” (Partridge, 2006, p. 1424). Over time, the meaning of the word hierarchy shifted from reference to ordered levels of authority and subordination in a

B4) STORIES Narrow-minded brain

B2) NOT-BECOMING Wilful short-sighted eyes

B4) STORIES Broad-minded brain

B3) CULTURAL MEMORY Malleable spinal cord

Fig. 6.1  Hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines of not-becoming “modern” people and whole infinity loops of becoming modern peoples

B2) BECOMING Farsighted eyes

B1) TIME Visionary third eye

B1) TIME Tunnel-visioned third eye B3) CULTURAL MEMORY Unmalleable spinal cord

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religious context to the natural sciences and social context where hierarchy is viewed as organisations, values and social relationships (Levine, 2015). Hierarchical structures rank people, experiences, things and ideas into asymmetrical and often discriminatory arrangements (Levine, 2015). If dialectical oppositions are two parts which are set against each other, then the bottom half of the hierarchy comes to represent the “absence” of the top half of the hierarchy. Whereas language binary divisions organise the potential of difference into polar opposites, hierarchical structures organise the potential of difference into a pecking order. Inequality is thus one of the most painful and consistent affordance of hierarchical structures (Levine, 2015).

White-Based Cultural Notions of the Masculine-Feminine The logocentric form of thinking functions according to a system of language  binaries in which pre-eminent terms of the oppositional pairs are invested with “truth” and obtain dominance by marginalising and excluding what they are not (Rutherford, 1990). The notion of logocentrism was developed by Jacques Derrida in an attempt to deconstruct the various ways in which Western knowledge systems rely upon some “origin”, “truth” or immanence from which hierarchical structures of meaning springs (Rutherford, 1990). In discussing Johannes Fabian’s, Time and the Other, Levine (2015) explains that Europe’s orderly narrative of a “progressive” modernity and the standardisation of time repeats an ancient model of temporal progression, that is, “the divine and providential mission of a chosen people, who claim a sacred relationship to time” (p. 50). Through its claim to absolute and universal truth, Western systems of knowledge cast European values and interests at the apex of racial hierarchies and in so doing, it “hides cultural diversity and conceals the power structures that preserve the hierarchical relations of difference” (Rutherford, 1990, p. 21). Rutherford (1990) adds that the construction of sexual difference is an example of binarism that pervades our language: “Active/passive, culture/ nature, rational/emotional, hard/soft, masculine/feminine, these dichotomies are inscribed with gendered meaning: they are the products of historical and ideological forces that underpin and legitimise women’s subordination and oppression” (p. 21). The “white-based cultural notions

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of the masculine and the feminine” was a marker of civilisation for colonisers (Yen Le Espiritu as cited in Lugones, 2008, p. 15). In her article, “The Coloniality of Gender”, Lugones (2008) explains that gender is understood “not only of control over sex, its resources and products, but also of labor as both racialized and gendered. That is, they [Women of Color feminists, including critical race theorists] see an articulation between labor, sex, and the coloniality of power” (Lugones, 2008, p. 16). Whereas time is typically coded masculine, space is coded feminine as being absence or lack (Massey, 1994). Further, temporal experience is regulated by a binary conception of gender (Levine, 2015). As demonstrated by decades of feminist scholarship, these forms are not natural or universal, rather gender is “more like a literary form”, one of many “iterable structures or patterns that are constantly shaping experience [and materials]” (Levine, 2015, p. 94). Foucault and Butler, for instance, have persuasively argued that gender roles do not emerge out of prior sex distinctions, but rather are “repeatedly asserted and reasserted through attention to norms and deviations” (Levine, 2015, p. 94). Butler (2004) asserts that gender is the “apparatus” that not only seeks to install the norm but also undermines the installation of the norm: Gender is the mechanism by which notions of masculine and feminine are produced and naturalized, but gender might very well be the apparatus by which such terms are deconstructed and denaturalized. Indeed, it may be that the very apparatus that seeks to install the norm also works to undermine that installation, that the installation is, as it were, definitionally incomplete … Whether one refers to “gender trouble” or “gender blending,” “transgender” or “cross-gender,” one is already suggesting that gender has a way of moving beyond that naturalized binary”. (As cited in Levine, p. 83)

Whole Infinity Loops of Becoming Modern Peoples Boundless Wholes The word “whole” derives from the Old English hāl for “sound (completeness), healthy” which implies an integration or blending of several separate parts into a whole (Partridge, 2006, p. 3791). Whole implies the

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holding together of disparate parts and a multi-dimensional “integrated system, as opposed to an individual part” (McCutcheon, 2010, p. 291). The formation of wholes, however, does not necessarily imply a timeless coherence. We bring together disparate parts into coherent and incoherent wholes for periods of time which facilitate information flows. When we shift our attention from the parts to the whole, we see how chaotic processes reveal the order inherent in the whole system (Cordon, 2013). The creation of orderly chaos and chaotic order is an infinite process. As depicted on the cover image, the recursive motion of the infinity threads follows different paths of trajectories as it loops back into itself, thus creating unique patterns of boundless wholes. However, it is important to be cognisant of the political danger and grave consequences that have haunted the embrace of unified form (Levine, 2015). Bounded wholes can function as a constraining singular form that imposes an essentialised inside that is differentiated from its outside. As Levine (2015) notes, “containers do not afford only imprisonment, exclusion, and the quelling of difference; they also afford centrality and inclusiveness” (p. 39). While it is important to remain extremely wary of the possible constraints of bounded containers, Levine (2015) suggests that “we cannot do without bounded wholes: their power to hold things together is what makes some of the most valuable kinds of political action possible at all” (p. 27). For example, wholeness is necessary for conceptual work in that theorists draw boundaries around which information to include and exclude in the analysis of a particular phenomenon. As there are a multitude of forms that operate simultaneously and collide with one another, “no single ideological or political whole successfully dominates or organizes our social world” (Levine, 2015). In the interests of transformative political work, Levine (2015) argues that we might “want to draw on the containing and unifying power of concepts, despite their dangers” (p. 28).

 emporal Metaphors as Whole Infinity Loops Within T the Margins of Hegemonic Discourses The Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci (1971) has noted that “The old is dying, and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear” (p. 276). This interregnum is

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comparable to the “post” in post-apartheid South Africa which “might forever be postponed” (Van Marle, 2010, as cited in Modiri, 2017, p. 80). The old that is dying could be interpreted as the long-standing patterns of power and privilege in society which are sedimented and fossilised (Vygotsky, 1978) in institutional practices and entities of knowledge. This interregnum is a space in between the decline of backward-looking old political identifications and the emergence of forward-looking alternate subjectivities and networks yet to be born. It is an in-between space where narratives of becoming bring traces of the imaginary to the present, but this imaginary is yet to be born or yet to develop a vocabulary to represent it (Rutherford, 1990). If language comes from images, then images and metaphors might help one find the words to meaningfully articulate the quality of feeling and texture of thought. We imagine possible futures which we project onto our present space in the form of images and metaphors. By exploring the mutually constitutive formations of subjectivity and sociality in relation to spatial practices and material geographies, it is the images of our ideas and the metaphors that surround us which facilitate the creation of an-other spatio-temporality beyond the imposed closures and limits of material spaces and masculinist discourse (Soja, 1996; Tamboukou, 2003; Weigel, 1996). Teresa de Lauretis (1986) describes these images of our perceptions and metaphors as “spaces in the margins of hegemonic discourses, social spaces carved in the interstices of institutions and in the chinks and cracks of the powerknowledge apparati” (as cited in Tamboukou, 2003, p. 58). Similar to narratives, infinity loops unfold through bounded periods of time. The infinity loops of bounded wholes fold into each other, forming boundless wholes and, thus, continually reforming fissures, discontinuities, and dissonances1 and fragments. It is in these interstitial spaces of circular temporality where modernity is endlessly reborn. The word “modern” derives from the Latin modernus, or modo which means “just now” and is related to a group of words under modal, pertaining to poetic metre, or melody (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2018; Partridge, 2006). Modernity is the invention of  Nichols (2014) explains that “[d]issonance happens when a contradiction is not ignored but rather has to be factored into an understanding of the possible” (p. 904). 1

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something new through the renovation of the old-fashioned. It is the fashioning of different styles of being, becoming and “belonging to a future time” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2018). Modernity is a new ordering and rhythmical patterning of time. It is a state of being futuristic in present time. It is in this interregnum where narrative identities are always in the making; a “provisional full stop” which “contains traces of its past and what it is to become” (Rutherford, 1990, p. 24). Over time, individual memories extend into webs of meaning that bind the material/ symbolic, social/personal and historical/psychical. Cultural evolution is the continuous growing, widening and stretching of the human imagination (Bronowski, 2011). Culture could thus be understood as “the wholes in which everything is somehow related to everything else” and the “network underlying or permeating or hovering above surface phenomena” (Buzard, 2005, pp. 30–31, as cited in Levine, 2015, p. 116).

B1) Time as Our Third Eye Time is related to the word “tide” which derives from the Old English “tīd, time, period, era” (Partridge, 2006, p. 4469). Tide or betide means “to happen to” or tīdan signifies “tiding, an occurrence, a happening, [an] account” (Partridge, 2006, p. 3470). I will briefly differentiate between three characteristics of time, namely, absolute time, relative time and recurrent time (McCutcheon, 2010). Time is absolute. Time is whole. Through our third eye of introspection, we bring together disparate events and experiences into meaningful wholes for periods of time. Time is narrated as a story of a whole life. Time is relative. Time is relative to space and space is relative to time. Just as time is absolute as present space, space is absolute in periods of time. If space is the movement and sound of time, then becoming is the tempo of everyday life. Time is recurrent. Time is present in time past and time future. In his poem, Burnt Norton, T. S. Eliot (1963, p. 175) writes: Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past.

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The claim to universal truth by Western systems of knowledge and its dependence upon a guarantee of meaning relies on a linear temporal order of space. This conception of temporality draws on the reductionist approach of Newton’s theorisation of time for whom time functions like a spatial coordinate. As Wai-Chee Dimock explains, “It is a place, a location, a sequence of units on a calibrated line—and, for all those reasons, a container to which any event can be assigned” (as cited in Levine, 2015, p. 54). Conversely, Einstein’s theorisation of space-time as relativity, views space and time as twin siblings because both refer to “social action and social institutions, based on relations between positions in processes” (Faist, 2005, p.  763). Whereas space takes into account the relations between positions of being within varying sequences of events and action, time considers how these relations between positions are forever changing and always in a process of becoming (Faist, 2005). Ricoeur (1984) notes that if meaning arises from movement (i.e. how words unfold in sentences and sentences in discourse) then it is generated and understood within time: “[narrative is] meaningful to the extent that it portrays the features of temporal experience” (p. 3). We produce meaning in the present of the present which moves through the present of the remembered past and the present of the projected future. Ricoeur (1984) employs Husserl’s theory of “internal time consciousness” and Augustine’s concept of distentio to show how backward-looking and forward-looking action can be meaningful. Ricoeur (1984) writes, “The notion of distentio animi has not been given its due so long as the passivity of the impression has not been contrasted with the activity of a mind stretched in opposite directions, between expectations, memory, and attention”. He essentially argues that “Only a mind stretched in such different directions can be distended” (p. 18, emphasis in original). In this way, Augustine attempted to move away from the exterior world and into the interior world of the mind where narrative exists as a threefold present, as Ricoeur (1988) notes: Augustine’s inestimable discovery is, by reducing the extension of time to the distention of the soul, to have tied this distention to the slippage that never ceases to find its way into the heart of the threefold present—between the present of the future, the present of the past, and the present of the

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present. In this way he sees discordance emerge again and again out of the very concordance of the intentions of expectation, attention, and memory. It is to this enigma of the speculation on time that the poetic act of emplotment replies. (p. 21)

A primary narrative mechanism for making meaning of unrelated events, experiences and actions is the activity of emplotment. Our third eye could be understood as a threefold present—between the present of the future, past and present. If becoming is the organ of sight (eye), then time is the organ of vision (third eye). What does the storied re-formation of not-becoming “modern” scientists entail? a) “The problem is they [lecturers] try and shape us into what they want us to be” (Alala): Women’s entry into science as surrogates who are expected to conform to Eurocentric norms and pedagogies (Roach, 1996). After matriculating from a former Model C high school for which she received a bursary, Alala was awarded the Oya scholarship and subsequently enrolled for a BSc in architecture. After failing her repeat year of study, she recollects her struggles at university by providing an example of how her background is inextricably tied to how she views architecture in ways which does not conform to Eurocentric norms and pedagogies: Alala: I think a lot of us—I remember discussing this with Odirile and Busisiwe and the other Busisiwe—and, and the problem is they [white lecturers] try and shape us into what they want us to be. And we can’t, because, I think that’s why we struggle, and also as a Black woman you’re coming from a different background, you know. I remember there was a discussion in ‘Schooltalk’ about how, for example, it was about the whole Eurocentric teaching and … I remember a key point was that in English houses or whatever you have, when you enter, you have an entrance hall, with, I don’t know mirrors or whatever. But with us, with Black people, you have to go around the house, you don’t enter in the front of a house. Those are the differences. I mean you grew up going around the house and for you, when you go in design, that is imprinted in your mind. So, when you put down stuff like

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that, that’s what you have and if people won’t hear you, hear where you come from, then obviously they won’t understand … you’re coming from a different background. And architecture was set, well, the curriculum was set in a certain, in a different way from what your background is … so you’ve got your ideas, you’re from a different background and you come, and you present these ideas that are real to you, that, it’s, it’s about culture, it’s about creating. Alala believes that her lecturers tried to “shape us into what they want us to be”. The dominant culture positions her white (and male) lecturers as somatically “normal” architects that students “ought” to aspire to become. The conformity to these normative practices not only creates the illusion of independent and autonomous subjects but it also prevents lecturers from understanding how student’s background informs what kinds of architects they envisage themselves to be. Alala provides an example of walking “around the house [instead of ] enter[ing] in the front of house” to illustrate why her understanding of architecture as “a human thing, [a] social art” is inextricably tied to her background. Creativity is an expression of one’s freedom which is informed by one’s background, as Alala notes, “when you go in design, that [background] is imprinted in your mind … you present these ideas that are real to you, that it’s, it’s about culture, it’s about creating”. It seems that Alala’s struggle is that her background, which has informed her sense of aesthetics and approach to knowledge and meaning-making, was not recognised as real or legitimate by her lecturers, as she stated, “ if people won’t hear you, hear where you come from, then obviously they won’t understand … you’re coming from a different background”. Odirile adds that the biggest challenge she faced during her internship at an architectural firm was people’s negative perception and treatment of women. Odirile: Most of them [colleagues] are Black … it was okay, it was just the gender issue was the biggest. When I left, I was like, you know, I’ve learnt a lot and I have been that much stronger from that, you know … the workplace wasn’t the most friendly,

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friendly place in the world. I hated it. I hated it. I don’t like my boss—not him as a person—I didn’t like his leadership style, the way he did things. I didn’t like the way he treated women in the workplace. I don’t think it’s a reflection of his character, maybe a little bit on his character, but maybe a little on his perception of women. The way he does things and the way he thought about women in the workplace, for me I find it very sad, I mean, the year that I worked was, was that was when I really started being confronted with the real issues of things in the real world in terms of being Black, being a woman, being an architect and wanting to be an architect in this field and being a woman it was very tough … [For example] my boss was standing right next to you, what you’ve got to say is ‘please do this is’, it’s that simple. You don’t have to go and tell the manager to tell me when we were all standing in the same area, the same space, I was so like furious. I had a lot of that that year … I was always, like fighting. Institutions endure because people conform to normative practices and preform the characters that are scripted to them, similar to what Roach (1996, p. 2) calls “surrogation” in which people step into the roles of those who have departed. Alala and Odirile enter their discipline and profession as surrogates who are expected to conform to Eurocentric norms and pedagogies. b) “You’ve got to understand why, why they needed housing, where they come from, I mean it’s the whole story, narratives” (Alala): Knowledge production as an individual possession is disconnected from people’s needs, reality and sense of humanity. As mentioned, Alala felt that her lecturers “[tried] and shape us into what they want us to be [through] Eurocentric teaching” instead of acknowledging that “you’re coming from a different background”. This was notable as point of contention, which was shared by Alala’s fellow student, Busisiwe, who expressed her concerns about elitist housing practices in architecture.

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Alala: In housing, she [Busisiwe] was upset about something, about people creating housing and not understanding what people need. So all these housing, these housing projects, they are just sort of, I don’t remember what she said, like white architects, or architects that don’t understand or don’t, are not in tune with that sense of humanity, they are just creating things so that they can have it and she is like, for example, you can’t take, I mean people living in shacks and whatever they need, I mean they have managed to create a home for themselves with little, very little, so they don’t need so much … they don’t need fancy stuff, they just need a home and her point was that you can’t, you can’t make our housing elitist especially when you’re designing for a certain type of people. They don’t need elitist, that fancy stuff. Ja, she get so mad … in creating housing for someone who lives in a house and someone the lives in a shack are two completely different things, and also you’ve got to understand why, why they needed housing, where they come from, I mean it’s the whole story, narratives. Alala advocates that housing, for example, must not be created for the sake of just “having it” or as an individual possession but rather architectural design must always be in tune with people’s needs, reality and sense of humanity. Elitist housing practices thwart human needs by generating economic advantages for economic benefits to white people in South Africa through the “possessive investment in whiteness” (Lipsitz, 2006, p.  70). Instead, Alala implies that the production of knowledge must address the lives and narratives of the people for whom it serves. What would the storied trans-formation of becoming modern scientists entail? a) “it was also overcoming that whole thing of like ‘oh I’d been knocked down and everyone had laughed about it” (Alala): A plot based on metamorphosis which involves infinite moments of crisis, breaking points, crossing thresholds and spiritual rebirth (Bakhtin, 1981). Alala tells a story about how her vision of giving a speech at a school competition was completely derailed by a series of unexpected events during which her confidence took a “knock” because “everyone laughed about it”.

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Sabrina: Alala: Sabrina: Alala:

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Oh my goodness, the public speaking story is so funny, well it’s not funny, it was embarrassing. Okay in Grade 8 we entered a competition … okay fine, I was chosen to compete and it’s in the hall and the whole school was there, so I was like okay, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this, I can do public speaking. So I prepared a speech … I had prepared it for a class … I was like okay, I’ll rewrite it, I’ll rework it … let’s do it this way, so there I go, I rewrite it, I write so, hmm and I took the bus from home to school it was a long, it was far, an hour and a half, so I spent, I read, I read a lot … so there I was the morning of the speech, I was reading it, I was reading the speech, I was practising and I had the old speech with me as well, just in case I’d lost the other one, so I get there and I had practised the new speech, and I don’t know where the new speech is Oh my gosh And I’m standing in front. I’m switching my blazers [laughing] One of my worst nightmares And I have like my old speech, and now it was like, I can’t say this, I don’t want to say that this, and so I’m searching Sabrina and I’m like, ‘okay fine go with it’, just say the speech they are starting to to like get restless, I say it, I say it and then with all your speech actions, and then my speech fell out of my blazer pocket and everyone was just laughing. And I was like, ‘are you for real?’, and then I didn’t know which speech to do because now this one, this one had suddenly appeared and I started with this one, and everyone was laughing, and my confidence is like Shame man. So, I carried on with the old one and I didn’t make it to public speaking in Grade 8. Oh no. No, I didn’t but then, the next year I was like okay [laughing], do we do, we go with that and not try out for public speaking or do I try, so I tried out. This time I prepared, I threw away the old speech [laughing] put it in my pocket and I made it

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and for me it was not just finding my voice, it was also overcoming that whole thing of like ‘oh I’d been knocked down and everyone had laughed about it so’, so that’s why that’s what it meant. Sabrina: So, are you then, uhm, say the kind of person who needs things to run or be perfect? Alala: Ja, ja. Sabrina: So, do you find being a perfectionist stunts your creativity in some way or not really? Alala: Actually, I’m are weird type a perfectionist, I’m not much of a planner. Sabrina: Well, ja, if you put your speech on your sleeve [laughing]. Alala: Oh, I’m not much of a planner but, but for me I struggle when things are out of control with the vision, it’s the vision, it’s the whole visualisation thing. I mean, I understand that it’s not going to be the same as in my head, but when it’s completely not what I wanted to be or what it is supposed to be, and I’ve learnt a lot and I do leave a lot of room for whatever, unforeseen stuff that may come up, but when things get derailed, I do, I do not like it. I don’t like it. It’s, ja, it’s just. And it’s not so much the big things but it’s the little things that get me. Alala recalls how she had rewritten and practised an alternative version of an old speech to prepare for a school competition. Although she was well prepared for the competition, when she walked onto the stage, she couldn’t find her new speech. At that moment, she was faced with the decision whether to continue looking for her new speech or present her old speech, which she decided to do because people were getting restless. While she was presenting her old speech, her new speech fell out the sleeve of her blazer and she wasn’t sure whether she should continue with the old speech or start the new speech. When she started over again with the new speech “everyone was laughing, and my confidence is like”, therefore she went back to presenting the old speech. Although she did not make the public speaking team that year, she tried out again and made the team the following year. Alala evaluates the meaning of her

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story as “not just finding my voice, it was also overcoming that whole thing of like ‘oh I’d been knocked down and everyone had laughed about it so”. Alala’s story could be symbolic of life itself; as an infinite process of mourning the death of our old selves and creating a new vocabulary to voice and rebirth renewed ones. It could be interpreted as a story about spiritual rebirth; the process of facing moments of crisis, breaking points, crossing thresholds and in so doing, how we come to transform our character by becoming other than what we were. Alala is faced with an important moment of crisis “when things are out of control with the vision … when things gets derailed” as illustrated in her struggle to control the chaos that was created by the loss and recovery of her old and new speeches. She refers to the temporal development of her character by mentioning that “it was overcoming that whole thing of like ‘oh I’d been knocked down and everyone had laughed about it’”. In this sense, Bakhtin (1981) argues that “There is no evolution [of a plot based on metamorphosis] in the strict sense of the word; what we get, rather, is crisis and rebirth” (p. 115). In an environment where Black women’s background knowledges are not recognised as real or legitimate, where lecturers “try and shape us into what they want us to be” (Alala), where men (and women) in positions of influence delegitimate women’s existence and intellectual contributions in the workplace as Odirile noted, where disciplinary practices are not “in tune with [people’s reality and] sense of humanity” (Alala), then it would seem that the trans-formation of becoming modern scientists would entail a plot based on metamorphosis which involves infinite moments of crisis and spiritual rebirth. b) “Working hard and seeing the progress … I think that feeling will just make me sleep at night” (Takalani): Shifting one’s focus on the outcome to the process of learning requires a letting go of the future. Takalani was also faced with an important moment of crisis when she failed a year of study. Reflecting on what she learnt from her experiences of academic failure, Takalani emphasises the importance of shifting one’s focus on the outcome of completing a degree to the process of learning.

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Takalani: I think the future it’s, but there was a point where you know the future became so, it became so blurry, just because of what I was going through and at some point I was like ‘you know what future, you’ll come later’ … it was like, ‘I’ll see you later’. I don’t even want to think about you because the more I think about you and I fail [and] I get hurt. So, let’s just put you there and finish this. I think it has only been this year that I got back to thinking about my future and stuff. But I want to work hard, I want to work hard, and I want to regained these six years … I want to feel the worth of the six years. Sabrina: So, what would that feeling of the six years having been worth it look like or how would it feel like, if you could imagine it? Takalani: Like you know when you get to work and you’re just like you’re doing your work properly and you just get promoted and like there you are the manager of this and like you know just getting everything right, okay not everything right but like working hard and seeing progress, like just working hard and seeing the progress … I think that feeling will just make me sleep at night. By shifting her focus from the outcome of completing her degree to the process of learning required that Takalani let go of the future, as she stated “you know what future, you’ll come later’ … it was like, ‘I’ll see you later’”. She explains that “seeing the progress” would allow her to feel the worth of her six years of study at university. Whereas Takalani chose her academic transcripts as the ‘object’ that symbolised her future, Kaiya chose her degree certificates. Similar to Takalani and Alala, Kaiya also explains that her journey of obtaining degree certificates was made meaningful by working through particular moments of crisis. Kaiya: It’s me learning, not just in the degree but experiences I have had to go through to get this degree … the things that moulded me to what I am today and it is also something that I want to share upon my own family, my own kids, even the spouse that I

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may have. I want to share that experience with them. It’s getting that degree, not the actual certificates, but the process I had to go through to get that far and the people that supported me throughout … So, it did a lot for me, it defined friendships, it defined my values, my morals it defined a lot of [Kaiya] everything that I went through I got an opportunity to express my thoughts. So, it’s not just about the degree, it’s what I went through, to end up this far, it’s what makes it so emotionally essential. If I never went through the journey, the paper would be [inaudible] … I got to tap into my strengths, my weaknesses. I got to see how well I deal with challenges. I got to really understand my love for people. For Kaiya, learning is not just the attainment of content knowledge in the form of a degree but the process of coming to understand herself by working through challenges which “defined my values, my morals, it defined a lot of [Kaiya]”.

 2) Becoming as Our Eyes: Temporality B as the Storied Body of Cultural Memory This section will focus on the third analytic level of belonging, that is, “ethical and political values” (Yuval-Davis, 2006, p. 199). To answer the question, Who am I? is to tell the story of a life in which agents reflect on their affective sense of belonging to particular social locations and re-­ position themselves in alternative discourses, within conditions of impossibility. As a person’s narrative identity is co-authored by master moral narratives, identity categories are valued and judged differently and disproportionately within a given culture. The etymology of the word “become” is from the Old English becuman which is associated with a sense of approaching, arriving at, entering or happening (Partridge, 2006, p. 240). To become implies to move out of one state and enter into another state. Being is to move from a state of be-longing into a state of becoming and becoming is to move from a state of being into a state of belonging.

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Through the eye of retrospection (our backward-looking imagination) we come to see patterns of lived experiences which restructures our present being in space and future becoming with time. Whereas being is present space enacted with our bodily actions, becoming is future time foreseen with our eyes. Seeing is the act of appropriating and mediating our distant past with present concerns and possible futures (Fay, 1996; Ricoeur, 1981). Through the passageway of time, we imaginatively re-­ collect and selectively gather together a trail of past events with present concerns into a followable story (Freeman, 1993). Stories are thus the needle we use to knit together re-collected fragments of our-selves and lives into new patterns of meaning. Through the eye of projection (our forward-looking imagination) we come to see new pathways in possible futures which reroutes our present being with time. Just as becoming is an echo of being, time is an echo of space. Space is the movement and sound of time. Past and future time is the pulsating tempo of present space. As the past becomes the present, the future becomes an echo of a distant past. The future thus “enters into us in order to transform itself in us long before it happens” (Rilke, 1993, p. 65). Becoming is the eyes of retrospection and projection; our backward-­ looking and forward-looking imagination. Becoming is our eyes because we enstory time which contemplates like a third eye. All that is new is brought into existence out of the future into the present which eventually passes over to the past during which they become comprehendible through re-collection (Crites, 1986). In this sense, as Kiekergaard has noted, “we understand backwards, but we live forward” (as cited in Crites, 1986, p. 165). By seeing patterns of our lived experiences through periods of time, we come to understand and reformulate our responses to the questions: What am I? What am I doing? Who am I? Why am I doing this? Where am I? Where am I going? Where do I belong? We participate in an agentic process of emplotment by connecting past beginnings, present middles and possible future endings “in an endless dialectic [of ] ‘how my life has always been and should remain’ and ‘how things might have been or might still be’” (Bruner, 2003, p. 14).

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The body makes the gap between an inside and outside world narratively meaningful because it mediates between unruliness and order, or the resistant parts in relation to the unifying whole (Punday, 2003). Through our narrative bodies, we look inward at the present (introspection), reflect backward on the past (retrospection) and see forward into the future (projection). Similar to how the discursive body of social structure is a “meeting point” between intersecting relations of power (Ahmed, 2007), the storied body of cultural memory is a meeting point between the threefold present or several “nows”. What happens at these points of intersecting relations of power? Ahmed (2007) explains that whiteness is a “straightening device” and “a form of inheritance” (pp. 159–160). If white bodies approximate whiteness, then these bodies pass as “being like” and can therefore line up. But whiteness is also a matter of how these bodies arrive in spaces which is affected by “a form of inheritance” or what is “behind”. The inheritance of class privilege, for example, can “‘propel’ you forward and up” due to the conversion of resources into capital (Ahmed, 2007). Ahmed (2007) argues that “Becoming white as an institutional line is closely related to the vertical promise of class mobility: you can move up only by approximating the habitus of the white bourgeois body (see Skeggs, 2003)” but this depends on what is behind you (p. 160). The reproduction of hierarchies over time could be explained through this bind between the “behind” and the moving “up” (Ahmed, 2007). If institutions are not only reproduced by those who act within them but also changed by those who reproduce them (Haug, 1992), then it is important to reimagine people’s  bodies which resists semantic patterns and narrative closure. In his book, Narrative Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Narratology, Daniel Punday (2003) explains that before we can have stories which “move through a narrative trajectory within some overarching pattern” we must first find a way to think about our bodies that will allow us to resist that overarching pattern. What told storied reality does the re-formation of not-becoming “modern” scientists create? How is the principle logic of inclusion into and exclusion from normative entities of cultural knowledge produced and what does this form of excluding knowing-why do?

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a) “Hi Donald, you are the future of William and Smith’s Architects” (Alala): Cultural cloning (Essed & Goldberg, 2002) and masculine whiteness as a linear trajectory of progress at the apex of the hierarchy. After Alala was academically excluded from university, she did an internship at a commercial architectural firm called Williams and Smith. She recalls an incident in which a former and fellow student, Donald, was introduced as “the future of William and Smith’s Architects”: Alala: So Busisiwe and I are Black women and Donald [a white man] comes along and number one, Busisiwe was so offended by Donald’s introduction, they [management] were like ‘Hi Donald, you are the future of Smith and Williams Architects’. We didn’t get that introduction, in fact we sat around for a week and, and no one introduced us, well, we were introduced but we didn’t get work and for Busisiwe, it infuriated her but I was like, you know, at Busisiwe, you know it’s fine. [The responsibility given to Donald] was different from what we got; Donald got to work on in entire building by himself. Busisiwe was mad [chuckles] she wanted to explode [chuckles]. She didn’t work for a week, she drank coffee for a week, she was mad, but I mean, it’s, it’s also that struggle that people don’t believe in you, uhm I mean those ideas. I don’t know however many years into democracy, but, but it’s a long way before things really change and not everyone is welcoming to the ideas. The dynamics of existing knowledge systems means that institutions such as William and Smith’s Architects are often in the business of what Essed and Goldberg (2002) call cultural cloning. These culturally cloned institutions systematically reproduce sameness through a conception of temporality that follows a linear trajectory of progress in which individual agency is positioned within an autonomous, independent, and rational mode of subjectivity (Venn, 2000). Donald is described as “the future of William and Smith’s Architects” as he embodies the “star architect” which has traditionally been a gendered (white) male (Heynen, 2012).

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Whiteness is entangled with heteropatriarchal hierarchies and middle-­class privilege, which is normalised as the standard of achievement and positions Donald as automatically deserving of material benefits (Van der Westhuizen, 2018). For example, the director of the firm became Donald’s mentor, whereas Alala was assigned an architectural technologist. Alala: I didn’t mind, she was a woman I, I, I, could learn a lot from her but then after a while, Sarah was a wonderful woman she taught me so much within a short frame a time, but after a while, she’s, she’s a lazy person, so she wanted to put all the work on me and, and there was a lot of like patronising and the tone that I got from her and I was, that, that frustrated me, that really got me and at the end of the year. They moved me to a new project, and I was like, they asked me if I, and Sarah was like ‘Alala must come with me’ and I was like ‘no Sarah, I don’t want to work with you’ … but then they knew, you know, they knew Sabrina and the directors knew, they know what type of person Sarah is, but they left me there, they let me to suffer there, but I got through it. I learnt a lot. I learned to speak up as well. This example illustrates how distinguished professionals, such as directors, are chosen as role models to younger men, such as Donald, thus reinforcing the persistent regrouping of men to secure access to the most theoretical tasks and important responsibilities within an institution (Fowler & Wilson, 2012). b) “I sort of lost my voice and I was like, ‘okay, whatever you have for me I’ll do it’” (Alala): Alienation from the product of labour and the act of production itself (Bulhan, 1985; Marx, 1964, 1973). During her internship, Alala explains how she was given “minimal responsibilities” that nobody else wanted to do. Alala: And then I went, and then I went into, ah, ah, the workplace. First year, it was my internship, so they called us what, ‘trainee architects’, it was interesting. I was excited, I was, I, I thought to

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myself, ‘okay, fine, you know, uhm, they took me and I, they took me regardless of the fact that I had uhm, failed my third year, so they must see something, they must believe in something. So you get there and fine, I mean it was a commercial firm which for me, for me it maybe wasn’t the right move but it was the first experience I had to see what, what, what it was like, whether I wanted to continue, so for me it was interesting. I mean you learn so much within a week, you learn so much technical stuff that they try and ram into your head and then, excuse me, from first year to third year, that you learn and within the first month you have learnt so much technical staff it’s, it’s actually a wow experience to go into the workplace. You pick up things very quickly but then also, uhm, there’s the whole passion thing and, and getting into work, getting into proper work, getting real work, I mean, I struggled, I struggled with that. Uhm, I don’t know after the whole exclusion or failing thing, maybe I sort of lost my voice and I was like ‘okay, whatever you have for me I’ll do it you know’ and, what they had window scales, that’s what, what I was stuck doing, it wasn’t work Sabrina, it wasn’t, like I could do so much more if I had been allowed to put more but then you’re given so minimal responsibilities. Drawing on Meszaros (1970) interpretation of Karl Marx’s theory of alienation, it is evident that Alala experiences “estrangement from the thing” when she says, “they had window scales, that’s what, what I was stuck doing, it wasn’t work”. Alala feels alienated from the product of her work (i.e. window scales) because this product is not of her own making but rather a commodity to be sold and also because “I could do so much more if I had been allowed to put more” as she states. As the product of her work does not permit intrinsic satisfaction, she further experiences “self-estrangement” which refers to the act of production itself as she explains, “‘okay, whatever you have for me I’ll do it you know’ … getting real work, I mean, I struggled”. In this context, Alala’s sense of alienation from the product of work and the act of production itself is attributed to being treated as if ‘who I am’ is not becoming or belonging to the future. In other words, being given minimal responsibilities does not create the

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conditions in which she is able to do the kind of meaningful work that would enable her to affect society and the future of architecture. What told storied reality would the trans-formation of becoming modern scientists create? How is belonging (as a state of becoming) to networks of cultural values produced and what does the valuing of this knowing-­why do? a) “even when you draw a line, you put your self into that, you put your soul into that” (Alala): Expressing one’s humanness by transforming objects through meaningful soul work, which in turn transforms us (Bulhan, 1985; Marx, 1964, 1973). Alala asserts that that if space is a social product, then the essence of architecture should be about humanity. Alala: I mean, even when you draw a line, you put your self into that, you put your soul into that, you put your essence into that … if you cannot think like a human being … if you don’t have the human’s interest in mind, how can you design for a human, you know. I used to say this a lot, they [my lecturers and tutors] think I’m crazy, they think I’m crazy. I’m actually not, it’s been done, there is evidence of it all around us there’s evidence of real architecture and yes, I mean it’s beautiful when things are, are just shiny and glamorous but for me, that was a struggle that I went through … also because it’s an art and I understand the technical part of it, I mean that stuff you can learn, it’s, it’s the door, whatever you can learn … You can get creative this way, you can get engineers to help you to do this etcetera etcetera … But it’s [architecture] is about people, it’s the essence of it, who is going to be using it. In addition to designing buildings that are technically sound, Alala asserts that students should also be given the freedom to design buildings that are an expression of their values and architectural aesthetics which is informed by their backgrounds. In this sense, architecture would involve a workable marriage between applied science and artistry, architectural theory and reflective practicum (Schön, 1983). Alala implies that her sense of humanness is not only expressed through her understanding of

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architectural work as serving people’s needs, but also the humanity she shares with others as she states, “if you don’t have the human’s interest in mind, how can you design for a human”. Through meaningful work or soul work, people leave their mark in the world, transforming objects around them, which in turn transform them (Bulhan, 1985; Marx, 1964, 1973). This is evident in Alala’s statement that, “when you draw a line, you put your self into that, and you put your soul into that, you put your essence into that”. Conversely, when a person’s labour is alienated, so too is the person’s “humanness” (Bulhan, 1985). b) “put some faith in the upcoming professionals … we are so young and so excited about things [and] we still have this energy” (Alala): The role of leadership in making forward-looking action meaningful through narrating imaginative storylines of a projected future. In the excerpt below, Alala discusses how the youth have the will, energy and fortitude to do the real work of building possible futures. Alala: I understand you’re a first year [intern], but you know take the risk and then, I don’t know—what did they say uhm—take a like a leap of faith, invest, invest put some faith in the upcoming professionals and and, then you might be shocked at what we might produce. I mean you’ve gone through the motions of learning how to swim so if you throw me in the deep end, I will remember … just throw me in the deep end, let me swim, just try and, and obviously don’t, don’t put yourself in danger but try, try give them something, give me something to work with you know, and, and, and, I don’t know I feel like we are so young and so excited about things, life has not gotten us down yet, we haven’t worked seven years hating a job or whatever, so we are still excited and we still have this energy, so give us something to keep us going, don’t be like ‘yeah just, just do this stuff that everybody else doesn’t want to do’, you know, give us something to keep us going, to be like ‘oh yeah, I want to keep working’. But, but it’s not like that, everyone is scared. It’s, it’s and it’s frustrating when, it’s frustrating to think that you spend all those nights not sleeping and then, here you are doing things that you can do in your sleep, so it’s frustrating. And I didn’t like the

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workplace because I don’t know, I was stuck doing useless stuff, like it’s not useless, it’s not inspiring, I mean, I learnt, I learnt a lot, I mean like remember I told you I didn’t like it very much and you said to me, ‘no experience is wasted’ so, so it is not wasted but I would have liked to do more exciting stuff, to do real work, give me a chance to show you that I want to be here, I want to be present, I want to, you to know, to hear me, I want you to see me. But it’s, but it’s not like that and I don’t understand why because, because most of them [leadership] I mean at that position where they came straight out of varsity and they wanted to learn so, I don’t know it’s pretty interesting. Instead of investing in upcoming professionals, institutions are incubators of “the average Joe”, as Alala explains: Alala: People are just unhappy and bitter, there was this man at work, ‘Joe’, and he was just so, he was just so bitter and unhappy, but I don’t want to be like that, I don’t want to be stuck. I have to explore stuff. I have to learn more and more and more. I have to grow. I cannot sit in an office every day and just sit there. I, I have to explore stuff and learn. Alala implies that if people in leadership speak about the youth as the engines of an institution in the future perfect tense, it might then inform actual projects that “invest [in and] put some faith in the upcoming professionals”. In this sense, backward-looking action is not only made meaningful through reflection, but forward-looking action is also made meaningful through the construction of imaginative storylines of a projected future. If people in leadership are more attuned to constructing imaginative narratives of the future that invest confidence and resources in upcoming professionals, it might create the actual material conditions in which they are treated as if who am I is valued, heard, seen and who belongs to the future. As Alala asserts, “give me a chance to show you that I want to be here, I want to be present, I want to, you to know, to hear me, I want you to see me”.

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B3) Cultural Memory as Our Spinal Cord To define “culture” is to define humanity which could in itself be an act of violence or, as Michael Payne (2010) explains, “an invitation to potential if not actualized genocide. When one culture eliminates what it considers not human, it identifies itself, according to its own definition, as human. Cultural identification in such a context takes on ultimate [political] power” (p. 168). Cultural definitions of humanity could be instruments of racial power to create cultural boundaries defined along the lines of racial, national, geographical or linguistic divisions (Bolaffi, Bracalenti, Braham, & Gindro, 2003; Payne, 2010). Cultural conflict arises when oneself and one’s relations are not recognised by another culture’s sense of value or definition of the human (Payne, 2010). Accordingly, Homi Bhabha concludes that “there can be no ethically or epistemologically commensurate subject of culture” (as cited in Payne, p. 168). The interdependence between culture and social structure means that neither of the two is dominant (Vogt, 2005). As cultural dispositions are a determining factor for guiding human action, it plays a significant role in the continuous structuration of a society. Social structure is thus culturally interpreted (Vogt, 2005). Social agents are not “cultural dupes” of social structure but rather the “process of socialization is itself an activity which requires acquiescence at every stage” (Haug, 1992, p. 8). Culture is a field in which structures are not only experienced, lived and reproduced but also altered through the mediating power of signs and symbols in one’s personal and social life (Winter, 2005). Gordon (2008) notes that it is meaningless to speak of human beings as isolated and individual, rather the “human being must be understood through the community in which he or she lives, and that community is not locked in a permanent set of values but a living, dialectically evolving one” (p. 93).2 Over time, individual memories extend into webs of meaning that bind the material/ symbolic, social/personal and historical/psychical. This network of interconnections coalesces in individual life narratives (Kuhn, 1995). The evolving sets of values, signs and symbols of a culture act as a central  Gordon (2008) is referring to Hegelian phenomenological thought and he is  drawing on the works of Josiah Royce (1976, 1995) and Alain Locke (1992). 2

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source of collective consciousness. The intertwining of personal and public histories that form cultural memory creates the terrain of people’s “historically effected consciousness” (Gadamer, 1982, p. xv). In this sense, culture is an interpretative inquiry in search for meaning in which the human condition could be likened to being a spider who is suspended in “webs of significance” that she herself has spun (Geertz, 1973, p.  5). Human practice is made meaningful because it is mediated symbolically (McGuigan, 2005). Stories are thus to be understood through their “cultural locus” (Denzin, 1989, p. 73). Cultural memory is the spinal cord that connects the various parts of one’s body to our whole social brain (stories). What are the psychical effects of the re-formation of this told storied reality? a) “I’d rather not do anything than, than to be forced to be, to sort of like constantly kill my passion” (Alala): The attainment of “full personhood” through assimilation into the dominant culture’s sense of value means the separate deaths of oneself (Lugones, 2003; Lugones & Price, 1995). In the excerpt below, Alala discusses the personal effects of being constantly force-fed normalised “truths” of the dominant culture. Alala: I’ve been at home since [completing an internship]. Ah, so it’s a little difficult at times, you know, there are times, so being unemployed, it’s not nice … I remember saying to myself or to someone that, you know, you know even though architecture was not my first choice, it became a passion of mine, and, and I really, I really want to be like ‘yes, this is architecture, yay’. I wanted to be the cheerleader for architecture and, and you know, I’d rather not do anything than, than to be forced to be, to sort of like constantly kill my passion. I don’t know. I’d rather go on to something else and maybe one day I’ll still go back to it but right now, I’m sort of not, uhm. Ja, that’s it, that’s [Alala]. [Alala] is like sitting at home doing nothing. Ja I’ve worked, I’ve worked on contracts … it’s just drawing work, it’s no, it’s hardly any thinking work. It’s okay, I don’t mind it so much, I mean it’s technical, but it’s drawing work so and ja, I’m just hoping to figure out a way, a way to do what I need to do, you know, do

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what I need to do in terms of me and what I need, my passions, and something that can generate an income, so that I can help out but something I can enjoy. Alala implies that being forced to constantly conform and internalise Eurocentric norms and pedagogies, which do not recognise her background knowledge as legitimate, has effectively meant that her passion for architecture is slowly dying. As a result, she concludes by stating, “I’d rather not do anything than, than to be forced to be, to sort of like constantly kill my passion”. Her experience of being constantly forced to assimilate into normative entities of cultural values has meant the separate deaths of her self (Lugones, 2003; Lugones & Price, 1995). Drawing on the work of Fanon (1967), Hook (2004) explains that cultural oppression is being constantly force-fed with understandings and cultural values which are not one’s own and which de-evaluate one’s sense of self, background and culture. In this context, the attainment of “full personhood” would require that Alala “kill” parts of her self in order to assimilate into normalised truths of the dominant culture which are not her own. Lugones and Price (1995) note that from “the dominant culture’s standpoint, full personhood can be gained through assimilation” (p. 104). b) “[My mother’s dream] it’s a faith thing, you’re putting in the effort [but] it doesn’t always come out the way you want it to be” (Alala): The dignity of struggle and the tragic hope in remaining strong-willed even after devastating losses and disappointments (Eagleton, 2015). Alala refers to the impact that academic exclusion has had on her and her family, raising expectations only to be dashed. This seemed to be manifested in her mother’s anxious dreams about “my situation right now [unemployment], me right now, and me doing nothing at the moment”. Her mother dreamt of pulling out a bunch of carrots from the soil, however, she realised that the carrots were missing, and what she was holding were the stem and leaves: Alala: Oh, my mother had a dream the other day, she’s, she so worried, she’s so worried, about my situation right now [unemployment], and she had a dream, she had, she had of carrots being, she was, I don’t know, she was … I don’t know what to say, but she was

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getting carrots out of the soil, and then when she looks at them, there is no carrots, you know, there is no that orangie part of it, it’s not there and she was so devastated by that dream … and then this man interpreted it for her, and he’s like, you know sometimes we put in so much, you know into the whole planting, we plant, we water it, and, and the farmer next door, and everyone is putting in hard work and sometimes we don’t always, we don’t always get the same, you know, it’s underground, you don’t know the [outcome], you’re putting in the effort and it’s, it’s a faith thing, you’re putting in the effort … As you work, and you’re watering but when you sow … it doesn’t always, it doesn’t always come out the way you want it to be. I don’t know maybe there were worms in the soil, but then he also referred to how parents invest in their children and, and how they, they invest and they put them through school with the expectation that one day my child will come out and look after me. The word “culture” originates from the Latin verb colere which means “to till or cultivate” (Partridge, 2006, p. 698). Alala’s mother plants and waters a seed in hope that she will reap a harvest symbolic of her investing in Alala’s education with her middle-class aspiration that Alala will distribute the harvest to their family. Cooper and Subotzky (2001) have noted that the key driving force for transformation in South Africa does not reside in institutional policies but rather in “the middle-class aspirations of black students and their families” (p.  231). The “farmers next door” (other families) also nurture their seeds (their children’s education) with the expectation of a harvest (their children becoming the financial providers for their families). As these seeds “grow underground”, Alala’s mother and other families are uncertain of the outcome, as Alala notes “you’re putting in the effort and it’s, it’s a faith thing”. Alala expressed her concern about the lack of control she had over the outcome of becoming a professional and providing for her family despite “working myself to near death state”. The farmers (families) “don’t always get the same [harvest]” for several reasons, one of which being that people in South Africa do not compete on a level playing field due to the positionality of social categories along

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an axis of power in society, some categories higher or lower than others. The material spaces that comprise the field are mutually structured and shaped by uneven social relations. Further, the implicit rules which operate “underground” in the playing field serve to maintain existing practices that reproduce the harvest to normative groups that embody white, masculine, and middle-class dispositions. It would seem that the current and increasing shortage of critical Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) skills in South Africa would guarantee employment opportunities for science graduates. However, these women quickly realised that “this is not a future that is guaranteed to all, but is rather racialised, classed and gendered toward white males and white women in our labour market context—one that is still keen to exclude black graduates” (Qambela & Dlakavu, 2014, para 8). Alala expresses that her mother “was so devastated by that dream”. Alala and her mother’s strength remain even after their experience of devastating loss and disappointment as manifested in this dream. This dream could be symbolic of the paradox of faith and tragic hope, where they do not lose hope but “keep their courage in the certainty that the hopelessness of [the] struggle does not detract from its dignity and value” (Frankl, 2004, p. 71). Tragic hope, as Eagleton (2015) explains, “is hope in extremis” (p. 136). What would the psychical effects of the trans-formation of this told storied reality potentially be? a) “it’s a garden where you are taking care of your plants [not saying] ‘grow this way and grow that way’” (Alala): The growth of living knowledges, widening of the human imagination and the evolution of culture as new unfolding worlds. In this excerpt, Alala likens the university to a garden which holds the possibility of discovering new proposed worlds. Alala: We should be able to explore, it’s, it’s, it is, can I go back to the seed, that seed you know, it’s a garden where you are taking care of your plants. When you plant your seed in the soil, you’re not going to go back to it and say ‘grow this way and grow that way’, you plant it, you water it, you know and I think that’s what university should be. It should be about nurturing the talents that

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we have and matching it with the skills and the technicalities that, that come with the profession or whatever the careers that you have chosen, it should be matching that up, it should be taking your talents. I mean instead of creating copies, all little mini-me’s, it should be about learning and exploring and every person is here, maybe some people just, just want to go to work and they just want to do a 8 to 5 job but not everyone that comes here [to university], a lot of the people that come in here have ideas, they have chosen what they have chosen because they like it, and that they are passionate about it and that they wanted do something about it. I mean we all, I mean I’m sure we’re not the only ones that came into the world coming from high school with the idea of changing the world. I remember ­talking to some other guy who was in Honours already and he still wanted to change the world and I was like ‘why, you know, change it, let’s alter it’. We could have discovered so many things, so many, it’s like when you keep smacking your seed and it won’t grow, it won’t, you will get nothing from it. It’ll grow the way you wanted it, like an artificial seed. By using “an artificial seed” as a metaphor, Alala implies that patterns of power and privilege in the university field are reproduced through institutional practices in which lecturers tell students to “grow this way and grow that way”. If students represent the seeds of possibility in the garden, then it is the university’s responsibility to water these seeds or nurture their talents instead of “creating copies, all little mini me’s”, as Alala notes. The university loses its ability to innovate through the reproduction of the same copies of “mini me’s”. Alala likens the university to a garden where people nurture each other’s ideas of how to innovate and create living knowledges that address societal challenges and alter the world as we know it. She asserts, “‘why, you know, change it [the world], let’s alter it’, we could have discovered so many things”. Drawing on Marx’s thesis on the need to change the world instead of interpreting it, Alala implies that by altering the world, our interpretation of it changes. The alteration of old worlds and discovery of new proposed ones happens through “the nurturing of talents” instead of the suppression of talents, as

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Alala notes: “when you keep smacking your seed and it won’t grow, it won’t, you will get nothing from it. It’ll grow the way you wanted it, like an artificial seed”.

B4) Stories as Our Brain The word “story” or any “true” or fictional narrative originates from the Latin historia and the old French estorie (Partridge, 2006). Historia adopted from Greek and anglicised as history derives from the adjective “histōr, knowing, hence erudite” (Partridge, 2006, p. 1432). As eruditus is to “instruct or train”, it is similar to the word “structure” or instruere which means to teach, instruct or “furnish someone with knowledge” (Partridge, 2006, p. 3275). A story is a spoken, written or visual account of “true” or fictional events that convey to a particular audience a point of view of what, how and why something has happened in a particular way. In Chap. 3, I have provided an extended discussion of how stories are the means through which we negotiate, reposition and traverse multiple locations. Stories are thus a valuable resource with which to understand positionality. In this section, however, I will briefly discuss six defining features of a story. First, the events in a story convey what has happened. When accounting for what has happened in our lives, we do not just state the facts as they happened but rather, we tell a story that paints a picture of how particular events unfolded in space and with time. Second, the selection and organisation of particular events and experiences convey how something has happened or how something is developing with time. We impose a structure onto events and experiences in the form of stories which contains the following six elements: the abstract, the orientation, the complicating action, the evaluation, the resolution and the coda (Labov & Waletzky, 1997). Third, we tell an “accurate” and/or fictional account of what and how something has happened. Rather than viewing stories as providing access to “truths”, reflective narration enables us to listen to the self as being in the process of becoming in which the texture and patterns of meaning are constantly trans-formed in the flux of life (Rosenthal, 1993). Narrative reality and unreality enable us to understand oral histories as reconstructions of historical events as well as

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narrative constructions (Ricoeur, 1988; Sandino, 2009). Fourth, we revise and retell different versions of stories from different points of view in order to communicate particular messages or evaluations as to why a story has educational value. The evaluation clause of a story is particularly important because it provides insight into the intention or reason as to why the narrator believes a particular event or experience is significant (Labov & Waletzky, 1997). Fifth, we tell and retell stories to ourselves and others in a specific way, depending on the particular audience and context. Last, the stories we tell are particular. Stories function as a sense-making or cognitive tool of invention for individuals and groups of people to reflect on their affective sense of belonging to particular social locations in relation to others and in particular socio-political contexts. Stories could thus be viewed as a “cognitive scheme” (Polkinghorne, 1988). The etymology of the word’s “narrative” and “cognition” both mean “to know, to learn about” (Partridge, 2006, p. 557). Narrative is considered a primary act of the mind because we make sense of and meaning by imposing a particular form on events and experiences (Abma, 2005). Stories thus facilitate learning processes not only because it enables us to construct meaning from connecting unrelated events in actual space and time but also because stories are open to social dialogue and negotiation (Abma, 2005). An individual’s personal identity is co-authored by the person herself as well as the master moral narratives that preside within a particular culture in which the person acts and narrates (McAdams, 2011; Nelson, 2001). Kwame Anthony Appiah (1994) refers to these master moral narratives as “scripts” that “people can use in shaping their life plans and in telling their life stories” (as cited in Botsis, 2015, p. 182). Similarly, Bonilla-Silva et al. (2004) argue that these ideological categories function as “story lines” (p. 556) and Linde (2009) has noted that every institution has a “story stock” (p. 4). As these ideological scripts, storylines or story stock are often written by dominant/normative subjectivities, identity categories are thus valued and judged differently and disproportionately by master moral narratives within a given culture. For instance, the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2009) warns us against the “danger of a single story” which objectifies and flattens the experiences and complexity of people, particularly of marginalised and excluded groupings. Stories have thus not only been used to humanise, conscientise and empower

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people but also to dehumanise, disempower and dispossess people. As Adichie (2009) notes, “Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity” (p. 6). In other words, stories not only do the work of reproducing injustice, but stories can also work at disrupting social reproduction by “making normal strange” and thus altering the common stock of institutional scripts and storylines (Vincent, 2015). Stories operate like a social brain. Stories are the organ of thinking in that we imaginatively re-collect fragments of our-selves and lives into a followable story which (in)forms new patterns of meaning. The eyes of retrospection and projection send new patterns of meaning to our social brain which provides insight into the human condition and foresight that enlarges our mind’s eye. Stories are thus objects of thought about how our conceptions of self and society are projected reflections of the various ways in which we re-evaluate the present of the past, the present of the future present and thus re-imagine the present of the present. Similar to how our brains, blood vessels, heart and muscles all work together to make movement happen; stories, discourses and narratives all work together to make up the motion picture of our everyday lives. Just as our brains control our bodies, stories have the power to influence personal and political action. Stories, like our social brain, store millions of memories. Our brains need to match movements and shapes against images in its memory in order to make sense of the world around us. Similarly, stories match patterns of meaning from our collective enstoried lives against images in its cultural memory texts in order to make sense of our-selves. Through the eye, third eye, brain, spinal cord and nerves, the nervous system sends, receives and makes sense of nerve impulses throughout the body. Similarly, through becoming, time and cultural memory, the storied-­nervous system functions as a sense-making or cognitive tool for individuals and groups of people to meaningfully reflect on their affective sense of belonging to particular social locations and re-position themselves in alternative discourses. How is this told storied reality, and its psychical effects masked? a) “if you have slept with a guy or if you have a baby by 21… they [family]  won’t even throw you a [21st] party” (Nosakhele): Rehearsing script one—Being a “baby girl”.

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Khanyisile mentions that her 21st party was “very important for me culturally [because] they [family] say you are still a girl. I think it’s that pride your family feels when you are 21 and you are still a virgin”. Similarly, Nosakhele implies that she was rewarded for accepting virginity status with a 21st birthday party. Nosakhele: But my major problem with guys was, you know, guys try to force you into doing stuff, that you don’t want to do, for instance, the most important one is like sexual intercourse, right. And like I was raised up in a family where they say, ‘if you have slept with a guy or if you have a baby by 21 or before 21’, forget it, like, you are no longer a baby. It’s, it’s not that they will throw you away, but they won’t even throw a party for you because, you know, 21st’s are very important to everyone … ja, so that’s what kept me going that ‘phew’ I don’t want to miss out on the big party that my parents have been planning and you see, like that’s something amazing that I kept it, like to myself, like I kept, I was honest to myself and to my parents, I didn’t say ‘well, they can’t see me, I can like gallivant and dollying around with guys’ … ja, I did well, got the 21st party and I wasn’t feeling guilty about anything, ja, it was so nice, it was combined with my graduation party. Khanyisile and Nosakhele’s accounts illustrate how sexuality is culturally and socially produced and thus inextricably connected with power and domination because women’s virginity is monitored through cultural and religious practices (Chisale & Moyo, 2016; Wynn & Hassanein, 2017). The acceptance of this subtle monitoring in the form of self-­ policing seems to be  evident when Nosakhele states that she didn’t “[dolly] around with guys”. Women who “[dolly] around with guys” could be viewed in juxtaposition to women who are abstinent. Bay-­ Cheng (2015) argues that the virginity/promiscuity dichotomy is a foundation of the conventional rhetoric with regard to female sexuality. Based on their actual or alleged sexual behaviour, young women are divided into a group who are abstinent and therefore  presumed virtuous (i.e.

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virgins) or a group who are active and presumed contemptible (i.e. promiscuous). This by no means indicates that Nosakhele intended to draw this comparison but rather it illustrates how we all sometimes conform to gender and cultural norms. b) “I was seen as the perfect girl at home, so [my sister] was just waiting for that moment to turn me in” (Mamoratwa): Rehearsing script two—Being a “good girl”. Mamoratwa explains that she did not confide in her family about her pregnancy because they viewed her as “the perfect girl” at home. Mamoratwa: and still, I mean, you can’t have, hmm, you’re not allowed to have a boyfriend. You can’t even tell your mother about such things [i.e. sex and pregnancy], you can’t, you don’t mention such things at home, otherwise you will just be dealt with. Yes, so it was something you just had to do it [talk about ‘such things’] alone with your friends, you can’t mention it to, hmm, anyone, and I just by that time, such things, I couldn’t talk to my sister about it because, you know siblings sometimes you just fought so much, sometimes, you know, I was seen as the perfect girl at home, so she was just waiting for that moment to turn me in. So, I couldn’t even tell her [of my pregnancy]. I knew she was just going to tell my mum. The entrenched roles and expectations of gendered existence in the script of being “the perfect girl” were not only isolating for Mamoratwa because she “just had to do it alone” but also a form of imprisonment because it created a situation where her sister “was just waiting for that moment to turn [her] in”. She mentions that she “will just be dealt with” or disciplined if she did not behave in accordance to “the perfect girl” ideological script or story line. Mamoratwa implies that she cooperated with this kind of disciplining because of its potential for status mobility, which was particularly important for Mamoratwa whose family had a “certain position” or social standing in the community, as she states, “they

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[parents] are seen as those, uhm, you know a home, a home where you have that certain position”. c) “for males, they can do whenever, they don’t have to look after kids” (Ambani): Rehearsing script three—Child-rearing as solely a female’s responsibility. In her second year of study, Ambani decided to deregister from her degree in Engineering and pursue a degree in Agriculture which was offered by another university so that she could have children before it was “too late”. Ambani: And I just thought that engineering is four years and agriculture is also four years and that doesn’t go well with the females because I also want to have kids and if I do engineering then when am I going to have kids? So, for males, they can do whatever, they don’t have to look after kids … they [my parents] gave me a whole lecture of finishing what you started but I want to have a family of my own. I have to stay in varsity for eight years? I just [laughing] no ways, that’s not going to work out. Women have historically faced restricted options of educational opportunities and gaining footholds in the public realm because they have generally carried the important responsibility of childrearing (Mama, 2003). The rehearsal of ideological gender scripts does not mean that Khanyisile, Nosakhele, Mamoratwa and Ambani have been “fooled” by cultural norms, but rather that they strategically conform to and resist cultural norms in particular contexts. Butler (1990) refers to the simultaneous internalisation and resistance of gender identity as ambivalence. Due to the complexity of transformative contexts, actors may fully or partially and simultaneously internalise and resist ideological scripts of identity categories that are constitutive of their multifaceted and contradictory subject positions. However, the women’s agency is constricted because their actions are embedded in social norms and power relations. The possibility of resisting social norms does not lie in the consciousness of an individual but rather within the structures of power (Mahmood,

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2001). Giddings and Hovorka (2010) propose that agency could be conceptualised by comparing gender scripts to gender acts within particular contexts. Whereas gender acts are performances of gender, gender scripts are the “deeply entrenched or sedimented expectations of gendered existence” (Butler, 1990, p. 275). Conforming to cultural norms may contradictorily subordinate and empower women at the same time. For example, the decision to “maintain virginity” could be viewed as autonomous when young women position educational and professional aspirations as key to virginity status. However, the choice to “maintain virginity” is not simply an autonomous one as it occurs in a cultural context where patriarchal restrictions on women’s sexuality have made it an obligation (Matswetu & Bhana, 2018). How is this told storied reality, and its psychical effects re-formed? d) “no, we will not stay for tea because you have done us wrong, you have ruined [impregnated] our girl” (Welile): The Western distinction between the masculine and the feminine and the social construction of honour and shame at the core of virginity control (Awwad, 2011). The following excerpt illustrates how the entrenched roles and expectations of gendered existence in being viewed as “the good child [daughter] at home … the kindest one, the sweetest one” culminated in feelings of “shock” and “denial” when Mamoratwa realised that she was pregnant. Mamoratwa: and of course, there was adolescence. It started in Grade nine, Grade ten, yes and that’s where now the boyfriends and drama’s was, uhm, just starting, I had my first boyfriend in Grade nine … you not supposed to have a boyfriend up until the day you get married, you cannot have a boyfriend, you have to sneak, you have to sneak in and out, you can’t, it’s not allowed. So you know it was, it was a bit hard especially coming from my family where I used to be seen as the good child at home, out of all my sisters, I was the smartest one, the kindest one, the sweetest one and I wouldn’t dare do anything wrong. That’s what they thought … okay then uhm in Grade yes, let me just say, I started, shoo, it’s a bit hard to say this it’s personal but

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my first sexual intercourse would have been in Grade just after I turned sixteen, after my sixteenth birthday, yes and that was in Grade eleven and still I mean if you can’t have, you’re not allowed to have a boyfriend, you can’t even tell your mother about such things, you can’t … And then came matric that was when now, in Grade twelve, I got pregnant, I got pregnant. I only found out around September, I actually found out the day before I came to [this university] for the [Oya  scholarship programme] thing and I was so shocked, I was so scared. Still, I couldn’t tell anyone, even by then I wasn’t too sure, I was just in denial, I had morning sickness, but I was just in denial. I was like ‘no, I’m not pregnant’, it’s just one of those things maybe I’m sick the stress in matric and all of those and my parents couldn’t notice anything because I always hid my, my tracks with performing extremely well … so doing well to them meant, she’s still perfectly fine, I mean she’s ­studying every time. And when I found out, when I found out that I was pregnant, that’s when I was coming here, and coming here, and that was the time now when I was just losing hope on everything. I didn’t even want to be part of the scholarship, I didn’t want to come, I didn’t want to do anything. I just, I was just so dreadful, my parents forced me to come here, they didn’t know my situation by then, even here I wasn’t, probably you guys [Oya programme staff] did notice, but I wasn’t just free. I mean, I had to hide myself so that people couldn’t notice that this girl is pregnant. I mean in matric, and by that time, yoh, it was just so hard. Mamoratwa continues to discuss the complications she experienced as a result of having a baby out of wedlock. Mamoratwa: and then he [my boyfriend and my baby’s father] sees my baby, but that’s when my parents are not around because in a black community that is just wrong, wrong, wrong,

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wrong. You have, you were supposed to me marry me by the time I got pregnant but then my parents don’t believe in all of that, they don’t even believe in marriage while I’m still young, for me it’s to get a career and then decide on my own what I want to do. As her mother is a teacher and father a principal, Mamoratwa felt that her pregnancy out of wedlock had “destroyed” her family’s social standing in the community as she states that “It was, at home, they [parents] are seen as those, uhm, you know a home, a home where you have that certain position and now and you, now I just destroyed it, ja, it was yo, it was rough”. Mamoratwa is viewed as “the good child at home [or the] smartest one, the kindest one, the sweetest one [who] wouldn’t dare do anything wrong” because of her dual position of being a teacher’s daughter and a top achiever at school. She explains that allowing her boyfriend to visit their child in the company of her parents “is just wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong”. She believes that it is “wrong” because of the stigma attached to pregnancy out of wedlock, “wrong” because of her family’s social standing in the community and “wrong” because Mamoratwa was a top achiever in her school. Similarly, Welile also discusses the distressing complications that resulted from her pregnancy out of wedlock. Welile: And then from his [Kgwerano, my boyfriend] father’s side, he is Roberto Junior, that’s what they do, the first son, they name them ‘junior’ … so my mom had to write a letter Rob’s family … and when we get there [to Rob’s family] we had to get there in the morning because pregnancy out of wedlock is such, such a bad thing, so you can’t meet their family in daylight, in broad daylight, so we had to get that 5am … and then I had to go there all covered up … when we got there, it wasn’t a happy meeting. My aunt was just like, ‘we just want to know is this the one in the family, do you know of this woman that we are with?’ And Rob said, ‘yes’ and so [my aunt continued] ‘now, we have brought this incident’ (that’s what they call it) ‘and are you taking responsibility for it?’ And luckily for me Rob said, ‘yes’

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because a lot of guys are like ‘I don’t know that girl’. So, I was like, ‘oh please, say yes’ and then he said yes. And then they [Rob’s family] didn’t understand because they were like, ‘are you going to stay for tea or whatever’ and my aunts were like, ‘no, we will not stay for tea because you have done us wrong, you have ruined our girl’. And then Rob’s family had to come to our house and when they got there, they [my family] had to tell them [Rob’s family] about the damages, that he had damaged me so he had to pay a price … they told him that he needs to now marry me and I obviously, I’m not into that, I do want us to get married but not now but there is, there is still a lot that we need to do and you know when you are married, I feel like it’s hard to do things for your family when you’re married so I would rather us, so I would rather we do things for family while we still can … so then I said I was the one (because it would have been awkward for him to say ‘no’ he doesn’t want to marry me, it is almost as though he wants to impregnate someone else) so I was like, ‘no, I’m the one who doesn’t want to be married’ or whatever. And then they told him about the damages. And then they told him about the damages but then they said that the damages would be offset from the Lobola so that’s fine and then he was given an amount and it was like so expensive, I felt so bad [laughing] and then they were told that they would have to pay before [our baby] comes so that’s what happened. Mamoratwa and Welile’s pregnancy out of wedlock is received to have catastrophic consequences for personal and social status mobility as demonstrated by Welile’s aunt who states, “you have done us wrong, you have ruined [impregnated] our girl”, “do you know of this woman that we are with?” and “now, we have brought this incident” (that’s what they call it) ‘and are you taking responsibility for it?’. Welile expresses her distress and embarrassment with the use of the phrase, “incident”, as she says, “that’s what they [her aunts] call it [pregnancy out of wedlock]”. Mamoratwa affirms her agency and power to choose by stating, “I used to be seen as the good child at home out of all my sisters, I was the smartest one, the kindest one, the sweetest one and I wouldn’t dare do anything wrong.

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That’s what they thought”. However, their agency is contradictorily located in normative rules of gender and discourses which monitor female sexuality (King, 2014). In other words, women’s virginity is regulated, as Mamoratwa notes, “you can’t even tell your mother about such things [i.e. sex and pregnancy], you can’t, you don’t mention such things at home, otherwise you will just be dealt with”. Virginity is thus “an element of normative patriarchal restrictions on women’s sexuality” because unmarried young men, such as Kgwerano and Roberto, have the freedom to “lose” their virginity without adverse repercussions on their social standing (Matswetu & Bhana, 2018, p. 2). Welile explains that as “[Rob] had damaged me” from the perspective of her family (or society), they informed Rob of “the damages”, as she says, “then he was given an amount and it was like so expensive, I felt so bad [laughing] and then they were told that they would have to pay before [our baby] comes”. The economic value of women is relevant in this context. As Welile’s social status mobility is “damaged”, monetary “damages” need to be paid by the one “responsible” for the “damages”, that is Rob (and his family). In this context, Welile is constructed as an honourable “good girl” with mystical value and little agency as she has been “damaged” or “wronged” to echo her aunt’s words, “you have done us wrong”. Virginity and chastity symbolise such value because, as Ortner (1978) explains, “virginity is a symbol of exclusiveness and inaccessibility, nonavailability to the general masses, something, in short, that is elite. A virgin is an elite female among females, withheld, untouched, exclusive” (p. 32). When Mamoratwa realised that she was pregnant out of wedlock, it culminated in feelings of shock and fear, as she explains, “I was so shocked, I was so scared, still I couldn’t tell anyone … I wasn’t just free. I mean I had to hide myself so that people couldn’t notice that this girl is pregnant”. Awwad (2011) asserts that the social construction of “honor and shame are at the core of virginity control and gender-based violence in Turkey” (p.  105). The Western distinction between masculine and feminine is a crucial element in the functioning of this ideology which render women powerless and simultaneously “manages to create and maintain a powerful social control apparatus aimed at dominating [and] exploiting” women (Awwad, 2011, p. 105). Shame is constructed as a “feminine quality” in which women are ascribed the duty to protect

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chastity to ensure that a family’s honour is not “damaged” or “ruined” (Awwad, 2011). e) “Rob said that if the child is a boy, the child is going to be Rob Junior, but if it is a girl that I can just name it” (Welile): The patriarchal family as an administrative base unit in political-economic state structures (Ortner, 1978). In the following excerpt, Welile discusses how a cultural context where patriarchy values boys more than girls placed her in a situation where she feared “leaving my child with no mother”. Welile:

I understand he [Roberto] is a boy and our culture values boys more than girls, you know they are like the special ones [laughing] so now because he’s a boy everything has to happen according to his family which is true because [my son] carries his surname and like, me, I’m using my mom’s surname so with that, it’s not a problem because they don’t care about us girls but with the boys they have to use their father’s surname. Sabrina: So, when, if you get married to Roberto, are you going to take his surname? Why can’t he take your surname? Welile: Because I’m married into his family so the kids that I give birth to are his family’s. Sabrina: What about your family? What about the sacrifices your mom has made? Welile: That’s why with my mom she told me that I’m so happy that you have a boy because she just has girls, so she feels like she doesn’t have any kids. Even with Rob’s dad, he has two wives and Rob is also supposed to have two wives … but he said he’s not going to do it and I’m holding him to his words [laughing] because I told him that I will not be a part of that … Rob’s mom told me that I must also be ready for this whole thing because there is no way that Rob is going to have one wife … I don’t even know how I didn’t get a miscarriage. [My baby] is a little fighter [laughing]. I was stressed and the worst thing is I can’t even tell my mom about the stress. I couldn’t because, because I didn’t want to break the families apart. I had to be strong when I didn’t even want to be strong. I had

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to be strong … I was also talking to Rob but he’s also cultural man and he told me that this is the way it is but he swears he won’t get another wife but for me it was just words, it was just words to try to comfort me. I always felt like you could go back on his word if I do give birth to a girl. And the worst was even with the naming he said that ‘if the child is a boy, the child is going to be ‘Rob Junior’ but if it is a girl that I can just name it’, ‘you can just name it’. And I was like, ‘but how? don’t you want to have an input?’ And he was like ‘no, you can just’, you know and that’s why I felt like whenever he said even if it’s a girl, I don’t mind but the little comments they made me you know, that you could go back on his word. And I was stressed because I was thinking now I am going to be a single parent because if it’s a girl I’m going to have to be a single parent, I’m going to have to deal with that … they [family] tell us what to do whether we like it or not. I think because of his family, if it wasn’t for family, he would’ve been happy for any child. Sabrina: It’s like culture dictates family and family dictates you. Welile: Thank you, thank you. What scared me was leaving a child, leaving my child with no mother. In a cultural context where patriarchal values privilege male’s experiences and perspectives, Welile’s mother is made to feel “like she doesn’t have any kids” because “she just has girls” as Welile stated. These patriarchal interests are also made evident in Rob’s statement, “if the child is a boy, the child is going to be ‘Rob Junior’ but if it is a girl that I [Welile] can just name it”. Elaine Salo and Pumla Gqola (2006) explain that in postcolonial contexts, the normative practices and discourses of heterosexuality, which are anchored in male authority, have become sedimented into the central basis from which personhood, gender and sexuality are defined. Welile believes that if it were not for family “telling us what to do”, “[Rob] would’ve been happy for any child [i.e. male or female]”. Sherry Ortner (1978) suggests that one of the most noticeable features of the patriarchal family is perhaps the continued dependence and subjugation of sons. This points to the patriarchal social structure of the extended

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family which domesticates men, as husbands, fathers and sons to take responsibility for the family unit, not just economically but also in terms of “political accountability” (Ortner, 1978). In this way, the patriarchal family structure could be compared to a base unit or an administrative unit in the socio-political and economic structure of the nation state in which the husband/father is responsible to his family vis-à-vis the larger system. As Ortner (1978) notes, the family unit “became the base, and often the only base, of his jural status” (p. 29). The false notion that males should to be economically, legally and politically responsible for the appropriate functioning of the family unit “seems to be part of the systematic extension of principles of hierarchy, domination, and order in the evolution of states as a whole” (Ortner, 1978, p. 29). My insensitive question to Welile, “Why can’t [Rob] take your surname?” not only places unwarranted and undue pressure on Welile’s already distressing situation, but it naively assumes that Welile, as an autonomous individual can, should or wants to subvert the hierarchy of power rooted in the patriarchal family structure by simply refusing to take on his surname. Welile affirms her power and agency by deliberately and strategically navigating a way through a seemingly impossible situation. For example, she mentions she needed to make decisions based on not “break[ing] the families apart” which meant that “I had to be strong when I didn’t even want to be strong”. How could this told storied reality, and its psychical effects be unmasked? a) “When my water broke, my heart broke” (Welile): Sitting with fragmented pieces of our shattered selves. Welile’s heart-wrenching statement “When my water broke, my heart broke” speaks to the sense of brokenness or fragmentation as a fundamental part of our humanity: Welile:

And the worst is that okay, I wasn’t allowed to find out what kind of child I was going to have, like a boy or a girl and Rob was told if I get a girl then I am going to be the second wife. My pregnancy was stressful Sabrina. I was the most stressed woman, pregnant woman in the whole of South Africa [laughing] … And I didn’t want to tell my mom because, yo, my

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mom would’ve gone to that family and said ‘hei!’ [laughing]. So, whenever I was around my friends, they were like ‘you look like you are going to have a girl’ and they were all, they would give me a mini heart attack! [laughing]. I was like ‘don’t say, don’t say it’. So, after giving birth, after those 21 hours, I should have been relieved that the child is out of me, but I was stressed, I was like ‘is it a girl or is it a boy? I wanted to find out and I didn’t enjoy my pregnancy as such even when he was kicking, Rob’s mom would say, ‘you can tell by how he kicks whether it’s a girl or a boy’ and I didn’t even know how and I was like I didn’t even know and she was like, ‘well you better hope it’s a boy because you’re number two’ … And you know the whole time I was pregnant you know, you know, the kicking is really, it’s so beautiful, it’s so beautiful. I would be there reading to my baby but at the back of my mind I’m just thinking, ‘I hope you’re a boy’ and not because I wouldn’t be happy for a girl but because I want to get married to Roberto. I don’t want to be the second wife and I only want and I only want to be, I want to be the only wife. I just had the most stressful pregnancy and on top of that one of my aunt, she has dreams, she’s one of the dreamers in the family and every time she dreams it happens … so no one knew about my pregnancy then and then she dreamt that I was pregnant and whatever not and then my mom was so upset and then we had to just tell them because you can’t tell them about the pregnancy until the damages have been paid or at least until after the family has acknowledged the pregnancy so we were waiting for that time. So now my aunt, you know, had dreamt of the whole thing and then a few weeks later she tells me that she dreamt that I was going into labour and my child survived and then I died. Sabrina: but why, why would you, why tell you something like that. Welile: So, what can I say? After I gave birth I then put on a white gown, so in our culture if you are getting married or anything like that, it means that it’s death, it’s a sign of death so she couldn’t see my face so she knew, she knew that it was, it was

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me that was going and so I thought it was really going to happen so I was stressed not knowing whether I was going to get a girl or a boy and then on top of that thinking that this child, I am going to orphan this child, you know, what if my child is not loved? I was like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe this is going to happen to me so when my water broke, my heart broke because not only did I think that I was going to die, I thought that if I do survive and get a girl it’s still pointless. So ­fortunately, everything happened the right way, but I had a stressful pregnancy. Sabrina: How, uhm, how do you keep a sense of self, a sense of who you are through all of that? Welile: You don’t. You don’t. You really don’t. And so, we sit with the pieces. How could this told storied reality, and its psychical effects be trans-formed? b) “it’s a network, like Avatar … a breathing system, a network breathing space” (Alala): (Re)pairing fragments of our-selves in the form of network storymazes and cultural patterns of symbolisation. Stories have an “implicit contract” towards ordering fragmented pieces into some semblance of a meaningful whole, whereas life has no such contract (Bell, 1990, p. 174). In contrast to the deliberate manipulation of the story in which disruptive pieces are eliminated, life has no such structure (Crossley, 2000). We impose a structure onto our lived experiences and events in a story form which “reinforce and make more explicit the symbolisation that is already at work within a culture at the level of the practical human action” (Carr, as cited in Crossley, 2000, p. 542). Just as artists form and shape things that would otherwise be formless and shapeless, human beings give a shape to our lives in a story form that would otherwise be shapeless. As Bauman (2008) states in his book, The Art of Life: “To impose an ‘order’ on what otherwise would be ‘chaos’: to ‘organize’ an otherwise chaotic—random, haphazard and so unpredictable—collection of things and events by making certain events more likely to happen than all the others” (p. 125). The experience of traumatic events and moments of crisis, breaking points or thresholds in our lives

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serves to disrupt our sense of control over existence, “throwing into radical doubt our taken-for-granted assumptions about time, identity, meaning and life itself ” (Crossley, 2000, p. 542). Narratives are a way in which we restore a sense of connection in the face of disconnection, (re)pair fragmented pieces of our shattered selves and re-establish a semblance of meaning in our lives (Crossley, 2000). Isak Dinesen proposes that “All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them” (as cited in Arendt, 1958, p. 175). The storymazes which were presented in Chap. 4 is an attempt to express the nuances of the women’s lived lives and told stories in various forms (i.e. labyrinth story, rhythmic storymaze, looped storymaze and network storymaze). In other words, the ways the women give shape to their lives in a story form resembles the structure of a labyrinth, rhythms, boundless wholes and networks. I suggest that there are four main features which complexify the level of connectivity within and across the storymazes. These patterns of connections vary from least connected (i.e. labyrinth story) to most connected (i.e. network storymaze). It is important to note that although the storymazes differ in its level of connectivity and complexity, I do not imply that the person who told a story that resembles the form of a labyrinth is less complicated or multifaceted as compared to the person who told a story that resembles the form of a network. The stories the women told of their lives are fleeting constructions of their complex and multifaceted personhood which they carefully and intentionally crafted for a particular purpose, to a particular audience and at the particular time in which the interview conversation took place. Therefore, what I am relating is the crafted storymazes and not individual people. Neither do I imply that there is a “properly” narrated story to be told, rather I suggest that it may be important to discuss the features which complicate the level of connectivity within a told story because it may enable us to gain a better understanding of the various ways in which stories are used as a cognitive or sense-making tool to narrate the complexity of a life, (re)pair fragmented pieces of one’s sense of self, and re-­ establish a semblance of meaning in one’s life. I will now briefly discuss four features which complexify the level of connectivity within a storymaze.

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Similar to the structure of a labyrinth, these stories consist of a continuous pathway from the beginning (“entrance”) to the end (“exit”) of the story. This linear progressive series of events and experiences create a “stability narrative” that is in concordance with the desired “goal state or valued endpoint” (Gergen & Gergen, 1986). For labyrinth storymazes, see Figs. 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4. Conversely, I compare the remaining told stories to a maze because of how these stories contain many discontinuous points of beginnings (“entries”), middles and endings (“exits”). This non-linear series of events and experiences creates a constant tension between “concordance” and “discordance”, which facilitates a sense of instability and uncertainty about the desired endpoint of a story (Ricoeur, 1984). For rhythmic storymazes see Figs. 4.5, 4.6 and 4.7 and loop storymazes, see Figs. 4.8, 4.9 and 4.10. In particular, I suggest that the network storymazes convey the greatest degree of connectivity, a  sense of movement through time, instability and uncertainty about the possible endpoints of a story. For network storymazes, see Figs. 4.11, 4.12, 4.13 and 4.14. Levine (2015) proposes that if we were to craft textual lives around networks as opposed to separate persons as entities, characters would not be depicted as powerless or powerful in their own right, but rather as “moments in which complex and invisible social forces cross” (p. 126). The first feature which complexifies the level of connectivity within a told story is that the narrator does not only provide an account of being “what I am” (i.e. being positioned by social discourses in relation to others), but also how she has become “who I am” and “where I feel a sense of belonging” (i.e. meaningfully reflecting her subject position in the social world and re-positioning herself in alternative discourses within conditions of impossibility). In other words, the narrator does not just report on and describe actual events in her life as they happened but rather provides detailed descriptions and reflections of particular incidences from particular standpoints. Second, the narrator tells a story in a non-linear fashion which creates many retrospective and prospective pathways that loop back into present perspectives. In this way, the narrator attempts to make meaning from her (dis)continuous and unfolding sense of selves through the activity of emplotment in which she organises sequences of events into beginnings,

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middles and ends which generate a sense of intelligibility of her past, present and projected future. Along the narrator’s journey of restoring a semblance of meaning in their lives, their (network) stories not only provide us with “truths” that relate to real-life situations but also provide a “roadmap” for resolving conflicts along various pathways in a maze which is symbolic of life. The third feature which complexifies the level of connectivity within a network storymaze is the tension between “concordance” and “discordance” which creates “dramatic effects”, a gradual build-up of suspense and a sense of instability and uncertainty about the evaluative endpoints of a story (Gergen & Gergen, 1986; Ricoeur, 1984). The evaluative component of a story conveys the meaning of the action as it provides insight into how the narrator understands the significance of an event and why her story has educational value to a broader audience. These evaluative components of stories reflect the shared customs, values, attitudes, and beliefs that characterise a particular community and that are passed down from generation to generation. The tension between “concordance” and “discordance” is created by moments of crisis and rebirth. In particular, academic failure was a significant moment of crisis which seemed to create a sense of instability and uncertainty about the desired endpoint of a story. For example, Kgnaya states, “I failed that one course and my life has changed. I’m never sure of anything anymore”. The fourth feature which complexifies the level of connectivity within a network storymaze are entangled motifs and metaphors which are not only personal “marks” that are retold over a life course but also marks which are symbolic of human action. If textuality is a model for human action (Ricoeur, 1981), then intersecting and entangled motifs and metaphors of a network storymaze make explicit cultural patterns of symbolisation that is at work on the level of human action (Carr, 1986). For example, Alala uses a tree as a metaphor to represent the interconnectivity of life in all its forms: Alala:

I’ve always felt connected to people, to nature, like I always found myself sitting in the garden and then just drawing … for me if God (but I don’t believe in God) but if, if God created the earth, then, then we can look to it and we can learn

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so much. It was the tree again, we were sitting outside looking at a tree and I was like, look at the tree, it has to go through the summer, the winter, all the other seasons, but it still stands, it stands, it’s grounded. When it rains, I mean it loses, it loses branches, and it’s bruised and, but it still remains grounded until someone chops it down or it dies but it remains grounded. It’s, it’s, you know, ah I hate going down this road, but the whole circle of life thing, the whole Lion King thing, it’s, it’s in the Earth and it feeds and it feeds from the Earth, it gets its nutrients, it rains and then there is the sun, and it’s just all connected, it just shows how as people, we need each other and, and sometimes in your winter, you need someone, you need a ray of light …you can learn a lot from nature, it has lots to say … I think we are all connected, and we can harness it. I mean the world is just, is just the way it is but we can still, still find our humanity in it and our connections. Sabrina: like with self and an other, the self is an other and an other is, is self. It’s like one of the same thing. Alala: it’s a network, like ‘Avatar’ [laughing] … a breathing system, a network breathing space. These features which complexifies the level of connectivity within a told story could be understood as dialectical hinges between self and society in that network storymazes are “forms of thought and imagination that help the individual to re-invent the culture in their minds”, while binding the individual into culture (Brockmeier, 2000, p. 70). Figures 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5 and 6.6 provide a visual representation of these fragmented pieces and cultural patterns of symbolisation that are at work in the women’s actions as represented by the structure of their (textual) stories. These figures also depict the ways in which levels of connectivity between fragmented pieces and within cultural patterns of symbolisation vary from a labyrinth story to a network storymaze. In other words, these figures illustrate how the telling of lived events (as immediately experienced in space) and the reconfiguration of told events (as retrospectively experienced with time) fold into fragments of chronotopes as expressed through symbols which reconfigure the symbolic content or theories of our

Fig. 6.2  Labyrinth story (collated)

Fig. 6.3  Rhythmic storymaze (collated)

Fig. 6.4  Looped storymaze (collated)

Fig. 6.5  Network storymaze (collated)

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Fig. 6.6  Labyrinth, rhythmic, looped and network storymazes (collated)

collective human experience. In this way, theory is enriched by experience and experience is enriched by theory. In her article, “Creative Twists in the Tale: Narrative and Visual Methodologies in Action”, Bradbury (2017) reminds us that the process of reflecting on one’s life may empower people to “[re]read the world” (Freire, 1972) and change their moods, minds and lives. If we see and read the world (Freire, 1972) differently, these new forms of knowledge production may help us to incrementally shift the “weight of the world” (Bourdieu, 1999). Twisting narratives into new visual shapes, makes new perspectives possible, enabling us to attend to lives, or aspects of lives, typically rendered silent and invisible, and foregrounds the critically important qualities of temporality and relationality in human life. (p. 33)

It is through the possibility of being moved by another’s story that we learn to see the chaotic complex humanity in each other. When we journey through the (e)motions of another’s life, we restore our sense of

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connection to humanity without forgetting, as Zadie Smith explains, “the mystery that lies at the heart of all selfhood. Of what a self may contain that is both unseen and ultimately unknowable” (2019, p. 19).3

Conclusion This chapter has provided evidence for the argument that the storied re-­ formation of not-becoming “modern” scientists entails a conception of temporality which draws on Newton’s theorisation of time for whom time functions like a spatial coordinate. Upon their entry into STEM fields, young Black women are viewed as surrogates who are expected to conform to Eurocentric norms and pedagogies (Roach, 1996). In this way, the production of knowledge is treated as an individual possession that is disconnected from people’s needs, reality and sense of humanity. The re-formation of not-becoming “modern” scientists creates a told storied reality in which the institutional line of becoming “white” is related to “the vertical promise of class mobility” (Ahmed, 2007, p. 160). In this told storied reality, the dynamics of existing knowledge systems means that institutions are often in the business of what Essed and Goldberg (2002) call cultural cloning through a linear trajectory of progress which creates a sense of alienation from the product of labour and the act of production itself (Bulhan, 1985; Marx, 1964, 1973). The psychical effects of the re-formation of this told storied reality is that cultural definitions of humanity are defined along the lines of racial, national, geographical or linguistic divisions. In this storied reality, the attainment of “full personhood” through assimilation into the dominant culture’s sense of value means separate  deaths of oneself (Lugones, 2003;  Lugones & Price, 1995). This told storied reality and psychical effects are masked and re-formed through preforming or acting out deeply entrenched and sedimented ideological “scripts” (Appiah, 1994) which are informed by Western distinction between the masculine and the feminine, the social construction of honour and shame  at the core of virginity control  My thanks to Pamela Nichols for sharing this article with me.

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(Awwad, 2011) and the patriarchal family as an administrative base unit in political-economic state structures (Ortner, 1978). This chapter has also provided evidence for the counter-argument that storied trans-formation of becoming modern scientists entails a conception of temporality which draws on Einstein’s theorisation of relativity in which space takes into account the relations between positions of being within changing sequences of actions and events which are always in the process of becoming (Faist, 2005). The trans-formation of becoming modern scientists would create a told storied reality in which the leadership of an institution would construct imaginative narratives of the future that invest confidence and resources in upcoming professionals. The psychical effects of the trans-formation of this told storied reality is the evolution of culture as new unfolding worlds as sustained through the growth of living knowledges and widening of the human imagination. This told storied reality, and its psychical effects are unmasked through sitting with fragmented pieces of our shattered selves and trans-formed by critical psychosocial mnemonics (Duncan et al., 2014) and collective memory work (Haug, 1992) as rituals of meaning-spirit making which shape individual lives as a question and reformulate collective cultural patterns of symbolisation.

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7 Pathway C-entre. The Narrative-­ Respiratory System of (No)belonging to Knowledge Communities: The Collective Psychosocial Life of Social Scientific Research

Introduction This chapter  begins with a discussion of how social scientific research methods as the content of the hidden curriculum could be viewed as narrative formations in the dialectical interplay between entities of inclusion-­ exclusion (i.e. no-belonging) and networks of belonging to knowledge communities. I will explore what the symbolic narrative re-formation of the principle logic of inclusion in and exclusion from knowledge communities entails, through the notion of class as an organising principle by which the perceived differences of social groups come to be positioned and fixed in racial, heteropatriarchal and (neo)liberal hierarchical entities. Dominant knowledges or patterns of oppressive power, such as white domination and privilege, take the form of entities. In an effort to take the final four steps towards the centre of the Minotaur’s labyrinth, the following questions are posed: What does this symbolic  narrative system of no-belonging to knowledge communities entail, how does this create a symbolic narrative reality with particular psychosocial effects, and what are the various ways in which this reality

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and its psychosocial effects are masked and re-formed? I will argue that the South African university is in a state of breathlessness (no-belonging) because its air (chronotopes as one-dimensional symbols) is stale. Its lungs (knowledge) are punctured because its heart (predictable symbolic narratives) is shattered. In other words, the (neo)liberal logic of inclusion in and exclusion from classed entities of knowledge entails histories of colonialism which has made the world ‘white’ in that the “body-at-home is one that can inhabit whiteness” (Ahmed, 2007, p.  153). “Chronotopes” (Bakhtin, 1981) is expressed through one-dimensional symbols. (Neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion create a symbolic  narrative reality of institutional timespaces that close individual bodies into separate unchanging entities with an inevitable overarching plot of sameness in the form of “academic excellence” or “academic talent” as evaluated against white middle-class habitus. The (neo)liberal inclusion-exclusion logic (i.e. no-­belonging) is our breathlessness. The psychosocial effects of re-forming this symbolic narrative reality are that political systems and systems of knowledge work to rationalise and justify a “theodicean grammar” (Gordon, 2008, p. 76) which serves to maintain the reproduction of social inequalities and injustices. Atrophied1 knowledge is our punctured lungs. This narrative reality, and its psychosocial effects are masked through assessment practices driven by disciplinary decadence (Gordon, 2006) and the meritocratic recognition of “academic talent” as well as re-formed through the fear of  shattering failure as paralysis. Predictable symbolic narratives is our shattered heart. Conversely, I will explore whether the organising principle of networks could be used to think through what it might mean to decentre and overwrite Manichean hierarchal entities. What affordances do infinity networks entail, and what are the implications for the symbolic  narrative trans-formation of belonging to knowledge communities? In an effort to take the final four steps away from the centre of the Minotaur’s labyrinth, the following questions are posed: What does this symbolic  narrative  Atrophied knowledge resonates with Gordon’s notion of disciplinary decadence in which he explains that “decay begins when disciplines turn away from reality, as is the case when living beings turn away from life” (2007, p. 13). 1

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system of belonging to knowledge communities entail, how does this create a symbolic narrative reality with particular psychosocial effects, and what are the various ways in which this reality and its psychosocial effects could be unmasked and trans-formed? This chapter will develop the following counter-argument or vision towards trans-forming the collective psychosocial life of social scientific research: The South African university is in a state of breath-fullness (belonging) because its air (chronotopes as multi-­dimensional symbols) is spirited. Its lungs (knowledge) is heartened because its soul (unpredictable symbolic narratives) is a webwork. In other words, the symbolic narrative trans-formation of belonging to knowledge communities entails a phenomenology of whiteness as sitting with and digesting what is habitual and routine in a world that is made “white” by colonialism (Ahmed, 2007). Chronotopes is expressed through multi-dimensional symbols. The trans-formation of belonging to knowledge communities would create a symbolic narrative reality of biographical timespaces where people disconnect their sense of self from the reproduction of sameness (Essed & Goldberg, 2002) and reconnect with the uniqueness of the narratable self (Cavarero, 2014). Belonging is our breath-fullness. The psychosocial effects of trans-forming this symbolic narrative reality is the construction and enactment of knowledge through Biko’s (2012 [1978]) philosophy of Black Consciousness. Living knowledges is our heartened lungs. This narrative reality, and its psychosocial effects could be unmasked by teaching and assessment practices driven by a “teleological suspension of disciplinarity” (Gordon, 2011) and exposing psychic wounds through artistic expression which gives one a sense of that which might be incomprehensible and ultimately unknowable. This narrative reality, and its psychosocial effects could be trans-­ formed through a  tragic love in motion. Unpredictable symbolic narratives that hovers on the border of chaos are our webwork heart.

Research Questions The following research questions focus on the psychosocial construction of (neo)liberal-lines of inclusion in and exclusion from classed entities of knowledge

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C1) What does the symbolic narrative re-formation of the principle logic of inclusion in and exclusion from classed entities of knowledge entail? C2) What symbolic narrative reality does the re-formation of the principle logic of inclusion in and exclusion from classed entities of knowledge create? How is the principle logic of inclusion in and exclusion from classed entities of knowledge produced and what does this form of excluding knowing-that do? C3) What are the psychosocial effects of the re-formation of this symbolic narrative reality? C4) How is this symbolic narrative reality and its psychosocial effects masked and re-formed? Conversely, the following research questions focus on the psychosocial construction of infinity networks of belonging to knowledge communities: C1) What would the symbolic narrative trans-formation of belonging to knowledge communities entail? C2) What symbolic narrative reality would the trans-formation of belonging to knowledge communities create? How is belonging (as a state of being) to networks of symbolic knowledge produced and what does the valuing of this knowing-that do? C3) What would the psychosocial effects of the trans-formation of this symbolic narrative reality possibly be? C4) How could this symbolic narrative reality and its psychosocial effects be unmasked and trans-formed?

 ocial Scientific Research S as the Symbolic Narrative Content of the Hidden Curriculum Although institutional frameworks, policies and laws may be altered, “social and cultural structures, practices, habits of mind and heart, remain stable over time” (Linde, 2009 as cited in Vincent, 2015, p.  26). The continuity or reproduction of social and cultural structures is invisibly and actively performed in the seemingly ordinary and mundane micro

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cultures of the day-to-day lived experiences. We can access the details of how these structures continue to be reproduced through the various ways in which stories are told, silenced, sanctioned and circulated within institutions (Vincent, 2015). By listening to the stories an institution tells about itself and the stories we tell about the institution in relation to ourselves, we could get a sense of how forms of dominance are simultaneously being reproduced and interrupted (Vincent, 2015). If the existing story stock of an institutional culture is reproduced through our complicity in unthinkingly re-narrating common institutional stories, then what is the symbolic narrative content of this story stock, particularly at HWUs in South Africa? HWUs in South Africa often present themselves as being associated with a tradition of academic ‘excellence’ and prestige. For example, when a particular HWU in South Africa celebrated its centenary, the theme was one of celebrating a history of ‘excellence’: [Our HWU] has a history that has made us proud. The achievements of old [alumni] bear testimony to what we strive for:—the pursuit of excellence in all areas … Your support will see [our HWU] into its second centenary of excellence.

At another HWU in South Africa, transformation is conceptualised as “first and foremost about the pursuit of excellence—about creating a University in which each individual as well as the whole is enabled and indeed, challenged, to be excellent”. The notion of social transformation is thus bound up with economic competitiveness as the focus is on developing ‘academically talented’ or high-quality graduates in accounting, commerce and STEM disciplines, “whilst not neglecting the arts and humanities”: In alignment with the priorities of our country, we want to advance economic competitiveness and social transformation through research, teaching and learning activities to produce the high level and scarce skills needed to foster development … we are committed to developing more and higher quality graduates in science, engineering, technology, accounting and commerce whilst not neglecting the arts and humanities … Our determination is to integrate South Africa more powerfully into the global knowledge economy by offering world-class education to all academically talented individuals.

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This claim to excellence can act as a bulwark against change because if something is “excellent” then the argument for changing it is rendered moot (Booi, Vincent, & Liccardo, 2017a). The reproduction of elite spaces at HWUs is legitimated by appeals to “excellence”, “academic talent”, “quality” or “high standards of achievement”. As the university has a vested interest in protecting the economic value of its degrees, it not only embraces a form of transformation which protects its social and intellectual elitism but it welcomes new people into its space if they preserve its social, intellectual and economic capital (Botsis, Dominguez-­ Whitehead, & Liccardo, 2013). In the context of the global ranking industry, the appeal to “quality” is an appeal to the quantity of wins that would increase an institution’s “profits of position or rank” and corporate social capital (Bourdieu et al., 1999, p. 127). Discourses of “quality” and “excellence” are thus underpinned by “performance measures, output-based funding, measures of economic value, tests of relevance and impact, and relations with funding agencies based on contracts, accountability and audit” (Marginson, 2009, p. 587). In Lyotardian terms, the field becomes a game of performativity in which performance is measured as an end in itself, with little regard to teaching, learning and community engagement. As noted by Marginson (2009), “All universities have stronger incentives to put performance ahead of social access [in] a rankings-based reputational race” (p. 595). The future value of a university is reliant on speculation about its ability to attract future investors, which in turn is dependent on the perceived “excellence” and “quality” of an institution as determined by its position in the global ranking game (Brown, 2016). Speculation about the “quality” of a university implies a value judgement about whether an institution or person inherently possesses characteristics or dispositions considered to be excellent in relation to others (Strike, 1985). Naidoo (2004) contends that, in South Africa, academic excellence is evaluated against the “intrinsic” dispositions of those “typical” students from the white schooling system (i.e. those individuals who attended private schools and former Model C schools). If excellence is associated with the characteristics of individuals from private schools and former Model C schools, then discriminatory practices that reproduce patterns of privilege and exacerbate economic injustice are also rendered moot. Thus, the global ranking industry fosters

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inequitable practices, as historically and socially situated agents are not in an equal position to strategically compete for the symbolic and material benefits associated with a notion of academic ‘excellence’ that is evaluated against white middle-class habitus in South Africa. The stock story about academic “excellence” functions to frame transformation in relation to “high standards”, which is tied up with the expression of anxieties about change, as Vincent (2015) explains: “The spectre of the black candidate for the top post immediately evokes the mantra of potentially compromised standards” (p. 26). Existing unequal power relations, disguised as neutral and objective values of academic experience and “excellence”, are used by players in the field to sustain their own privileged position and to reproduce the institution in their own image (Booi et al., 2017a). It is thus crucial to interrogate how the stock story about “excellence”, “academic talent” or “high standards” acts as the dominant interpretive framework of systemic institutional racism, and heteropatriarchy and a “sense making mechanism which provides a kind of substratum for the perpetuation of prejudice” (Vincent, 2015, p. 26). The structures of modern discourse, as West (2002) explains, are “at its inception produced forms of rationality, scientificity, and objectivity, as well as aesthetic and cultural ideals which require the constitution of white supremacy” (as cited in Botsis, 2015, p. 216). Put differently, as HWUs invoke the need to maintain their position as leading higher education institutions globally, and the notions of “excellence” and “quality” have emerged as discursive practices (Booi et  al., 2017a). These exclusionary practices preserve the legacy of institutionalised racial hierarchy and perpetuate social inequality because global university ranking systems obscure struggles of unequal power relations as struggles for meritocratic recognition of “academic talent” (Amsler & Bolsmann, 2012). In this sense, the structural nature of the South African higher education system continues to conflate race, class and academic ability (Botsis et al., 2013). Unequal power relations are reproduced through the naturalisation of rankings and its underlying neoliberal principles of individualised competition, market relevance, elitism, hierarchy and inequality (Amsler & Bolsmann, 2012). Rankings are thus not neutral methods for evaluating the “quality” of education, but rather “politico-­ideological technologies of valuation and hierarchisation that operate according to a principle logic of

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inclusion and exclusion” (Amsler & Bolsmann, 2012, p.  284). Global competition is thus, as Amsler and Bolsmann (2012) note, “used as a policy instrument, and ‘world-­classness’ in universities has become signifier of national productivity, power and prestige (Hazelkorn 2008)” (p. 286). A devastating crisis facing humanity is the reproduction of new forms of apartheid in which groups of people are included in and excluded from knowledge communities and society not only through enforcing explicit rules of segregation but also through implicit processes of unequal valuation (Amsler & Bolsmann, 2012). As academic excellence is reduced to quantitative assessment and statistical accountancy, the free pursuit of knowledge has been substituted by the goal of pursuing credits in which students become customers and consumers (Mbembe, 2015). As a result, Mbembe (2015) asserts that we need to decolonise systems of management that are based on business principles in which higher education is turned into a marketable product to be bought and sold by numerical standards or units.

 he Content of the Hidden Curriculum T as Symbolic Narrative Formations in the Dialectical Interplay Between Entities of Inclusion-Exclusion (i.e. No-Belonging) and Infinity Networks of Belonging to Knowledge Communities The aim of this section is twofold: first, to explore what the symbolic narrative re-formation of the principle logic of inclusion in and exclusion from knowledge communities entails through the notion of class as an organising principle by which the perceived differences of social groups come to be positioned and fixed in static racial, heteropatriarchal and (neo)liberal entities (See Fig.  7.1). Second, I will discuss whether the organising principle of networks could be used to think through what it might mean to decentre and overwrite Manichean hierarchal entities. What affordances do infinity networks entail, and what are the implications for the symbolic narrative trans-formation of belonging to knowledge communities? (See Fig. 7.1).

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C1) CHRONOTOPES as multi-dimensional symbols Spirited air C3) KNOWLEDGE Heartened lungs

C1) CHRONOTOPES as one-dimensional symbols Stale air C3) KNOWLEDGE Punctured lungs

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C2) BELONGING Regenerative breath C4) SYMBOLIC NARRATIVES Webwork heart

C2) NO-BELONGING Breathlessness

C4) SYMBOLIC NARRATIVES Shattered heart

Fig. 7.1  (Neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion and infinity networks of belonging to knowledge communities

Inclusion-Exclusion Lines of (Neo)liberal Entities as No-Belonging to Knowledge Communities Entities The word “entity” derives from late Latin “ens, ent- ‘being’ (from esse ‘be’)” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2018). Entities exist in abstract and concrete terms. In the abstract, an entity denotes the existence of an individual self, mind, spirit, “soul” or psyche. In the concrete, an entity denotes the substance of individual things. In the abstract and concrete, an entity is “something that exists separately from other things and has its own identity” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2018). Conversely, nonentities also exist in abstract and concrete terms. In the abstract, a nonentity is associated with nonexistence, a negative value, absence, nonbeing, insignificance, unborn or subordinate (McCutcheon, 2010). In the concrete, a nonentity is linked to nothingness, zero, nobody, shadow or a phantom (McCutcheon, 2010).

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Furthermore,  the notion of “identity” derives from the Latin idem which means “‘same’ [or] the state or feeling of being very similar to and able to understand [or identify with] somebody or something” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2018). “Identities” exist in abstract and concrete terms. In the abstract, “identity” refers to the qualities, characteristics or traits which make up a person’s disposition or tendency to behave in a particular way. In the concrete, “identity” denotes a person’s character which is formed through distinguishable qualities and the reiteration of particular behaviours (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2018). Personality derives from Latin persona, which means an actor’s mask or a character in a play. Character, which refers to the features of physical things, is associated with the following four terms; (1) personality (i.e. individuality, temperament, type, sort, kind, qualities), (2) integrity (i.e. reputation, standing, position, distinction), (3) role (i.e. impersonation, portrayal) and (4) written symbol (i.e. cipher, mark, figure) (McCutcheon, 2010, p. 103). If disposition is defined as the particular way something is placed or arranged, then durable, transposable dispositions could be understood as (non)entities in which human qualities, characteristics or traits are arranged and fixed according to the two dialectically oppositional terms in which one becomes the privileged or dominant term (i.e. entity) and the other its subordinated, suppressed, negative counterpart (nonentity). The character of entities and nonentities could be read through written symbols.

 xisting Patterns of Power and Privilege Are Sedimented E in Entities of Knowledge as Static Forms of Capital As mentioned, Bourdieu (1986) posits that cultural capital can exist in the “embodied state”, the “objectified state” and the “institutionalised state”. A university education, as intellectual capital, is a form of institutionalised cultural capital. If knowledge or culture is understood as a form of capital, then entities of knowledge could be viewed as static forms of capital. Bourdieu focuses on the ways in which the transmission and accumulation of cultural and social capital perpetuates social inequalities across generations. The global ranking industry locks higher education

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into a competing field in which differently positioned institutions and agents compete in a constant struggle to realise their interests (Bourdieu, 1998). Cultural and social capital are thus “disguised forms of economic capital [which is] at the root of their effects” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 24). Class is experienced at the level of the body because our patterns of consumption are embodied as dispositions (i.e. habitus) and materialise in degrees of symbolic power (i.e. forms of capital) (Bourdieu, 1986). The volume of cultural and social capital as accrued by social agents, particularly in the university field, is determined by the size of their classed networks and determines the number of available strategies to reposition themselves in the field of power (Booi et al., 2017a). Social capital derives its durable currency from networks of connections that agents have mobilised from socially instituted formations and associations such as one’s family name, class, type of school and tribe (Bourdieu, 1986). Agents utilise networks of connections as an investment strategy aimed at maintaining social relationships that can produce profits in the short or long term (Booi, 2015; Bourdieu, 1986). Social class and classed identities are reproduced through providing particular social groupings access to socio-political and economic power, while limiting access to such powers to other social groups (Fathi, 2017). Knowledge and information are distributed unequally in South Africa, and the perpetuation of this cyclical pattern of reproducing social inequality remains both gendered and highly racialized (Carnoy & Castells, 2001; Sooryamoorthy, 2015). Research evidence suggests that when such “outsiders” are given access to the network, through employment opportunities, for instance, they are expected to fit into an already existing classed social space in order to gain trust and to succeed in their careers (Booi, Vincent, & Liccardo, 2017b). Existing patterns of power and privilege in education are thus sedimented and reproduced through fossilized (Vygotsky, 1978) entities of knowledge as static forms of capital. These entities of knowledge, that have been ossified by tradition, are isolated from the reality of a changing world. As a result, it loses its ability to innovate because its theoretical foundations and symbolic language only conjurer up the past, freezing its inhabitants in another moment (Rutherford, 1990).

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 ecognition, Nonrecognition, Misrecognition R and the Performing Class-Coded Acts Being recognised as a middle-class subject based on particular norms and feeling a sense of belonging to this particular grouping is not only affected by neoliberal discourses around capitals but also depends on the performance of certain acts which are expected of professionals (Fathi, 2017). Normalisation refers to “processes of iteration and reinforcement of standards of being, and of inclusion and exclusion” (Van der Westhuizen, 2018, p. 341). The principle logic of inclusion in normative entities of knowledge requires that members know how to perform expected class-­ coded acts. Norms, as patterns of structuration, “hold the power of constituting subject positions for individuals” (Van der Westhuizen, 2018, p.  341). The continuous acts of recognition, nonrecognition and misrecognition could be viewed as tacit processes of unequal valuation which do the work of including and excluding particular social groupings from classed entities of knowledge.

 haping Institutions Through Enacting Rules, Norms, Forms S and Practices Institutions comprise a collection of enduring norms, values, practices, beliefs and rules which are not only embedded in structures of resources and meaning but are also resilient to the particularities and idiosyncratic expectations of individuals (March & Olsen, 2006). Institutions endure precisely because its participants perform the characters that are scripted to them, similar to what Joseph Roach (1996, p. 2) calls “surrogation” in which people step into the roles of those who have departed (Levine, 2015). Institutions are thus shaped by the enactment of traditional practices, rules, norms and forms which are dependent on a sense of residual or “citations borrowed from the past” and which impose order on objects, discourses and bodies (Levine, 2015, p. 63). In this way, “path dependency” refers to the ways in which an institution moves down a particular path without looking back because “the costs of reversal are very high” (Lecours, 2005, p.  9). However, we continually participate in altering

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institutional cultures and traditions through the play of “sedimentation and innovation” (Ricoeur, 1991). As Hans-Georg Gadamer notes in his book, Truth and Method (1982), “Tradition is not simply a precondition into which we come, but we produce it ourselves, inasmuch as we understand, participate in the evolution of tradition and hence further determine ourselves” (p. 261). We participate in the evolution of tradition by reimagining knowledges that have developed a symbolic language which brings traces of an imaginary culture and politics into a radically changing world.

Infinity Networks of Belonging to Knowledge Communities Networks The term network was originally used in the sixteenth century to describe objects that were interlaced like a net or web and made out of fabric and metafibres (Levine, 2015). Whereas entities of knowledge are centres of static forms of capital, networks are interconnected nodes with no centre, as John Lechte (2003) explains, “a network has no centre; it is non-­ hierarchical; it can be augmented without limit. A network totality is only ever provisional” (p. 169). A network can thus be defined as connectivity in that its exchanging sets of connections form patterns of interconnection which organise aesthetic and social experience (Levine, 2015). Smith (2019) states that the development of networks is about “building knowledge and data bases which are based on the principles of relationships and connections” (p.  158). Entities are closed systems with impermeable boundaries that block the exchange of information, while a network is an open system of interconnecting nodes which create flows of information. Manuel Castells (2000) proposes that information technology networks are the “new morphology” in that the “power of flows takes over from the flow of power” (as cited in Lechte, 2003, p. 170). Technology could thus be understood as society, that is, a single network in a globally networked society (Castells, 2000). We are entangled within multiple dynamic unfolding networks that sprawl across space and unfold over time (Mann, 1986).

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A network is theoretically capable of “infinite extensiveness” because it grows just by linking to new nodes (Levine, 2015, p. 117). Networks are thus the manifestation of spatio-temporal relations. Like a radio station, networks connect things from different places at the same time.

 hythmical Flows of Infinity Networks Within Knowable R Whole Loops and the Unfolding of Symbolic Worlds as the Dialectics of Space-Time The act of reading could be compared with the intricacies of a network (Derrida, 1992). Similar to a text, a network is not directed towards a single end but rather it involves interwoven strands that move in multiple directions (Levine, 2015). The written and visual traces of a culture could be treated as “a mutually intelligible network of signs” (Gallagher & Greenblatt, 2000, p. 13). It is through these networks of signs, which are deposited in the written and visual traces of a culture, that we come to understand ourselves. We create symbolic narratives about our-selves and others in the world through language and literature. In his book, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation, Ricoeur (1981) notes: In contrast to the tradition of the cogito and to the pretension of the subject to know itself by immediate intuition, it must be said that we understand ourselves only by the long detour of signs of humanity deposited in cultural works. What would we know of love and hate, of moral feelings, and, in general, of all that we call the self if these had not been brought to language and articulated by literature? … [W]hat must be interpreted in a text is a proposed world that I could inhabit and wherein I could project … my ownmost possibilities. (pp. 86–87)

It is through our reading of this network of signs that we come to imagine and inhabit a symbolic “proposed world” where we could project our “ownmost possibilities”. The process of interpreting these signs of humanity that are deposited in cultural works could be read as a process of what Lugones (1987) calls “world”-travel. Networks, as the folding of space-time at liminal points, open a threshold to travel and ‘lose’ oneself

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in an other’s world.2 It is at this space within infinity, an ever-changing present of dynamic and unfolding networks, where we renegotiate, reconfigure, reimagine and rewrite our-selves. It is at this space within infinity, where new relationships, meanings and practices emerge with the possibility to decentre dominant psychosocial formations. It is within these conditions of impossibilities, which create an opening to travel into, reconfigure and potentially make a “home” in each other’s worlds and hearts. Perhaps Divinity is to be found within this space of infinity where we endlessly discover something new about our-selves as another. Longing to know a place to call “home” acts as a force that turns the hermeneutical circle time and time again, thus creating unfolding networks of signs deposited in cultural works that take human understanding to greater heights. The point at which the hermeneutical circle or loop folds, each time passes at a deeper level, and so the hermeneutical project of longing for human understanding through self-knowledge reaches deeper levels and greater heights (Ricoeur, 1984). In this way, “the invisible cohesion” of “the cultural matrix” could be understood as the cooperation between networks and boundless  wholes in that cultures are networked movements that flow and circulate within the boundaries of knowable wholes (Gallagher & Greenblatt, 2000, p. 13).

 1) Chronotopes as Expressed Through C Symbols Is the Air, We Breathe Following Einstein’s theory of relativity in which events and objects exist as spatio-temporal relations, Bakhtin’s (1981) notion of a chronotope is translated from the Greek khronos (or time) and topos (or space) which means a liminal timespace. Chronotopes unfold in the dialectics of space and time. Chronotope is a spatio-temporal concrete whole that is expressed through symbols in an art form, as Bakhtin (1981) notes; “the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature [and in life] … spatial and temporal indicators are  My thanks to Nafisa Cassimjee for helping me make this connection through our conversations about wormholes. 2

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fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole” (p. 84). Chronotopes are at the heart of the threefold present in that it is a spatio-temporal concrete whole of the present of the past, the present of the future, and the present of the present. Time and space, and past and future intersect and fuse in objects, which enables an object to ‘hold’ memories and dreams of symbolic significance. Objects thus instantiate chronotopes in that: Time takes on flesh and becomes visible for human contemplation; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time and history and the enduring character of a people … Chronotopes thus stand as monuments to the community itself, as symbols of it, as forces operating to shape its members’ images of themselves. (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 7)

One can only be one’s self through its relation with communities of other selves, which builds up a social world that uses a system of symbols as a means through which to underwrite a continuous pattern of interaction, in which these selves recognise and respond to each other (Fay, 1996). Chronotopes lay the ground for a representation or modelling the world on which narrative events flesh out time in space. These narrative events emerge as conjoined twins of temporal markers with spatial features which form specific biographical, historical and social relations (Pier, 2010). If belonging is the organ of respiration (breath), then chronotopes, as expressed through symbols, is the air that we breathe. Chronotopes could be understood as “distributed through a network of relationships over time … like the air we breathe, our common spiritus … the language we share in conversation” (Crites, 1986, p. 155, emphasis in original). The “old that is dying” is the long-standing patterns of power and privilege in society which are sedimented and fossilised (Vygotsky, 1978) in static entities of knowledge and institutional practices. The “the new cannot be born” because symbolic language “only conjure[s] up the past [or the future], freezing us in another moment” of stale air (Rutherford, 1990, p. 14). Drawing on Fanon’s ideas about “a historical-racial schema” as situated “below the corporeal schema” (p. 111), Ahmed (2007) explains that histories of colonialism continue to make the world “white” in that “the body-at-home is one that can inhabit whiteness” (p. 153). Instead of privileging the vantage point of the past or the future, Ahmed (2007)

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asserts that we still need to fully describe racism as a continuous and unfinished history and how “the world of whiteness coheres as a world” (p. 165). Ahmed (2007) proposes that an approach to a phenomenology of whiteness could enable us to keep the force of the critique open: It is by showing how we are stuck, by attending to what is habitual and routine in ‘the what’ of the world, that we can keep open the possibility of habit changes, without using that possibility to displace our attention to the present, and without simply wishing for new tricks. (p. 165)

What Does the Symbolic Narrative Re-formation of the Principle Logic of Inclusion into and Exclusion from Normative Entities of Knowledge Entail? a) “I’ll stick to my kind … who you fit in with … that was dictated by the religion that you are in, your race and your culture, all of that. I think those were very set ideas” (Amirah): Identity categories as representational entities that are fixed and close-down human relationality and connection. In the excerpt below, Amirah implies that her sense of identity involves not only involve a subjective sense of herself in relation to others but also the application of socially constructed self-definitions or static characteristics. Amirah: If I had just come to varsity and was not a part of [the Oya programme], I doubt that we would have become friends just because you are in your own little world and you would never consider hanging out with certain people and all of that. You would just be like, ‘I will stick to people I know. I’ll stick to my kind’ or whatever. I think those identities come from high school, because high school was very much about identifying who you are, who you fit in with and all of that and that was dictated by the religion that you are in, your race and your culture, all of that. I think those were very set ideas. Amirah explains that the identification with subject positions that social discourses of difference, such as race, ethnicity and religion construct for us, dictates what or “who you are, who you fit in with”. She notes that these socially constructed self-definitions are “dictated by the religion that

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you are in, your race and your culture, all of that”. In other words, when “those very set ideas” construct identity categories as representational entities that are fixed and closed, it closes down human relationality and connection, as Amirah notes, “I will stick to people I know. I’ll stick to my kind”. In an interview, the Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa explains that identity categories attempt to imprison, constrain or keep one from growing (Blake & Ábrego, 1995). Therefore, Anzaldúa asserts that these social categories, which are impermanent and fluid, need to be continuously disrupted and reinvented (Blake & Ábrego, 1995). For example, by developing friendships with her peers in the Oya programme who were positioned differently to herself, Amirah was able to critically reflect on and disrupt “those identities [that] come from high school”. b) “some of my cousins they, they called me ‘white’ now, and well they’ve been calling me ‘white’ since I came to [this HWU]” (Nosakhele): Perceived racial “authenticity” and labelling the new Black middle-class as “coconuts” (Matlwa, 2007, McKinney, 2007). Nosakhele spoke about growing up in a family house with 20 family members and how her aunt insisted that her father buy his own house; however, he was waiting for Nosakhele to complete her degree before he could take out a bond. She explains that her father had already taken out a loan in order to pay for her first year at university, although she was offered a bursary by the end of her first year. Whereas all the women in this research project obtained funding from the Oya scholarship programme for the duration of their studies, Nosakhele received funding from the programme for her Honours year of study. At that point, Nosakhele started saving money from her scholarship stipend and she held several part-time jobs because she planned on buying her parents a house. When she applied for a home loan and her application was rejected, she increased her number of working hours. After a few months had passed, she reapplied for a bond and it was approved. In the excerpt below, Nosakhele spoke about her journey of buying her parents a house. Nosakhele: And then they [bank] said: ‘No, it’s ok.’ Then they approved the bond. That’s actually the highlight of my life because even when I was studying, you know, it’s not really nice to stay at a nice comfortable place at [university] res [residence]

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and you know that at home your parents are not so happy because of family issues and stuff. Ja, so they built the house for us from scratch and we even, you know chose the design and everything. My parents they, you know they were so happy, they were so grateful that, ‘wow, we didn’t think of this, we were actually waiting for you to start working so that you can help us out’ and well they weren’t saying it in a bad way that you must pay us back. So they said, ‘No, we know the way we raised you up, you won’t run away from us,’ like other people we see in my family, when they work they stay in nice townhouses and leave their parents to suffer … So literally I can say I bought my parents the house because I’m paying for the bond till now … Alright so we moved in, in March, end of March … So we moved in and our family was not so happy about that and they felt like now we think we’re better because we’re staying up in town now, you know like we had so many bad comments that, ‘Ah, we won’t come visit you.’ Oh, ja and some of my cousins they, they called me ‘white’ now, and well they’ve been calling me ‘white’ since I came to [this HWU] because I came to varsity and I was the first in my family to come to varsity. After moving into their house, Nosakhele and her parents experienced animosity from members of their extended family, as she says, “some of my cousins they, they called me ‘white’ now”. She explains that her cousins had called her ‘white’ before their family moved into their house, “they’ve been calling me ‘white’ since I came to [this HWU]”. In Lynda Spencer’s (2009, p.  66) detailed reading of Kopano Matlwa’s novel Coconut (2007), she explains that the two young Black female protagonists, similar to Nosakhele, are positioned in an in-between space where they “too black to be white” or “too white to be black”. Spencer (2009) explains that this is an in-between space of conflict and ambiguity due to the protagonists’ experiences of multiple tensions between diverse ethnic African ideals in relation to Western values of whiteness; township life in relation to the allure of city life and; a tension between the prioritisation of family and community in relation to the enchantment of self-invention.

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By calling Nosakhele “white”, her cousins are labelling her a “coconut”, which is a derogatory metaphor in which one is considered “black on the outside and white on the inside” (McKinney, 2007, p. 17). Spencer (2009) explains that the “coconut metaphor presents an inversion of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks: it is not about the politics of epidermization, but about “culture” and one’s “essential” being” (p. 68). Being the first generation to attend university (particularly a historically white English-speaking university) and buying a house “up in town” means that Nosakhele finds herself in an ambiguous in-between space in which she experiences a tension between growing up in a family house in relation to moving into her own house with her parents “up in town” as well as a tension between prioritising her extended family in relation to the possibility of self-invention by attending university. By calling Nosakhele “white” and labelling her a “coconut”, her cousins are imply that she has “become contaminated by ‘whiteness’ through too much contact with its ways” for example, through shifting class positions (Vincent, 2008, p. 1435). c) “[Labels] are a horrible weapon, its destructive, the adjectives that describe these labels can tear the person apart for life” (Kaiya): The socialisation into cultural values of whiteness via mass media. As Kaiya does not speak an African language, she befriended her white peers during her schooling which, as she believed, “created a problem because it was now was as if I was trying to be white and it wasn’t the case”. She also recalls an incident in which she was called a “white coconut” by her peers at the university residence: “I had a very big test and it meant a lot to me and I wasn’t doing so well so I had asked them [my peers] on occasion to turn it down and that’s how the fights, that’s how the fights broke loose and during the fights they said ‘you white coconut’”. She explains how being called “white” and a “coconut”, which she interprets as lacking self-worth, “wounded me to the point that it disabled a lot”. As a way to detach her sense of herself from the label ‘white’ and ‘coconut’, she argues that “one of the ways that I try and prove to people that I am, that I do have self-worth, is try to also force myself not to be part of styles of people [i.e. global Western values of whiteness]”.

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In the excerpt below, Kaiya explains how the mass media bombards South Africans with “image[s] of what is ‘beautiful’ and ‘accepted’ in society”. Kaiya: I think it is then again about self-worth, when you are now painting yourself to something that you are not that you feel society appreciates especially when it comes from media and all that media plays a great role. [The media] make you believe in the image of what is ‘beautiful’ and ‘accepted’ in society … the media, for example like a weave, eyelashes and faking certain accents and colour contacts and making yourself look like a different person. And I think one of the ways that I try and prove to people that I am, that I do have self-worth, is to try to also force myself not to be part of styles of people … [Labels] are a horrible weapon, its destructive, the adjectives that describe these labels can tear the person apart for life … you may feel at that time that it is just a sentence and you may not even realise the impact you have had on  a person’s life, the impact you have made on my life, you know. Calling people these names, it wounded me to the point that it disabled a lot, it disabled me in a big way, you look at yourself and it is always going to be the negative you. If you want to praise yourself, you will never be satisfied at your accomplishments, there’s always going to be a problem. She proposes that if people lack self-worth, they would “paint” their body in accordance with societal images of ‘beauty’ that privilege global Western values of whiteness. The cultural values of “whiteness”, as Spencer (2009) notes, “do not simply refer to race, but rather to an identity that is associated capital which is held up as aspirational” (p. 68). Kaiya refers to labels, such as “white coconut”, as a “horrible weapon” that can “wound” people’s bodies and “tear” their sense of self-worth apart. She explains that it is the “adjectives that describe these labels [which] can tear the person apart for life”. These adjectives ‘make up’ an image of what Kaiya calls “the negative you” which becomes a disabling reflection of what she sees when “you look at yourself ”. Kaiya implies that this image of “the negative you” is disabling because despite being an agentic

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subject who overcomes obstacles, “you will never be satisfied at your accomplishments, there’s always going to be a problem”. In this way, she is describing her lived experience of being socially constructed as a problem (Du Bois, 2007[1903]). Growing up, Kaiya reports that “I got ill-treated” for not speaking an African language which shaped her into the kind of person she has become: Kaiya: It was hurtful, that time, you know, you’re immature, you are still growing as a child, you don’t know how to handle it and I think that’s how I landed, ended up being the person I am today, very quiet about my problems, about my life, about everything even my successes. I don’t tend to share them with a lot of people, not even my family and it’s not to say that I don’t [trust] my family, it’s just I think the way the environment played a great role in making me as I am today. She reflects on how these childhood experiences may have also influenced her choice of career: “I think that’s the reason why I like the idea of pharmaceutics, even forensics, it’s a way of healing someone’s wound”. Similarly, in his chapter, “Does he Speak Xhosa?”, Kopano Ratele (2013) reflects on an encounter in which a shop assistant asked whether his son can speak Xhosa: In my country, a child whom society thinks of as black, but who does not have an African language as his or her mother-tongue, gets entangled in the struggles of society to reimagine itself. These subjects might create new divisions, true. But the tongues these children grow up speaking, because they look different from how they are ‘supposed to’ speak, and because they speak differently from how those who look like them speak, also alert us to historical breaks and continuities, to possibilities and inherited constraints which shape how we speak. They alert us to the forces which made us into the kinds of people we became. (p. 125)

Botsis (2015) explains that in South Africa’s history where the ideological categories of language and race are mutually constituted, language continues to function as a proxy for the expression of concerns related to race, ethnicity and culture. Similar to Fifi and Fiks, the young protagonists in Matlwa’s

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novel, Coconut (2007), Kaiya and Nosakhele find themselves positioned in an in-between space of ambiguity and perpetual contrasting ambivalence where they continually negotiate between compromised values, “suspended between two worlds, belonging nowhere” (Spencer, 2009, p. 77). What Would the Symbolic Narrative Trans-formation of Belonging to Knowledge Communities Entail? a) “I don’t even know why I do certain things because I grew up just doing it … you don’t question such things, I mean it’s religion, it’s who you are” (Amirah): The university as a place that could potentially  facilitate the “complex creativity involved in the “digestion” and “liberation” of contrasting spaces” (Harris, as cited in Peterson & Rutherford, 1995, p. 189). Although Kaiya finds herself in situations where she has to navigate contrasting spaces, the university offers her “a place that I could be free, a home”. Kaiya: And then varsity came, Sabrina, yes, I was so excited. I was, I found a place that I could be free, at home. I didn’t have the opportunity to express what was on my mind [in my household] so in comparison to my younger sister, she is quite stubborn like my mother, she doesn’t really, she will not tolerate or will take orders unless she believes in them. Unlike me, on the other hand, I guess I did everything that I was told with the intention to please. When I finally got to varsity, it was quite difficult, awkward to meet up with people that had that freedom of thought, of expression. I came from a home that was suppressed, so it was exciting, so I was in a place where I could finally be in a diverse environment and find people that got along with me. So now I was literally faced up with the world and through that, I think I got to, to learn more about myself after all, ‘birds of the same feather flock together.’ So I think that’s how I ended up really, really, learning who I am as a person, what I really want from life, not just that I want a degree but in general … finding friends that shared my values … I realised when people had problems, they came to me. I think that’s when I did realise I love people and I love to help people and it was the right path to take science even though it’s not medically related to what my mother did, I knew that I would give back in some way.

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Similarly, when Amirah’s peers questioned her religious practices, it made her re-evaluate “why I do certain things” which “strengthened my spiritual beliefs”. Amirah: Then on the spiritual side the growth happened, because of this mix, this cultural mix [at university] and this change and a lot of questions were raised about why I do certain things, why pray, why do I and I even questioned that myself. Like oh my goodness, I don’t even know why I do certain things because I grew up just doing it, it was just what I did and there was no need to question because you don’t question such things. I mean it’s religion, it’s who you are. It’s just like whatever, do it. Varsity was so different because I met different people who would not wear a scarf, who would not dress in a certain way, not do certain things which was always so weird because I wasn’t used to that … And then we would, like, ask questions about stuff and do certain things and it strengthened my spiritual beliefs because then I finally understood why I was doing what I was doing. And I think, that’s when I made the choice to, like, I know why I’m doing this and I’m happy doing it. I feel, I feel spiritual growth when I do it. It fulfils me, and I think that was really amazing, that growth. It still continues, it always… but I think, ja, it’s good to mix with other cultures, in order to understand your own, hmm, ja, so that was spiritual and social growth. Kaiya contrasts her “home that was suppressed” to the university where it was “difficult, awkward to meet up with people that had that freedom of thought, of expression”. When Amirah’s peers questioned “why I do certain things”, she realised that “I don’t even know why I do certain things because I grew up just doing it”. We could view the process of driving each other to become conscious of that which we do not see could be viewed as an act of love in the form of a mutual education. For instance, in an interview, James Baldwin (1973) stated:

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If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see. Insofar as that is true, in that effort, I become conscious of the things that I don’t see. And I will not see without you, and vice versa, you will not see without me. (p. 41)

These encounters of mutual education unsettle a person’s attachments to social categories, as Amirah notes, “you don’t question such things, I mean it’s religion, it’s who you are”. Amirah stated that as a Muslim woman, the result of these encounters meant that it “strengthened my spiritual beliefs because then I finally understood why I was doing what I was doing”. This infinite act of working through the discomfort of making our own sense of normalcy strange is how we challenge ourselves, push the boundaries of knowledge and come to a new understanding one’s self, another and the world. For example, Kaiya explains that when she was confronted “with people that had that freedom of thought … in a diverse environment” she was “literally faced up with the world and through that, I think I got to, to learn more about myself ”. The engagement with “this cultural mix” (Amirah) and deep bodies of knowledge at university provides Amirah and Kaiya with the opportunity to participate in the “complex creativity involved in the “digestion” and “liberation” of contrasting spaces” (Wilson Harris, as cited in Peterson & Rutherford, 1995, p. 189) which could potentially shift the entrenched ways in which the categories of race, gender and class exist as axes of power in society. Higher institutions of learning should enable students entering existing traditions of knowledge to challenge these traditions by creating new ways of doing things and forging new trajectories or paths of knowledge (Liccardo & Bradbury, 2017). b) “[The Oya programme] it’s like your mom who raised you and stuff and now she is like, ‘Okay child, go out, go do your thing’” (Amirah): A “homeplace” as a safe place to heal the wounds inflicted on Black people by the culture of white supremacy (hooks, 2015). Having attended an Islamic school from Grade R until Grade 9, Amirah explains how her “social experience” started when she was exposed to a “mix of people” at university.

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Amirah: So, from the very beginning, I think high school and all of that, that’s not, it’s not, hmm, okay shame, it is important and I think, it started the definition of who I am, that started my process of understanding who I am, what I want in life and all of that. But not as much as the first year of varsity of course, that’s when it really started, I don’t know, I think that’s when maturity actually hit and things became more clear, more obvious and all of that stuff. In every sense, like spiritually, academically, socially. But just like holistic growth, I think that really happened first year that’s [Oya programme], that’s when [Oya] first started. For me, [Oya] oh wow, I think a lot of the changes that I see, when I look back and I’m like, ‘how did I change?’ ‘how did I grow as a person?’ a lot of it is owed to [Oya] and maybe because firstly, hmm, [Oya] started my social experience because that’s when I met the people who eventually I consider them my sisters. So that’s when everything started because I am, I met these girls and weirdly enough as different as we were, we were so similar and I think that really, that resonates so much because I could relate to people that I would never … I came to varsity and [Oya] and it’s just this whole new cultural change, this mix of people, it was so exciting, it was so different, it was so new. I met all these friends, and they became now my best friends. So from the social side, [the Oya programme] was very major, it had a very major role … like the group of girls, the close friends. When the Oya programme came to an end, Amirah and her peers reflected on what the programme had meant to them. Amirah: I think really at the end of it we sat, when I was sitting with Ethwasa, Khanyisile and Naila we were reflecting on the end of [the Oya programme], it was like what this means to us, it’s crazy, it’s like your mom who raised you and stuff and now she is like, ‘Okay child, go out, go do your thing’. It’s like, ‘no, we’re not ready, not ready’. It was exciting also because now that we are out of this supportive role of [Oya], how will we survive? Will we make it? Won’t we? It was very scary and daunting.

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Amirah’s sense of belonging was created through affective bonds with, as she says, “people who eventually I consider them my sisters”. The formation of these affective bonds created a “safe” space at the university that stabilised her sense of self. The Oya programme became symbolic of what bell hooks (2015) calls a homeplace or a site of resistance due to the supportive role it played in their lives, as Amirah states, “it’s like your mom who raised you and stuff and now she is like, ‘Okay child, go out, go do your thing’”. hooks (2015) explains that a homeplace, most often made by Black women, is a safe place for healing the wounds inflicted on Black people by the culture of white supremacy. hooks (2015) writes that, “it was there on the inside, in that “homeplace,” … that we had the opportunity to grow and develop, to nurture our spirits” (p. 42).

 2) Belonging as Our Breath: Chronotopes C as the Symbolic Narrative Body of Knowledge This section will focus on the second analytic level of belonging, that is, “identifications and emotional attachments” to social locations (Yuval-­ Davis, 2006, p. 199). To answer the question, Where do I belong? is to use abstract language to make meaning of our ideological and discursive positions and express a  sense of belonging. Belonging is an emotional attachment or feeling a sense of being at “home” in the world. It is affected by how social locations are valued and judged and is paradoxically activated through experiences of exclusion (Anthias, 2006; Yuval-Davis, 2006). Identities or the practice of identification and emotional attachments to various collectivities and groupings move through the dialectic processes of being and becoming, becoming and belonging, “belonging and longing to belong” (Yuval-Davis, 2006, p. 202). Belonging is being in a state of longing or having “a strong feeling of wanting something” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2018). The word “long” derives from the Old English “langian” or the Dutch and German “langen”, which implies to “dwell in thought, yearn”, “reach, extend” and “grow long, prolong” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2018). In this way, the word “long” is related to both space and time in that long means to cover a distance, space or period of time. Belonging unfolds in the dialectics of being in space and becoming with time.

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Belonging, as unfolding timespaces of place-making, is animated by an affective dimension of longing to feel connected to a sense of ‘home’. George (1999) describes the duality of “home” as centred on the threshold between interior and exterior: ‘Being home’ (sic) refers to the place where one lives within familiar, safe, protected boundaries; ‘not being home’ is [a] matter of realising that home was an illusion of coherence and safety based on the exclusion of specific histories of oppression and resistance, the repression of differences even within oneself. (As cited in Thaver, 2006, p. 19)

The inclusion-exclusion logic (i.e. no-belonging) as our breathlessness is reproduced through the separation of space and time into meaningless entities. As a storyline “takes on flesh”, Bakhtin (1981) implies that the way in which a narrative positions bodies within a space is linked to the way in which it imagines space and time (Punday, 2003). The chronotope shows how events take place in particular spaces through notions of time. The description of spatio-temporal positions in the process of giving narrative flesh is important to the body. As Punday (2003) explains, “bodies demand that space and time be made meaningful, since in that time/space, that chronotope, characters will choose, act, and anticipate consequences” (p. 94). For space and time to be made meaningful, it is important to imagine how individual bodies resist the overarching plot, semantic patterns and narrative inevitability (Punday, 2003). In unpacking the notion of a chronotope, Bakhtin begins with early Greek novels in which he observes that time and space is meaningless because nothing seems to change between the starting and ending points of the narrative. He provides an example of how the hero and heroine in early Greek novels are not subject to doubt, but rather their love remains unchanged from the starting to ending points of the novel. These narratives do not “flesh out” the passing of time in space or describe the characters’ psychological growth; instead, Bakhtin argues that there is “an extratemporal hiatus [or ‘adventure time’] that appears between two moments of a real time sequence” (as cited in Punday, 2003, p.  95). Put differently, this kind of adventure novel “is one of random contingency, which is to say, chance simultaneity and chance rupture, that

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is, a logic of random disjunctions in time as well” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 92, emphasis in original). These narratives construct space and time as meaningless because it contains and encloses the individual body (as entities) in an inevitable narrative trajectory or an overarching plot in which things remain unchanged. Bakhtin (1981) explains that living artistic perception conceives of time and space not as separate entities but as inseparable from one another. In literature and art itself, temporal and spatial determinations are inseparable from one another, and always coloured by emotions and values. Abstract thought can, of course, think time and space as separate entities and conceive them as things apart from the emotions and values that attach them. But living artistic perception (which also of course involved thought, but not abstract thought) makes not such divisions and permits no such segmentation. It seizes on the chronotope in all its wholeness and fullness. (p. 243, emphasis in original)

Belonging as our breath is transformed through the connection of space and time as meaningful networks. As mentioned, the development of a plot as the primary narrative structural device of meaning-making will depend on an understanding of the “body as narratively unruly” (Punday, 2003, p.  94). The “body as narratively unruly” could be expressed through the notion of narrative identity which Ricoeur (1988) describes as the identity of the “who”; “To answer the question ‘Who?’ … is to tell the story of a life” (p. 246). In this sense, the focus shifts from the individual body as disciplined by entities of knowledge, to reimagining the narratively ‘unruly’ or undisciplined body as a node in networks of knowledges. Bakhtin (1981) moves from discussing the adventure novel to the development of biographical time in Apuleius’s The Golden Ass in which time and space are made meaningful by the movement between plot and resistance which creates a sense of change (Punday, 2003). This crisis-based plot is made up of the temporal development of the character (e.g. Lucius in The Golden Ass) through critical moments of his life in which the transformation of his character is revealed through his metamorphosis (Punday, 2003). Bakhtin (1981) writes:

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Metamorphosis serves as the basis for a method of portraying the whole of an individual’s life in its more important moments of crisis: for showing how an individual becomes other than what he was. We are offered various sharply differing images of one and the same individual, images that are united in him as various epochs and stages in the course of a life. (p. 115, emphasis in original)

A plot based on metamorphosis, however, is not only a personal evolution but also a collective one. Bakhtin (1981) notes “There is no evolution in the strict sense of the word; what we get, rather, is crisis and rebirth” (p. 115). The crisis-based plot emerges through an understanding of the development of a narrative body that resists the overarching plot. Lucius undergoes “a ceremony of ‘voluntary death’ and rebirth” during which he develops an understanding that enables him to “achieve the spiritual purification that characterizes him at the end of the novel” (Punday, 2003, p. 97). For Bakhtin, the ability to “flesh out” unfolding events which are connected to the character’s lives makes the places of the narrative more significant and concrete (Punday, 2003). Coherence is provided by the body not only in individual bodies but also in symbolic bodies, such as the material-discursive body of social structure, the storied body of cultural memory and the symbolic narrative body of knowledge. Bakhtin assumes that a whole unity exists in everyday human interactions. What obstructs the continuity between parts of a whole human community is an abstract schema of social hierarchies which are mechanically imposed on that unity (Punday, 2003). Bakhtin writes: Amid the good things of this here-and-now world are also to be found false connections that distort the authentic nature of things, false associations established and reinforced by tradition and sanction by religious and official ideology. Objects and ideas are united by false hierarchical relationships, inimical to their nature; they are sundered and separated from one another by various other-worldly and idealistic strata that do not permit these objects to touch each other in their living corporeality. (as cited in Punday, 2003, p. 98)

Belonging is our breath because we inhale and exhale chronotopes (symbols) which connect us like air. Belonging is the organ of respiration (breath) and chronotopes (symbols) is the air we breathe.

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What Symbolic  Narrative Reality Does the Re-formation of the Principle Logic of Inclusion Into and Exclusion from Normative Entities of Knowledge Create? How is the principle logic of inclusion into and exclusion from normative entities of knowledge produced and what does this form of excluding knowing-that do? a) “I realised that [education is important] because they were starting to give us, to give out rewards, awards. So, if you do well, you are recognised” (Ambani): Inclusion as “schooling” students through the reward of formal recognition to confuse the value of education with grade advancement and academic “excellence”. Ambani realised that “perhaps education is important” when her high school rewarded learners for their good performance in the form of awards. Ambani: So in Grade 7 when I actually started realising that, okay perhaps education is important, it isn’t just about going to school and making friends and coming back because I actually had to learn something in Standard 5 [Grade 7] and then I realised that [education is important] because they were starting to give us, to give out rewards, awards. So, if you do well, you are recognised and things. So I started to take school seriously because I knew that there was a reward at the end and then before then it was just about is going to school, it didn’t really matter much, it was just to go there and make friends, just to make sure that you would move to the next grade the following year. Takalani recalls the first time she was one of the top ten performers in her primary school: Takalani: I was like position 8 out of 200 and I was like ‘wow’ and I went home, and my mom was so happy, and she was like, ‘you see I told you you’re going to do well’. So, I did it I was in the top 10 and I was like ah, maybe that’s where it started like you know. I was like, ‘what?’ I was like, I’m not even expecting that, okay, I worked hard for my test, but the thing is at primary school, I would never study, I would just come

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home and sleep. So I think I worked hard and my mom was trying to help me so I did very well and from there, I just had to maintain the standard to be in the top 10 and then I met people who were in the top 10 as well and I started befriending them and that’s where it all started so every time from position 8, I went to 5 from 5, I went to 3 and I was in position 3 for the rest of the years in that school until Grade 12 where I got the sponsor [the Oya scholarship]. After Takalani’s matriculation examination, she was recognised as being one of the top 20 academic performers in her province. Naledi also realised that she was an academic achiever when she was awarded for being in the top three of academic performers in her school. She states: “I only knew that I was a good performer when, when I was in Grade 3 because then they had awards for the top three and then I was one of them. That’s when I started thinking that you know, it then clicked”. Mamoratwa recalls the time when she realised that she was not the top achiever in her grade. Mamoratwa:

That’s where … the drama just started and everything just at high school … I remember the first term, that was my first time having not been the best learner in my entire life, it was a shock. … It was a disappointment to me, and you know my father as well. I’ve been just the cream of my class since Grade 1 and then, but then after that I picked up again, I was best learner of that school, the entire village, the entire region from Grade 8 up until I left high school.

Mamoratwa implies that her motivation to be the top academic achiever was influenced not only by external competitive rewards of recognition but also by her parents’ high expectations. Mamoratwa: There’s not much to talk about my academic life, except I just had to be the best in everything in all my subjects, in everything and then, it was a bit hard sometimes. I remember in Grade 11, my final year mark, I got a 90% average and my mother looked at my report and she was

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just like, ‘is that the best you can do’? And then I was like ‘what’? Knowing that and it was so hard because for my sister they [parents] would beg her just to, just to go get 50%, then they would buy her a phone or something just so that she can pass and then I would get 80% and then that wasn’t enough. I had to get beyond that, and that was just, I felt it was ridiculous. Mamoratwa expresses her disappointment and frustration for not producing marks that were good enough to meet her mother’s expectations. It is noteworthy that Mamoratwa, Ambani, Odirile, Takalani, Kgnaya and Amirah’s parents are teachers and/or school principals who held particularly high expectations for their daughters. When Nosakhele was nominated for a provincial award in science during her Honour’s degree, she recalls how her peers posed a message on Facebook which read; ‘Please don’t forget about us when you’re … popular in science’”. Nosakhele: Somehow, I think this project [honours research project], honestly, it’s one day, it’s going to make me popular in science. Ja because already through this project this year I was nominated for [a provincial award] and you know when I was doing it last year, at the beginning I was like: ‘Agh what am I doing here playing around with [this organism]?’ Ja but then you know the opportunities that came with this project are bigger than anything else I could have done, I think. Well even if I didn’t win, I was still honoured that you know, I’m at the embassy … I think science for me has a different meaning, it’s not about, you know working and making money, but I think there is a reward in everything somehow indirectly so, like even I think it was yesterday on, on my Facebook, one of my friends, she just wrote something like, she wrote me a message out of nowhere on my wall and she said to me ‘ah, ah we can, well the work that you are doing, we can see that and don’t think that we can’t see and like you will be blessed more than I don’t know, like she was just saying, ‘don’t think that we don’t acknowledge much.’ So ja

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people are aware, she said that we are aware and you know she said, she even said to me, you know, ‘Please don’t forget about us when you’re [laughing]’ Sabrina: popular Nosakhele: popular in science’. The women’s proficient performance in science was recognised as credible by communities of practices when they were consistently in the top 5% of academic performers in their grades. Their outstanding performance was also recognised by their schools and the Department of Education, who offered them multiple academic awards in their Matriculation examinations. Through the conferment of competitive academic awards, the women in this research project were able to position themselves and were positioned by other members within a community of practice as scientists in the making. In addition, the women were recognised (and branded) as being academically talented when they were chosen for a prestigious Oya scholarship programme which gave them access to institutionalised capital. The recognition of shared characteristics with other individuals who have risen to the top of a hierarchy of honour in a merit-based culture provided a sense of inclusion into an exclusive group of academically talented achievers. b) “I defined myself as being someone who knows. I’m knowledgeable” (Takalani): Inclusion as “schooling” students to confuse academic “excellence” with their sense of self-worth. The formal reward of recognition that the women received for their academic performance defined who they believed themselves to be. They felt a sense of inclusion into normative entities of knowledge when they self-identified with being branded ‘academically talented’. For example, Takalani’s identification with being branded as ‘academically talented’ is evident in her statement, “I defined myself as being someone who knows. I’m knowledgeable. I am a genius”. Similarly, Itumeleng mentions that academic work is not simply ‘what I do’ but also ‘who I am’. Itumeleng: That [receiving an academic award] is where I felt I was smart. It showed me, or it made me into who I am.

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The reward of recognition became Ambani’s driving force to work hard. Ambani: And the whole thing about you study hard to, you were recognised, that is what was driving me, that motivated, that motivated me, that knowing that there would be a reward at the end in the form of recognition … [Grade 7 is] when I actually started realising that, okay, perhaps education is important. Whereas the reward of recognition drove Ambani to work hard, Mamoratwa couldn’t obtain less than a 90% average because she felt that her mother would then perceive her to be weak. Mamoratwa: And it was, it was just so hard and I just, sometimes it’s not so fair that I would work so hard and still not get recognised [by my mother] and you couldn’t, I couldn’t perform less now, performing less now, it was though I’m weak, it was hard. In accordance to Julian Rotter’s (1975) external control of reinforcement, the women’s drive to excel was contingent on the reward of recognition and their parents’ high expectations. It is very important that these young women are recognised for their hard-earned academic achievements and being in the top 5% of academic performers in their grades. It is equally important to question what this form of recognition is doing. For example, Ambani’s imagination is “schooled” to conflate the value of education with receiving awards, as she recalls “okay, perhaps education is important … because they were starting to give us, to give out rewards”. What this reward of recognition is doing is ‘schooling’ students to confuse studying with learning, academic marks with competence, academic awards with the ability to innovate, grade enhancement with the value of education and academic ‘excellence’ with their sense of self-worth. For example, Mamoratwa believes that if she were to perform less than obtaining a 90% average, “it was though I’m weak”. c) “I don’t think overthinking is a problem. I don’t think you fail a person for overthinking” (Alala): Exclusion as the mystery of failing for “overthinking” which implies the mastery of the lecturer who is typically a white mister and missus (Ahrentzen & Anthony, 1993)

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In the excerpt below, Alala believes that her lecturers failed to make explicit the implicit rules of enquiry and the construction of knowledge in her discipline. Sabrina: Did they [lecturers] say to you, ‘this is what went wrong’? Alala: Do you know what they kept saying Sabrina, ‘you’re just, you are just not there yet’ … And I would ask them, I remember one thing in my last crit, it was a roof project for construction, and ‘I had, I had over designed it or over thought it’, that’s what he said. I mean there was a simple solution, but I couldn’t find one, so I worked on it. I worked on the detail and I tried to figure out different ways to make sure that the water doesn’t go into the building, it worked, it was expensive I understand, but it worked Sabrina and he said to me ‘I had over designed it and that’s why I would fail’. I mean if I’m over designing then doesn’t that mean that I’m thinking about this and that I’m trying, and I actually got a solution. Even though it wasn’t an ideal one—it wasn’t ideal, it would have been expensive— but then I had tried, you know. I don’t think overthinking is a problem. I don’t think you fail a person for overthinking. In this case, Alala is treated as a passive recipient of knowledge consumption instead of an active agent who is trying to learn how to solve problems and construct knowledge. Ahrentzen and Anthony (1993) propose the “Mister Mastery Mystery Phenomenon” within the architectural studio in which lecturers seldom assist students to recognise the ideas and theories which underpin design decisions. The Mister Mastery Mystery Phenomenon demonstrates that instead of making explicit their implicit rules of enquiry, Alala’s lecturers kept their practices a mystery by saying, “you are just not there yet”. As a result, Alala is led to believe that this mystery implies the mastery of the lecturer, who is typically a white mister (and missus) in STEM disciplines. Ahrentzen and Anthony (1993) have noted that the patriarchal master apprentice model is often reinforced in the design studio which creates a sense of self enclosure within the discipline. These white misters (and missus) or “men as masters of the discipline” who are inculcated and encultured into the discipline may

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occupy positions of influence in the university field without much critical reflection on their academic practice and thus fail to inculcate students into the discipline of knowledge. d) “they must give the scholarship to somebody else who is more deserving because I am just a failure” (Welile): Exclusion as the evaluation of academic ‘excellence’ against white middle-class habitus and the traumatic effects of academic failure on one’s sense of self-worth. Welile’s sense of academic exclusion is powerfully expressed in her statement, “I am just a failure”. Welile: It was the whole [academic] exclusion part. I never ever thought I would ever get excluded, ever, ever, not even in my life did I think that is something that would happen to me. So, when I was excluded and then I made a decision, an arrogant decision, you know, to leave [the university] and just go do something else. I think that I also felt that I disappointed my sponsors, you know, never mind my family. I just felt that I disappointed the people that had invested in me. So, I am failing, and you know that’s, I just remember that I just cried all the time [crying]. I told [the project manager] that I didn’t want to come back, that they must give the scholarship to somebody else who is more deserving because I am just a failure, and [the project manager] being the person that she is, she was like, ‘no, you’re not a failure, you are going to ask to be brought back to the university’ … I told myself I am not going to do that [apply for readmission] because I didn’t want to bring myself down to that level, you know. The formal recognition that Welile received for her academic performance over the years defined her sense of self-worth. For the reward of recognition to be reinforcing, it is essential that not everyone is recognised as ‘academically talented’. Obtaining scores that were the top 5% of her grades and receiving the Oya scholarship meant that she was recognised as a legitimate member of an academic community. In a merit-­ based culture, the women in this research project were able to live up to being recognised as ‘academically talented’ by outperforming their peers

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and rising to the top of a ‘hierarchy of honour’. Taylor (1994) notes that as people are in competition with one another in a system of hierarchical honor, “one person’s glory must be another’s shame, or at least obscurity” (p. 54). Welile’s experience of academic failure and exclusion was emotionally devastating because she stated that it “brought myself down to that level” where she felt excluded from the top achievers who are recognised as legitimate members of an academic community. The effects of academic failure and exclusion made the women feel like “I don’t know-­ how”, “I don’t know-why” and “I don’t know-that” or as Odirile had previously noted, “inferior … like you’re not supposed to be there, or you’re not worth you being there”. Alala expressed concerns about the lack of control she had over her academic results despite “putting all your heart into the work”. Alala: First year was really difficult. First year was awful because you come from a place [primary and secondary school] where you worked hard, or you listened in class and you produced the work and you got the results. So, it was simple. And now you come [to this university] and you work hard, you don’t sleep, you put in all your work and you put your heart into the work, and it comes back with these results and then you are like, ‘but why?’ From an early age, the education system has socialised the women in this research project into an ideology of individualism and meritocracy, which is the linchpin of capitalist democracies (Stevens & Lockhat, 1997). The women developed an “academic habitus” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) by internalising the standards of meritocratic “excellence” in the form of being recognised as “academically talented”. As a result, they were led to believe that their advancement in science solely depends on their academic ability and hard work, and that the ideological categories of race, gender and class which are constitutive of subject positions would not interfere in their pursuit of a STEM degree. Consequently, their experiences of academic failure at university created feelings of shock, disbelief, embarrassment, confusion, loneliness, devastation and defeat because being an ‘academically talented’ student became part of who they understood themselves to be rather than something that they did.

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The structural nature of the South African higher education system continues to conflate race, class and academic ability (Botsis et  al., 2013). Naidoo (2004) has noted that, in South Africa, academic excellence is evaluated against Eurocentric standards and the “intrinsic” dispositions of those “typical” students from the white schooling system. Academic success is often put down to individual effort, based on a system of meritocracy, with social power axes being disregarded, leading to a discourse of exceptionalism for young, Black women to succeed in STEM disciplines. What Symbolic  Narrative Reality Would the Trans-formation of Belonging to Knowledge Communities Create? How is belonging (as a state of being) to networks of symbolic knowledge produced and what does the valuing of this knowing-that do? a) “[Awards] is what made me … that shadow that I walked with … I had to go back and redefine myself, as who you are. I always liked to create” (Alala): Disconnecting one’s sense of self-worth from the reproduction of sameness (Essed & Goldberg, 2002) and reconnecting with the uniqueness of the narratable self (Cavarero, 2014). Alala reflects on how formal recognition defined her sense of self as an academic achiever. Alala: Like I had gotten a lot of awards and a lot of achievements and a lot of certificates of merit but now when I look back, they made me at that time, they were important, but right now they are not, but they kept me going”. She explains that if our interview conversation had taken place before her experience of academic failure, she would have started her story with the reward of recognition instead of “where my drive came from”. Alala:

I don’t know I guess, for me, I mean if you would have done this interview maybe five years ago, I wouldn’t have started this story at this point, I would have probably started it at that point in Grade 7 when I got all those awards, all those trophies, those medals, for me this is what made me, this is what encouraged me to do arts and, and that’s, I mean, that led me

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through, that shadow, that shadow that I walked with, and I would have said all those prizes and all those medals, but they didn’t make me who I am and in high school after I decided no, they are not going to define me. I had to go back and redefine myself, as who you are. I always liked to create, I always created little things for myself … it captured the reason I started, because it captured me at home and me at school because that’s where I learnt to do the things, to get interested. I mean what I did with the bees is terrible, but I made a radio, and then I put them inside, and they sang [laughing]. So, it was just creating, it was it was horrible, but it was creating stuff for myself Sabrina: oh, the poor bees Alala: but I got stung a lot, so it’s fair [laughing]. The reward of recognition, as Alala stated, “is what made me”. The “me” that Alala is referring to could be “that shadow that I walked with”. Formal recognition was materialised through awards and certificates of merit which Alala describes as “that shadow that I walked with”. But like a shadow, that which was being rewarded is illusive and unobtainable. That which was being rewarded is the reproduction of sameness (Essed & Goldberg, 2002, p.  1067) according to standards of academic “excellence” that is evaluated against Eurocentric norms and white middle-class habitus in South Africa. In response, Alala made the decision that “they are not going to define me. I had to go back and redefine myself, as who you are, I always liked to create”. She ultimately reconnected with the uniqueness of the narratable self (Cavarero, 2014) by redefining herself as that “girl with a story as well”. Alala reflects on the process of disconnecting her sense of self from a system of meritocracy in which people disingenuously “pat me on the back saying, ‘well done, you got 80% for that test’”. Alala:

They [lecturers] didn’t like it [the group assignment]. Oh no, he said that it was amazing, he critiqued us but then later on he gave us a really like, not a nice mark.

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Sabrina: I remember you once told me that you can’t judge or define yourself by your marks otherwise you will lose yourself. Alala: Ja and like for me, that’s what started to happen in high school because you know, you know when you grow up, your parents are always like, you know this whole competition like, you have to do better than so and so at school. You have to be number one. And I was, I was in it and then in high school, I was like, no man, I’m going to do stuff for myself because I can’t let this define me, what if, what if I lose it all and I did, oh my gosh, that was the premonition because I always thought to myself, fine you getting in the top 10, and you’re getting A’s but what if I, what am I, I asked myself this question, I remember journaling about it, I was like, who am I without the marks and without people patting me on the back saying ‘well done, you got 80% for that test’. I was like, I am this person, and I defined that person, and that person has got me through, has got me through when I came to varsity and all I had was 45% and 49%. That was weird, that was really weird, I never really thought about it. Alala explains that she was able to disconnect her sense of self from the formal reward of recognition through a reflective process of journaling and questioning, “who am I without the marks”. The “who” she defined herself to be gave her the energy to persevere, it “got me through when I came to varsity and all I had was 45% and 49%” as she stated. b) “my supportive teachers at school, they pushed me and encouraged me … then I fell in love with genetics” (Nosakhele): Developing a passion for learning through teacher’s encouragement and support Alala reflects on the meaning she attached to a certificate that her art teacher had made for her during a time when she was not invited to a prize-giving evening. Alala: I’ll start with what, what, what, what started me off as, what started to inspire me, where my drive came from when I was, I was young but ja, so sort of where I drive came from. So, I went to Robin’s primary school and I remember in Grade 3 there was,

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there was this, this prize-­giving and, and I wasn’t a part of it. I hadn’t got any prizes for anything at the formal, uhm, at the formal prize-­giving. But then my art my teacher, Ms. Katz, she did this little, did a little certificate for us, and the one she did for me was one with art, it was handwritten and had painted it herself, and it was for the best practical work or art or something, or, I don’t remember something along the lines of art. And for me, that, that is where my, my sense of believing in myself in terms of creativity started and but then there was also something else, that, that drove me to be academic and to work hard. My mom was like to me, ‘ah but why?’As she looked at that, at that thing, at that certificate, and she was like, ‘but why didn’t you get the formal one?’ and I was like, I was devastated. I was in Grade 3 and I thought to myself, ‘why didn’t I get one of those [formal] things’ … So at the beginning, that is what drove me, that is what drove me, and I have always worked hard, and just try to do the best so that my mother can be proud of me, so that she can no longer, so that she doesn’t ask me, ‘why didn’t you’, why, so so, that was the beginning. That was the drive. The time and effort that her art teacher spent making a certificate to recognise and show appreciation for Alala’s creativity was significant because “that is where my, my sense of believing in myself in terms of creativity started,” as Alala noted. Alala realised the value that society places on formal recognition when her mother asked her “‘but why didn’t you get the formal one?’” As a result, Alala believes that this is what “drove me to be academic and to work hard” not so that she could be formally recognised by her school but rather “so that my mother can be proud of me”. Alala also spoke of another supportive teacher, Ms Harriet, who was “sort of like a second parent” because her personalised letters gave Alala the inspiration to ‘keep going’. Alala:

There was this amazing old lady, Ms Harriet, and she, she always had something inspirational to say, she always, I remember every end of the year after she got our reports, she

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would send letters, very personal letters and we would send, we would send her letters as to how we were doing, what we enjoyed, what we liked, and how things were going and, and that, that kept me going. Every time I had something, when I wasn’t feeling okay or when I was struggling with something, with a subject, I’d go to her and she always told me that, she always said to me, ‘you know there’s so much diseases and germs and you worry too much, you should be worrying, like the things you worry about [laughing] are highly unlikely to happen’, and she’s like, ‘you worry too much, you’re too anxious’ … And she kept me going through high school, sort of like a second parent that I had, like that was a huge support system for me. Similarly, as Nosakhele’s teachers encouraged her to explore topics of interest, it led to an emotional investment in the form of “going to the library, reading more about genetics”, developing her competence in the “basic stuff” or knowledge-that and a passion for biology. Nosakhele: High School, that’s when I realised that I have a passion for biological studies and because of my supportive teachers at school, they pushed me and encouraged me to perhaps consider studying what makes me happy, right and then I remember talking to my biology teacher in Grade 10, he said to me, ‘now it’s time that you identify chapters which you really like’, right. And then I fell in love with genetics, I fell in love with genetics. And then that’s when I actually started now, going to the library, reading more about genetics, just the basic stuff on genetics and then even when I got to Grade 12, I still knew that I wanted to do genetics, but I wasn’t sure about job opportunities which one can be exposed to when they study genetics. Khanyisile also mentions how her teachers encouraged her to pursue and develop her love for mathematics.

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Khanyisile: My love for science it was more the love for mathematics, from I think around Grade 10 by then I developed just a liking for maths as a subject and, and I started excelling in maths from Grade 10, and it was just my thing, ja, it’s just, it’s just something I love doing, something I was very good at and I think the teachers also realised how good I was at maths and so they tried to influence me to concentrate on it and to develop it even further and that was one of the reasons I chose to study a BSc because that’s what I love most, mathematics”. Most of the women spoke about the encouragement they had received from their primary and high school teachers. Only Takalani, Amirah, Odirile and Kaiya mentioned the positive role their lectures played during their university studies. For example, Takalani was confident that her lecturers were preparing her to become an aeronautical engineer. Takalani:

The thing is we learn a lot, we learn a lot like, I think our school is like the best. The lecturers here they like, they make sure you learn everything and sometimes you complain, ‘ah it’s hard, why did he give us something so hard’ but looking at it now it’s like it was worth it because I remember when I was doing my vac [vacation work] last year and the aviation [firm], they were like amazed at the things I would do, like [they would say] ‘what, you know this?’ and I’m like, ‘yeah we did this in class’.

After her father passed away, Amirah also commented on how her supervisor pushed her to finish her Honour’s degree. Amirah: The good thing about that is she [my supervisor] got me to finish what I was doing because my motivation levels were down. It was completely on the ground. If it wasn’t for her telling me to just get it done, get it over with, you will pass at the end of the year and you’ll be done with your honours … I think the patience that honours forced me, it didn’t teach me it forced me, was good though. I feel like it broke me, but it healed me at the same time.

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Odirile also spoke fondly of two lecturers, Ntombi who became her mentor and another lecturer who introduced her to Critical Race Theory and Black Feminism. c) “the ability to communicate and express to others, you can only do that when you understand something” (Kaiya): Communities of learning and the academic practice of understanding as “distantiation, appropriation, research and articulation” (Slonimsky & Shalem, 2006). In the following exchange, Kaiya also developed a passion for biology and chemistry because of her teachers and lecturers. Kaiya:

I love biology. I had a very passionate biology teacher, Ms. Boswell, she loved teaching and she would always go beyond just like the scope, you know, the subjects for the year, sure, she’d talk about random things and funny enough these random things, that’s like in my mind that you just remember … she really wanted you to enjoy the subject and when studying, I was not cramming unlike other subjects, like I would cram. Biology became that subject where I learned to just understand and once I understood, I was comfortable to write my exam … I always used to watch ‘Medical Detectives’ at school, the idea of solving problems and all that was intriguing to me. So that link to the biology part and the chemistry part, you know, the pharmaceutics forensic analyst, that’s kind of all, it ended up falling into place as I learned more, as I learned more, as I understood more, as I was exposed to more, as I was given the opportunity to be given mentors and not just the mentors from the scholarship, but the teachers, the lecture rooms and so forth … when I did chemistry, biochemistry there aren’t a lot of other people who knew biochemistry and that fascinated me so when another person asks about biochemistry, it’s a good feeling. Sabrina: I remember you always used to say how much you loved biochemistry. Kaiya: I didn’t excel as much as everyone in the class, you know with straight A’s and everything, but it was, it was, it kept me fascinated Sabrina. I struggled, I did struggle in comparison to

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others, certain concepts were very complex, very hard to understand because, but I was still interested and intrigued. I would do whatever I could to urge to learn … my honours marks is very high in comparison to all the others, so I’ve also noticed I am quite the practical learner so the theory that I learnt over the three years, I managed to apply it and make use of that knowledge that I had. Sabrina: So that’s the difference between studying and learning Kaiya: So, I realise that I’m more the learning type of person, more hands-on, that’s why I tried to survive by cramming stuff and that bio was my trigger to, you know, have an understanding of things rather than just cramming. So I would cram and then forget [laughing]. So if you ever came to me and asked me and I would be like, ‘I do not know’ … unfortunately in the science fields, you can’t forget, that is why I had to have a quality of learning to understand my work and having the ability to communicate and express to others, you can only do that when you understand something Sabrina, and I think that’s where I ended up starting. And honours year for me was the most intense year, it was the most challenging year, you need to apply the work that you learn from the three years … I was supervised by someone that was very strict, that had high expectations of whoever was doing a project in his lab. There are days that you cry, there are days that you can’t wake up in the morning so that you don’t love what you do, it questions your ability to complete the present project on time and I pulled through. It made me realise that this is definitely for me. And it’s, it’s a realm where a lot of people would learn, that there is an opportunity to work in teams, and you shared and learn a lot from others. I was very lucky to be in a lab where the lecturers, the supervisors, I had were very willing to teach me, to make me understand things in perspective such that I could implement it  into my work. I think it’s very important, I think that’s what made the experience even more significant to me than all the others. I think that’s why I was so eager to do my masters and push to a PhD. One day, it is

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still, it’s no longer a dream, it’s a plan, it’s a plan in action. I think I need to be very realistic, to focus and with patience, I think it will all play out in the end. When Kaiya studied a subject in preparation for an assessment within a short period time, she would “then forget and if you ever came to me and asked me and I would be like, ‘I do not know’”, as she stated. Kaiya mentions that although she did not excel in biochemistry, “it kept me fascinated”. Her fascination for the subject was not informed by getting “straight A’s” but rather “the idea of solving problems and all that was intriguing to me”. Kaiya mentions that her passion for the subject is what gave her the energy to persevere, as she explains, “there are days that you can’t wake up … it questions your ability to complete the present project on time”. Drawing on Ricoeur’s (1981) notions of distantiation and appropriation, Slonimsky and Shalem (2006) explain that distantiation and appropriation are mutually constitutive because agents would need to not only distantiate from their taken-for-granted assumptions but also appropriate conceptual resources in a way that would enable them to  rethink and rework old questions and issues. Kaiya developed an understanding of biochemistry not only by “apply[ing] it and mak[ing] use of that knowledge that I had” over time but also through the “opportunity to work in teams [in which] you shared and learn a lot from others”. By working with and appropriating knowledge, Kaiya was able to position herself within the current knowledge base and develop a perspective of her own. She also implies that understanding involves communicating with and learning from others who are also passionate about knowledge, rather than being in competition with one another. This shows how knowledge is produced and shared by communities of learning. Her understanding of biochemistry not only gave her the “ability to communicate and express [her ideas] to others” but also a sense of belonging to a learning community of practice in which she could see herself doing a PhD, as she states, “it’s no longer a dream, it’s a plan, it’s a plan in action”. Similarly, Nosakhele felt a sense of belonging to a scientific community when she was expected to articulate her research findings with her peers.

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Kaiya: When I got to Honour’s, that’s when I realised that like being a scientist, uhm, needs you to be focused and disciplined right. Because we’re working independently, there was no lecturer, there was no one, well you have a supervisor, but your supervisor doesn’t tell you everything, your supervisor would just give you ah, give you, you choose the research topic, right. And they give you like guidelines and stuff, but then you do almost all of the work by yourself. The supervisor is just there to check if you like on the right track. So, I think being in honours actually groomed me because I grew so much, I was learning to read independently so and I learnt so many things, and that’s when I started like assimilating a lot of information and learning how to apply it. In terms of application, we do a lot of laboratory work, so whatever that I would read, I’d try it at the lab. So that’s when I felt like science is really, it’s, it’s very proper because you read and you apply at the same time, you read something, and you try it out. If it doesn’t work well, the good thing is in science even a negative result it’s a result because you can, you know or come up with explanations as to what, why would you get a negative result right. But then also you have to have that mental, being able to explain what could have gone wrong, that’s the important thing right. So, I learnt a lot on, on like critical thinking, critical analysis and being able to explain your observations because we work a lot on observation, those are your results, whatever you observe those are your results, so you have to be very careful. You can’t do an experiment and go chat with your friends; you have to be extra careful right. So like when I got to honours like the work at the lab actually made me also realise I can, you know do a lot of things at once because you, you’re expected to write up on your results, you’re expected to present, have a PowerPoint presentation and have a poster presentation, go to  seminars, so that’s when I started feeling like, ‘Oh well, I think I’m a scientist now,’ because you do so many things you know.

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Nosakhele developed a perspective of her own through her research topic by “read[ing] independently … assimilating [or appropriating] a lot of information and learning how to apply it”. In this way, Slonimsky and Shalem (2006) remind us that research moves between distantiation and appropriation which requires that agents re-search their own existing knowledge as well as established concepts. Nosakhele points to the importance of critical thinking in explaining observations from her experiments and interpreting the research results which would be open to scrutiny from her peers. Nosakhele: But those people in my School [Department] who are already criticising my [Master’s] project … So, like you know you still get those scientists who look at your research and think, ‘Agh what is she doing playing around with [these organisms] and stuff?’ … It’s interesting because well that question uhm made me come up with more ideas for my PhD. I decided that next year when I do the PhD, I link the health implications to, towards why should I really, really try eliminate [this chemical] and use [these organisms] right? So, I’m actually currently reading about like how, how do those chemicals that we affect gene expression, well so like literature reveals that those, I mean accumulation of the chemicals leads to development of cancer. So, if you can remember well, in honours I specialised with cancer and already I had like methods which are used to search for how chemicals affect our DNA right. So, I’m going to do the same thing next year, ja, so you see that’s interesting because already with his [a professor in the School] question which I thought was dumb, I came up with a new proposal and my supervisor was still so impressed and he’s saying, ‘no, don’t worry next year I am going to literally find funding for you and maybe find like a scholarship that’s going to pay you every month’ type of thing because he also knows that I have to work at some point.

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Nosakhele’s engagement with the critical feedback from her peers on her Master’s research project led to an alternative path of enquiry for her PhD project. The test of her research findings is whether it stands up to public scrutiny from her peers in a community of practice. She articulates and communicates her research findings verbally and in writing in that her knowledge becomes the object and means of reflection for others.

C3) Knowledge as Our Lungs Knowledge unfolds in the dialectics of social structure-agency and cultural memory. Belonging, as unfolding timespaces of meaning-making is animated by an affective dimension of longing to know a place to call ‘home’. But what is ‘home’? Where is ‘home’? Home is supposedly where the heart is. What does it mean for home to be where the heart is? Home is feeling a sense of connection to what love is. But what is love? What is life? Why is life worth living? What is the worth of love in life? What is its value and meaning? What is its truth? Where does it begin and end? What is the point of it all? Why does the world exist? Why was life created and then given to me and we and it? Why breathe and think and question and seek and act and work and hurt and then continue? I, we and it have been called to live. But why? To be or to choose to be? I seek to choose and choose to find. I find myself feeling a sense of connection to what Love is. I choose to re-search and find yet once more. Why? Because of Love. But I love what I love not what I choose to love. I love wisdom and “truth” or the wisdom and  truth about Love. I know that I cannot love without learning and learn without loving. So, I seek to learn and understand why. I choose to search, to find and to re-search. This makes life worth living. This is the worth in life. The Love of life; its beginning and end. It is the point of breathing, of thinking, of questioning, of seeking, of acting, of hurting and of continuing. Why? Because it is home. It is where the heart is. Knowledge is the lungs that surround our heart and the inspire our art. The word “spirit” is from Latin spīrāre, to breathe and anima, whence breath, life, or soul. “Spirit” is also from the Greek “pneuma” which means breath, air and wind (Partridge, 2006). Spīritus acquires in late Latin the sense of Divine spirit or breath. Inspīrāre, which means to breathe in or

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into, and the late Latin “to breathe religious or divine feeling into”, becomes French inspirer, whence “to inspire” (Partridge, 2006, p. 3178). In response to Henrich Beck’s onto-triadic thesis,3 Mogobe B. Ramose (1994) proposes that the appeal to Divinity, “at the time when the boundary between knowledge and ignorance is well-nigh impossible to determine,” should be approached with skepticism because it “tends to block the way to inquiry and consequently generates an unfounded sense of complacency either about our knowledge of the world or our ignorance thereof ” (p. 69). Gordon (2008) shows that in the modern age “theodicy” has become secularised and extends to other systems, such as political and knowledge systems which have now “taken up the void left by God” (p. 76). Rather than being concerned with “an all-good and all-­powerful God in a world marked by injustice and evil” (Gordon, 2008, p. 76), these political systems serve to justify and rationalise forms of knowledge that constitute the discourses and subjectivities of the dominant, hegemonic formations. Put differently, in the modern age these systems work to legitimate a “theodicean grammar” in which the “appeal to blacks as problempeople is an assertion of their ultimate location outside the systems of order and rationality” (Gordon, 2008, p. 76). Davies (1983) proposes that if we were to find Divinity, it would not be through making “God the friend of ignorance” but rather through the endless process of critical inquiry, unmasking, discovering and re-searching: “To invoke God as a blanket explanation of the unexplained is to invite eventual falsification … If God is to be found, it must surely be through what we discover about the world, not what we fail to discover” (as cited in Ramose, 1994, p. 69). Ramose’s reference to one’s sense of complacency about our knowledge of the world could be read through Charles W. Mills’s (2007) concept of epistemologies of ignorance which strongly resonates with theorisations of whiteness, as a structure which produces racism. In his PhD thesis The Jurisprudence of Steve Biko: A Study in Race, Law and Power in the ‘Afterlife’ of Colonial-apartheid Joel Modiri (2017) explains that Steve Biko’s philosophy of Black Consciousness provides  Henrich Beck theologises his onto-triadic thesis by claiming “Divinity as the absolute foundation of all being”. In response, Ramose (1994) argues that being is “its own foundation and source” and does not require “an external force other than itself ” (p. 68). In other words, Ramose questions Beck’s onto-triadic thesis that meaning can be found behind being or existence. 3

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a critique of dominant racial (and racist) powers, practices and discourses” as well as an “emancipatory political vision and praxis offers an alternative way of framing, understanding and responding to pressing issues of history and memory, race, racial identity and racism, power, equality, justice and freedom in the present context. (p. 2)

What Are the Psychosocial Effects of the Re-formation of This Symbolic Narrative Reality? a) “we have to incorporate what has been, what has been kept quiet for so long” (Alala): The historical context, which is written into the very core of institutions, bears upon culture like a “dead weight” (Thaver, 2006) There is an urgent need, as Alala notes, to incorporate “what has been kept quiet for so long”. Alala: Agh Sabrina, this is a conspiracy theory. I’m sure, but the university, the university is meeting their numbers that they need to meet and then that’s set. I mean there is no actual exploration. I mean when, when you changed from the old regime surely you should have changed the old regime’s thinking and practices and I’m not saying we change everything or throw everything out the window, that’s just silly but we have to do, we have to incorporate what has been, what has been kept quiet for so long. Her statement that “everyone is pretending that everything is okay” could be understood in relation to how the “post” in post-apartheid “might forever be postponed” (Van Marle, 2010, as cited in Modiri, 2017, p. 80). This “conspiracy theory” that Alala alludes to is masked by the rhetoric of a “new” South Africa or what Modiri (2017, p. 1) describes as the “fundamental paradox of ‘post’-apartheid South Africa” which he describes as “the continuation and escalation of racial inequalities and social hierarchies produced through over 350 years of white colonial domination in a “new” constitutional order that espouses non-racial and egalitarian ideals”. Alala implies that this “masking” partly involves how “the university is meeting their numbers that they need to meet”. In this way, Alala is referring to the ‘paradox’ or apparent discrepancy between the measured increase in participation rates of Black individuals into

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academia through programmes such as the Oya scholarship and the reproduction of dominant white middle-class institutional cultures through micro-social day-to-day lived experiences. The “paradox” of commitment, to equity in the university but not to how differences and diverse perspectives serve as an impetus to knowledge production, is maintained by a politics of “quality” and “excellence” which have emerged as discursive practices, invoked by HWUs, to reproduce social class differences and maintain their position as leading higher education institutions globally (Booi et al., 2017a). Although there is an urgent need to incorporate “what has been kept quiet for so long”, Alala points to how disciplinary and institutional cultures remain obdurate as she is treated like a guest instead of a critical member of the university community who is actively creating new ways of belonging to and remaking its tradition (Thaver, 2006). Lionel Thaver (2006) proposes that a sense of “not being at home” or unbelonging at university is created by the socio-political sagas or the historical context, which is written into the very core of institutions and bears upon culture like a “dead weight”. By incorporating “what has kept quiet for so long”, Alala is advocating for  the potential of what Walter Mignolo (2007, p. 453), following Amin (1995) and Quijano (2000), calls “delinking” which could possibly lead “to de-colonial epistemic shift and brings to the foreground other epistemologies, other principles of knowledge and understanding and, consequently, other economy, other politics, other ethics”. After failing her repeat third year of study, however, Alala was academically excluded from university. b) “we have to fight for our ideas to be heard. We still have to fight for a stake. We still have to fight with ourselves” (Alala): Epistemic violence (Spivak, 1988) reproduced through a set of white logic, white methods (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008) The following exchange illustrates how an epistemology of ignorance (Mills, 2007) and a set of white logic, white methods (Zuberi & Bonilla-­ Silva, 2008) reproduces epistemic violence (Spivak, 1988). Alala:

It’s a fight. This random man in the street, I think we were at Haroldhall, a poetry thing or something and we were buying gum, and he comes to me and Busisiwe and he’s like ‘guys, life

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is war’ and Busisiwe was like, ‘Oh okay’ [laughing]. Ja, he’s like, ‘life is war, keep fighting’ and Busisiwe was like ‘that man is crazy’ but I was like ‘what he said was profound’ because life is war, you have to keep fighting, sometimes you don’t want to wake up in the morning but you have to, sometimes you’re away from your family, but you have to keep fighting. Sabrina: I always wondered, during apartheid, what kept activists fighting, I mean where did they get their strength, I mean people were being murdered, now like it’s still, it’s about fighting for ideas, but still, but still for freedom. Alala: I mean, I think, I mean, I don’t want to get political like I said again. Sabrina: what’s wrong with getting political Alala: I get very crazy about that but also, hmm what I was going to say is that, you know, fine it’s not, we’re not, it’s that whole Bob Marley thing, that quote, ‘you raise yourself from mental slavery’, it’s that, it’s that and also in Biko’s book he also always said, it’s your mind, that that, it’s your mind and they talk about the colonised mind and all of that stuff, and, and we have to fight for ideas to be heard, we are still and, and for me, I really find it frustrating that, that I mean even I find even our government frustrating, even our Black leaders frustrating because of, of what they are doing and how it’s distractions, everything is just distractions from what’s going on, and, and because everyone is pretending that everything is okay, and I mean, I mean, it’s better, but it’s not okay. You know everyone is pretending that it’s okay, and when you go down that road, you know, ‘you’re a racist’ or that ‘you’re playing race cards’ all of that stuff so, that’s why you don’t get political but, but we’re not there yet, we have a long way ahead I mean even, it’s, it’s like, we have to fight for our ideas to be heard. We still have to fight for a stake. We still have to fight with ourselves. Sabrina: it’s hmm it’s an “ism” that tries to change who, who we are. Alala: We mustn’t change who we are, we have to be who we, what we are when we are born and fight with that. It’s a struggle to get heard Sabrina, it is like for me, I just find it frustrating

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sometimes when it’s like undertones it’s nuances like little but it’s they enter me I find it frustrating that they carry on and it’s like it’s fine .. Because that’s when we allow it to carry on … I mean, I mean Busisiwe and I couldn’t say anything, we couldn’t say, ‘no you are being biased toward us because you know Donald is getting better treatment’, we couldn’t because then then we were out of a job and we don’t get experience and if you wanted to come back then we have a bad record. Alala expresses how anti-black racism devalues black thinking and individuality and continues to erase and deny the black past, as she contends, “we [Black people] have to fight for our ideas to be heard. We still have to fight for a stake”. She refers to Biko’s call for the Black Consciousness Movement to confront how, as Biko stated, “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed” (2012 [1978], p. 68). Biko, in his book, I Write What I Like, articulates his vision of the philosophy of Black Consciousness: The call for Black Consciousness is the most positive call to come from any group in the black world for a long time. It is more than just a reactionary rejection of whites by blacks. The quintessence of it is the realisation by the blacks that, in order to feature well in this game of power politics, they have to use the concept of group power and to build a strong foundation for this … The philosophy of Black Consciousness, therefore, expresses group pride and the determination by the blacks to rise and attain the envisaged self. At the heart of this kind of thinking is the realisation by the blacks that the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. (p. 68)

Alala continues by stating that “We still have to fight with ourselves” which echoes Odirile’s belief that “lecturers that didn’t, that always made you feel like inferior and just put you down and just make you feel like you’re not supposed to be there or you not worth your being there”. Fanon (1967) explains that “The feeling of inferiority of the colonized is correlative to the European’s feeling of superiority” (p.  69). Alala and Odirile are forced to struggle against a socially induced sense of

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nonexistence or “socially induced inferiority complexes” which as Hook (2004) explains “is one which Fanon repeatedly returns to, and it is one of the most important ways in which he thinks about the real damage, on the level of identity, the mass victimisation and enforced by dominant racist cultures on those they colonise” (p. 97). The pre-eminent postcolonial theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1988), in her essay Can the Subaltern Speak?, demonstrates that epistemic violence is the marginalisation and misrepresentation of subaltern voices by Western discourses. By quoting Macaulay’s “Minute on Indian Education” (1835) as an example of epistemic violence, Spivak (1988) writes: The education of colonial subjects complements their production in law. One effect of establishing a version of the British system was the development of an uneasy separation between disciplinary formation in Sanskrit studies and the native, now alternative tradition of Sanskrit “high culture.” Within the former, the cultural explanations generated by authoritative scholars matched the epistemic violence of the legal project. (p. 282)

A set of white logic, white methods (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008)4 which informs the inclusion into and exclusion from normative entities of knowledge creates a symbolic narrative reality of epistemic violence (Spivak, 1988) in that it not only provides Alala and Odirile access into a system that rewards those who possess the institutionalised and embodied cultural capital that is recognised and valued by those in positions of influence in the university (i.e. predominantly white men) but it also blocks their progression within this system which creates a situation in which young Black women in STEM disciplines fight against a socially induced sense of nonexistence. By referring to Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze’s (1997) insight into how modern rationality has colour, Maldonado-­Torres (2005) explains  that “racism is not only institutional, social, and cultural, but also epistemic (Lander & Castro-Gómez, 2000; Quijano, 2000)” (pp. 151–152). As be-longing is a state of being, the psychosocial effects of epistemic violence (Spivak, 1988) legitimises the material-discursive dehumanisation of Black peoples.  My thanks to Marzia Milazzo for introducing me to Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva’s White Logic, white methods. 4

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In response to Alala’s comment “We still have to fight with ourselves”, I respond by saying, “it’s an ism that tries to change who, who we are”. My response is rooted in what Mills (2007) calls an “epistemology of ignorance” which is “a non-knowing specifically grounded in white racial privilege” (as cited in Modiri, 2017, p. 6). Drawing on the notions of an “epistemology of ignorance” and a set of “white logic, white methods” (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008), Modiri (2017) explains that these concepts remind us that “what makes such ignorance “white” is not the phenotypical appearance (skin colour) nor even the socio-cultural background of the scholar but its routine analytic elision of race, racism and black lived experience” (p. 6). By saying, “it’s an ‘ism’ that tries to change who, who we are,” I am refusing to acknowledge or ignoring the obvious fact that the “we” Alala is referring to is Black lived experience. Alala continues to explain that “it’s a struggle to get heard” which is evident in my response that I am not listening to Alala nor hearing the significance of her words. It would seem that the current and increasing shortage of critical STEM skills in South Africa would guarantee employment opportunities for science students and graduates. However, these women quickly realised that the labour market context is racialised, classed and gendered towards white men and women and which continue to exclude Black graduates (Qambela & Dlakavu, 2014). For instance, three of the four women who had completed their Honours degree struggled to find employment a year after their graduation. What Would the Psychosocial Effects of The  Trans-formation of This Symbolic Narrative Reality Potentially Be? a) “Engaging with critical thinking and asserting myself ” (Odirile): Constructing and enacting knowledge through the philosophy of Black Consciousness In the excerpt below, Odirile explains that her engagement with critical race theory and black feminism enabled her to express her viewpoints and assert herself. Odirile:

There is the situation of the system of how things work and how I’m going to deal with it, you know, and what do I say about it and one of the lecturers here, we had lectures around

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race, a lot of lectures around gender and that’s when I started to read a lot and understand and really in terms of what it means to be a Black woman in Africa, what it means to be a Black architect in Southern Africa and in the world and what it means just to be Black as well, as a whole, you know and to be a person, and to be woman and to have a lot, a whole lot of roles that you wear and to deal with different kinds of issues not only on a social level but also academically for me, it was a challenge … so dialoguing, engaging with critical thinking and asserting myself and saying my opinions about what I know, what I’m reading, you know and I realised how much of time we missed in undergrad … for me that was the biggest issue was how the course was structured. So why should I learn about these things only in honours? Why don’t I have to learn critical thinking in undergrad? [I would have had] more time to read and engage in the subject matter … and understand the way I grew up. I want to explore these things because of ‘disadvantage’ and learning and knowing differences between white privilege and acknowledging, seeing the fact that you as a white person, the way you were born and where you come from does influence where you go to because you have been exposed to say computers … I got experience with computers in high school, but I used the Internet for the first time in first year … the small things like that don’t occur to you. I was like, oh my gosh, so it was simple things like that, that I realised it’s things that we don’t grow up with, it is unknown. Odirile believes that if she had “more time to read and engage in the subject matter [of critical theory]” she would have had the space to “understand the way I grew up” and the structural processes of her localities. She takes issue with the fact that critical race theory and black feminism is only introduced to students in their postgraduate studies. If students are introduced to and engage with African philosophy, critical race theory, black feminism, Africana philosophy, decoloniality, postcolonial studies and other traditions during their undergraduate studies, they would continue

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to develop their critical thinking skills to articulate theories of human oppression as well as strategies to bring about social change, as clearly demonstrated by the Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall student movement in South Africa. Similar to Alala, Odirile implies that critical race theory, black feminism, and Biko’s philosophy of Black Consciousness needs to be central in an undergraduate curriculum so that students have the time to theoretically and critically engage with the persistent problems of systemic racism and inequalities in South Africa. Modiri (2017) argues that the primary concern of critical race theory in a “post”-apartheid context should reveal “how the conditions, relations and practices that shaped colonial-apartheid and which sustain white supremacy were not abolished by the advent of a new constitutional dispensation but were rather concealed and reconfigured in another form” (p. 16). Education, as learning to think critically about one’s locality in historically specific contexts and creatively about strategies to bring about educational and broader social change, was a vehicle through which Odirile recognised the structural processes of her localities and the possibilities of creating new conditions of belonging to knowledge communities within (Southern) Africa and across the world. Through the crossing of these multiple social locations, the women in this research project might be in a position to potentially shift the entrenched ways in which the categories of race, gender and class exist as axes of power in society. b) “science is to learn techniques. We don’t learn to be smart; we learn to be able to do experiments … I learnt to be creative and innovative” (Nosakhele): Designing experiments, making new discoveries, altering existing knowledges and shifting normative constructions of Science and scientists on which the stock story about academic “excellence” is evaluated against Similar to Kaiya, Nosakhele explains that she is only able to design her own experiments when she has an understanding of the content knowledge. Nosakhele: So, like I was actually feeling like, okay, I don’t really have to go work now I can still uhm, do my Master’s and learn further because the important thing in science is to learn techniques. We don’t learn to be smart we learn to be able to do experiments, that’s, that’s, ja if you have the technique you can work, well, literally anywhere where they

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want you to do research. Like obviously I know when I go work they’ll just give me like a research topic, it doesn’t have to be related to what I did at school as long as I know how to come up with methods on how to run the research then … So it’s interesting because you learn to come up with methods of research right, and I don’t think like, I felt like I was not rote learning stuff, I was understanding and I learnt to be you know flexible in terms of my thinking. I learnt to be creative and innovative right, because then now I had to come up with, design my own experiments which I’m doing that in Master’s, Honours. You don’t really know how come up with a lot of experiments, you just propose a few that your supervisor will tell you to do. So that’s when I had, I decided it’s better to do my Master’s. I felt like I’m going to grow more in terms of discovering things and, and designing experiments and it makes me feel good because you know no one else has done that before. So, it’s not just, I didn’t feel like when I am in science, I’m just going to be reading, you know lazing around so that’s the reason, that’s the main reason I decided to further my studies … I felt like the research, it’s better you always get to learn a lot from, from researching, right. So, it’s amazing that like in, when I finished my Honour’s presentation, I was approached by my professor whose currently my professor then he said to me, ‘Please’ he was begging me to come to his lab. And I literally left my lab and I wanted to proceed with human genetics but then you know he was saying, ‘No, I really liked your presentation, please come I don’t have funding though, please come through and teach a lot of kids in my lab’, ah molecular work right. So, well when I thought about it I felt it was an opportunity for me to diversify my profile and like doing the same thing in Honours and then going to Master’s and you still focusing on the same topic. … so, I felt like, okay I’ve learnt so much already from doing my Honours research, I might as well like, move on to something else.

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For Nosakhele to learn and understand the content knowledge, she works with concepts in biology by experimenting or acting on material entities, and in so doing, she adapts her existing knowledge (Miller, 1989). Slonimsky and Shalem (2006) explain that “Appropriation imbues knowledge experienced through distantiation with significance” (p. 43). To appropriate a law of microbiology and biotechnology, Nosakhele needs to practically demonstrate and ‘experience the law’ through application experiments so that knowledge-that “this is a law” is arrived at through knowing-how to conduct experiments. There is thus a practical and a theoretical component to knowledge-how: knowing how to practically use technological resources and conceptually understanding the purpose for doing so. A computer metaphor illustrates this point: our minds are not only loaded with “data files” (knowledge-that) “but also sets of regulations or programs [knowledge-how] that determine how we operate on the world of our experience and how we experience the world we operate on” (Miller, 1989, p. 157). Making new discoveries in science is dependent on Nosakhele’s ability to innovate and creatively design her own experiments in which she needs to simultaneously do theory while thinking praxis. In so doing, she mentions how she needs to adapt and change existing knowledge in order to explain negative results. In this way, research as the interplay between distantiation and appropriation requires that Nosakhele justify her choices and interpret negative results in order to show that her research findings are reliable, valid and warranted (Slonimsky & Shalem, 2006). She feels a sense of personal growth and fulfilment through the process of discovery, as she states, “it makes me feel good because you know no one else has done that before”. c) “I love this project [it has] potential to have like a major impact in terms of our economy and also in improving the way we live” (Nosakhele): The cultivation of new ecologies of knowledges (de Sousa Santos, 2007) with the potential to enrich and change the world, its inhabitants and generations yet to come. Nosakhele discusses how her contribution to the science community could not only have an impact on the lives of people living in South Africa but also to the wider global community.

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Nosakhele: I designed another experiment which my supervisor just thought to himself, ‘ah no this should go for your PhD’ … I was reading a paper and I got this, I didn’t take the idea from the paper but like something just came up [explanation of the experiment]. I discovered two of them … so two of my, two of [them] that I identified have never been discovered in South Africa, but they’ve already been identified in [another country]. So, it’s a new discovery for South Africa, so I have to also name them. I also have to register them under the database. … Yeah, that’s, so like in the science community, like people really respect you for that, that’s if you understand like what it means, you see, so already now for like this experiment I’m working with those two species that I identified, so this experiment helps me to see [if they] are efficient, are they, are they like strong enough to be used as [control agents] in agriculture … And well, I am so lucky because all the experiments that I do, they turn to be like you know favouring … so this literally will give me my PhD because I can see how they behave right … I love this project more because you know you can see the application part already and it’s got lots of potential to have like a major impact in terms of our economy and also in improving the way we live. Nosakhele explains how she has contributed to science and society  through her research, as she states, “it’s a new discovery for South Africa, so I have to also name them”. Through the naming of these discoveries, Nosakhele’s contribution to knowledge becomes the object and means of reflection for others. By sharing this knowledge with an immediate audience and projected audiences in other settings, academic’s knowledge thus becomes part of an archive of knowledge for her peers, lecturers as well as wider local and global communities (Slonimsky & Shalem, 2006). As mentioned, Black women in higher education in the Sciences are marginally positioned by structural processes as ‘outliers’ in relation to the ‘centred’ position of White, male and middle-class normative constructions of Science and scientists. The margin as a supplement to the

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centre is a place of disruption and resistance which holds the possibility of decentring the hegemonic forms of knowledge that constitute dominant discourses and structures of  identities (Rutherford, 1990). The crossing of multiple social locations creates new possibilities for imagining other ways of, as Odirile notes, “what it means to be a Black woman in Africa, what it means to be a Black architect [or scientist] in Southern Africa”; thereby, shifting the entrenched ways in which the categories of race, gender and class exist as axes of power in society. By challenging this marginal “outlier” position, the formation of a new social grouping of Black women in higher education in the Sciences could potentially articulate a cultural politics of difference (Rutherford, 1990) in which new ecologies of knowledges (de Sousa Santos, 2007) are cultivated by communities of learning across gendered, racialised, class and national divides. In this way, the normative constructions of Science and scientists are also reinterpreted and shifted because differences and diverse perspectives serve as an impetus to problem-solving activities, scientific explanations and innovation in science and technology.

C4) Symbolic Narratives as Our Heart Chronotopes (symbols) and belonging are closely bound together like the air we breathe. Science and art are also bound together like our lungs and heart. If the lungs of scientific knowledge are punctured, then our (he)art cannot function properly. Whereas science brings to human perception knowledge, which is particularly important within historically specific contexts, art translates such knowledge from human perception to the region of emotion (Tolstoy, 1904). Art has the ability to make us feel and understand that which might be inaccessible, incomprehensible and inexpressible in the form of an argument (Tolstoy, 1904). Therefore, a misguided pathway in science inevitably causes a correspondingly misguided pathway in art. For example, Gordon (2011) proposes that the “inward path of disciplinary solitude” (p. 98) leads to what he calls disciplinary decadence which he describes as follows:

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the ontologizing or reification of a discipline. In such an attitude, we treat our discipline as though it was never born and has always existed and will never change or, in some cases, die. More than immortal, it is eternal. Yet as something that came into being, it lives, in such an attitude, as a monstrosity, as an instance of a human creation that can never die. Such a perspective brings with it a special fallacy. Its assertion as absolute eventually leads to no room for other disciplinary perspectives, the result of which is the rejection of them for not being one’s own. Thus, if one’s discipline has foreclosed the question of its scope, all that is left for it is a form of “applied” work. Such work militates against thinking. (Gordon, 2006, pp. 4–5)

Citing the painter Charles White, hooks explains that art has the ability to nurture the spirit and heal psychic wounds that have been inflicted by the culture of white supremacy: The substance of man is such that he has to satisfy the needs of life with all his senses. His very being cries out for these senses to appropriate the true riches of life: the beauty of human relationships and dignity, of nature and art, realized in striding towards a bright tomorrow. Without culture, without creative art, inspiring to these senses, mankind stumbles in a chasm of despair and pessimism. (As cited in hooks, 1995 pp. 4–5)

The purpose of creative art, as a human spiritual activity, is to infect or affect people with the feelings that moved the artist who expressed it. Whereas speech renders accessible to human perception all the knowledges that have been discovered through experience and reflection, art renders accessible the feelings experienced by our predecessors (Tolstoy, 1904). In reflecting on how women, and various marginalised and excluded groupings, have enlarged the literary landscape by articulating the words for people to know their own experiences and developing a vocabulary for the griefs and silences in a culture, Zadie Smith (2019) reminds us that artistic expression makes us feel and understand that which might be incomprehensible and unknowable. She writes: But in our justified desire to level or even obliterate the old power structures—to reclaim our agency when it comes to the representations of selves—we can, sometimes, forget the mystery that lies at the heart of all

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selfhood. Of what a self may contain that is both unseen and ultimately unknowable. (p. 19)

Like speech, art is a means of communication, and therefore of movement. Drawing on Marx’s critique of the logic of capital, Ahmed (2004) proposes that “the movement between signs converts into affect” (p. 120). In other words, rather than affect residing in a sign or object, affect is an effect of the circulation or exchange between signs and objects (Ahmed, 2004). Rather than emotions residing in a subject as psychological dispositions, Ahmed’s (2004) notion of the affective economy5 accounts for how emotions do the concrete work of “sticking” to bodies. In this sense, “the subject” is not the “origin and destination” of emotions but “simply one nodal point in the economy” (Ahmed, 2004, p.  121). Ahmed (2004) explains that as emotions do not reside in the body, sign or object, emotions are able to do this work of aligning bodily space (individual subjects) with social space (communities) and thus mediate the relationship between the individual (the psychical) and the collective (the social). This suggests that, as Ahmed (2004) notes, the relational unconscious is not the unconscious of individual subjects, “but the failure of presence—or the failure to be present—that constitutes the relationality of subjects and objects (a relationality that works through the circulation of signs)” (p. 121). If discourse is the organ of sense (skin) and stories the organ of thinking (brain), then symbolic narratives is the organ of relationality and connection (heart). The heart forms part of the circulatory system. Symbolic narratives is the organ which connects the circulatory, nervous and respiratory systems. The constant circulation and exchange between discursive contexts and storied forms produce the content of symbolic narratives. Symbolic narratives unfold in the dialectics of discourse and story. Symbolic narratives is the muscle of emotion and the heartbeat of thoughtful feelings. It is the “organ that sees better than the eye” (Yiddish proverb, as cited in McCutcheon, 2010, p. 285). The heart of symbolic narrative exists in between the lungs of knowledge. How Is This Symbolic  Narrative Reality, and Its Psychosocial Effects Masked?

 My thanks to Peace Kiguwa for introducing me to Ahmed’s notion of affective economies.

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a) “you don’t try and say ‘eat this, this is the Book of Life, eat, this is what I’m telling you’”(Alala): Disciplinary decadence (Gordon, 2006) and the internalisation of regulative rules, consumption of lifeless knowledge and regurgitation of methods committed to colour-blind individualism and meritocracy Referring back to her mother’s dream, Alala explains that as seeds “grow underground, you don’t know the [outcome], you’re putting in the effort and it’s, it’s a faith thing”. Similarly, it could be argued that regulative rules which operate “underground” in the university field serve to maintain existing practices that reproduce the harvest to normative groups that embody white, masculine, and middle-class dispositions. In discussing her academic exclusion from university, Alala names these regulative rules that govern the university’s ways of doing things as “the Book of Life”. Sabrina: You were saying that you worked hard in high school and you got the results but then at university, you still worked hard and you were saying you failed that project, like, how did you make sense of that? Alala: “It [failure and academic exclusion] was devastating. You just feel defeated you know. When you put your all into something and you work hard and then, and then people don’t see that, recognise it when they should. I mean they’re lecturers, they are supposed to find the good in all of us. I know that we all don’t know anything, we’re not stupid when we come [to university]. I mean you are supposed to find the light and harness that and try and help us grow. For me, that’s what a teacher is, you don’t try and say, ‘eat this, this is the Book of Life, eat, this is what I’m telling you’”. The “food” that Alala is referring to when she states, “[don’t] say eat this, this is what I’m telling you” could be likened to the Eurocentric curriculum in which living knowledges are not digested, rather normative theory is consumed. Alala’s reference to the “Book of Life” could be compared to the “dead weight” of the historical context which is written into the very core of an institution’s culture (Thaver, 2006). Regarding Alala’s previous critique of the architectural curriculum for its Eurocentrism, she seems to be suggesting that this “Book of Life”, which is based on

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normative theory, is used by lecturers as a principle or moral rule to influence students’ thinking and acting. This is evident in Alala’s statement, “that’s what a teacher is, you don’t try and say, ‘eat this, this is the Book of Life, eat, this is what I’m telling you’”. According to Partha Chatterjee’s (2011) notions of “norm-deviation” and “norm-exception” paradigm, Luckett and Shay (2017) explain that “[W]estern ‘standards’ were set up as norms from which colonized populations were shown to deviate empirically, leading to colonial policies in which they were treated as the exception to the norm” (p.  14). This “Book of Life” refers to Western ‘standards’ that set up rules of behaviour through normative theories which aim to regulate or discipline people’s actions and maintain structures of domination. Alala implies that lecturers who “say eat this, this is what I’m telling you” have internalised the implicit regulative rules or principles that govern the university field and thus conform to cultural norms that reproduce the interests and values of the dominant classes. The prescribed values and rules of field function to either facilitate or limit an agent’s position to change it, as Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992) explain in their book, An invitation to Reflexive Sociology; “Each field prescribes its particular values and possesses its regulative principles. These principles delimit a socially structured space in which agents struggle, depending on the position they occupy in that space, either to change or to preserve its boundaries and form” (p.  17). Power struggles emerge between agents who attempt to change or preserve the regulative principles within a field because these unequal power relations depend on one’s volume of capital that shape and maintain specific rules of the field (Booi et al., 2017a). Agents in the university field do not compete on a level playing ground because academics (particularly older established academics) possess large volumes of capital, which enable them to defend their discipline’s “Book of Life” and thus reproduce existing patterns of power and privilege in education through normalised practices and sedimented traditions of knowledge (Booi et al., 2017a). Alala argues against these sedimented and fossilised (Vygotsky, 1978) traditions of knowledge that attempt to “force feed” students’ normative theory from “the Book of life”. Instead she proposes that lecturers should “find the good in all of us … find the light and harness that and try and help us grow”. In this sense, she is calling for reflexive pedagogic practice in

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which lecturers help induct new students into an academic discipline so that they can develop their knowledge-how, allowing them to be able to set up their own sets of questions about the world, and to produce their own knowledge-that. This alerts us to the fact that  when a discipline is not grounded in reality, it is treated like the “Book of Life” which leads to what Gordon (2006, pp. 4–5) has called disciplinary decadence. Gordan (2011) explains that “The discipline becomes, in solipsistic fashion, the world. And in that world, the main concern is the proper administering of its rules, regulations, or, as Frantz Fanon argued, (self-devouring) methods” (p. 98). b) “they [lecturers] mark on ‘feeling’ and you’d be like, ‘but I don’t understand what that means’” (Itumeleng): Assessors’ judgement-making processes are a social practice constituted through disciplinary, departmental and institutional values which are embedded in regulative rules and procedures (Shay, 2008) Itumeleng and Alala believe that their lecturers relied on a subjective marking criterion that was based on ‘feeling’: Itumeleng: I don’t remember having a Black lecturer and it was difficult actually because there were a lot of things I didn’t quite understand with the marking and all that, because like a lot of memos and things, lecturers would tell you—especially the essay-type questions—that they mark on ‘feeling’ and you’d be like, ‘but I don’t understand what that means’. Alala: And you know how Sabrina, they give you your marks, they go like, ‘let me see, hmm, I’ll give you 45%’, that’s how they give you your marks. There is no, there is no criteria when I was there, there was no criteria, there was no, ‘okay, fine you handed in … your door widths are correct, your windows are correct, there won’t be water in your house or building, it was, ‘hmm, let me see, what I shall give you’. Itumeleng and Alala’s concerns about assessment practices relate to how lecturers, as insiders to normative practices in their discipline, have developed an embodied sense of their actions and activities, often with little consideration and reflection on the norms which inform and underpin their activities (Slonimsky & Shalem, 2006). Teaching and assessment

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are a social practice (Broadfoot, 1996; Filer, 2000; Gipps, 1999; Shay, 2005) that is concerned with people’s habitual acts of judgement making. The classificatory frameworks which inform assessors’ judgement-making processes are internalised because they are an outcome of being ‘at home’ in a field (Shay, 2008). Assessors might be unable to fully articulate their judgement-making processes because they have not reflected on that which generates their activities and thus “may not be fully conscious of their ways of viewing and classifying the world” (Shay, 2008, p.  160). These classification acts are produced through disciplinary and departmental values which are embedded in regulative rules and procedures of an institution (Shay, 2008). c) “it’s people defining you … It doesn’t matter if it’s not a big number next to my name or a shiny star on my forehead” (Alala): Global university ranking systems obscure struggles of unequal power relations as struggles for meritocratic recognition of ‘academic talent’ which preserves the legacy of racial hierarchy and perpetuates social inequality Alala reflects on her discomfort with how the reward of formal recognition is a means through which people conflate intellectual capital with one’s self-worth. Alala: For me, I mean it was that whole, I had a lot, I have a lot of people coming up to me and saying, ‘oh I look up to you, you’re like top 10, always number two, you and Portia, you’re always there at the top’ and a lot of teachers like me, like because I got the marks. For me, I was like but, but what is that, you know. It’s, it’s people defining you. I mean, but without that, what would I be? What, what would I be if I didn’t have that? And I realised that I am still [Alala]. I am still talented. I still have something to offer the world and that, that was great for me. It doesn’t matter if it’s not a big number next to my name or a shiny star on my forehead. I mean it goes back to the education system, it’s horrible the way they teach us but anyway. But if I don’t have a gold star, I’m still, I still have something to offer, you know and it also goes back to the whole people thing because I had a lot of friends who weren’t top 10 and didn’t have the gold stars and they still had stuff to offer you know, there was something, there were stories behind them and for me, I decided that I was a girl with a story as well.

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Alala implies that being recognised as having something of value to offer the world is contingent on having “a big number next to my name or a shiny star on my forehead”. For the reward of recognition to be reinforcing in a system of hierarchical honour where people compete with one another, “one person’s glory must be another’s shame, or at least obscurity” (Taylor 1994, p. 54). However, Alala believes that her peers who did not have “a big number next to [their] name” still had something to offer, “there were stories behind them” she states. Alala responds to her question, “without that [meritocratic recognition] what would I be?” by stating; “I still have something to offer the world … for me I decided that I was a girl with a story as well”. While power is reproduced culturally, it is socially grounded in the material world through practices such as meritocratic recognition where students who do not compete on a level playing field are either branded with “a shiny star on [their] forehead[s]” or not. In the broader context of global university ranking systems, the notions of “quality”, “excellence” and “academic talent” are affected by neoliberal discourses around capitals and institutionalised through meritocratic recognition in which differently positioned institutions and agents compete in an endless struggle to realise their interests (Bourdieu, 1998). Amsler and Bolsmann (2012) argue that by “measuring products, practices and environments, university ranking tables obscure struggles of unequal power as struggles for meritocratic recognition” (p.  294) which preserves the legacy of institutionalised racial hierarchy. How Is This Symbolic  Narrative Reality, and Its Psychosocial Effects Re-formed? d) “dealing with this uncertainty about myself … how can I get a Master’s if I’m so unsure about myself ” (Odirile) In the following excerpt, Odirile explains how she is left with the burden of dealing with her experience of racism in her department. Odirile:

I was engaging with it, with it [racism] academically and trying to understand myself in the context as an Honours student, that was, Blacks who was experiencing these prejudices you know in architecture and I still do, even till today even while doing my Master’s … I mean if a lecturer, a Black lecturer, she’s experiencing it at her level of being a lecturer and

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she’s experienced that as being a student and now she’s left that department because the politics are just too heavy for her to handle. So, it’s too sad, it’s too sad from the student’s point of view, it’s too sad from, from the way things are done and run. She feels like it’s out of her power and she can’t do anything about it, and she can’t, can’t handle it and this is a Black lecturer who has fought so hard to be where she is and she is saying that. And I’m asking myself what then, you know, how do we deal with, with this, how do we deal, how do I, do I assert myself and get my confidence to what is was when I was in Matric because I was way more confident than I am now, not dealing with this uncertainty about myself. But I got a Master’s, how can I get a Master’s if I’m so unsure about myself, you know. So, it’s all these psychological and political things that I’m going through, you know. I’m having a lot of dialogue, a lot of questions within myself and a lot of prepping myself and pepping myself up during this time. But the thing is I know what I want, I know how I want it and I know when I want it. If Odirile’s lecturer and mentor had to leave the department “because the politics are just too heavy for her to handle”, then Odirile questions where that leaves her as a student who is following in her mentor’s footsteps. Odirile is placed in a situation where she is trying to regain her confidence by “prepping myself and pepping myself up” to reconcile the contradictory feelings of, on the one hand, the achievement of obtaining a Master’s degree but on the other hand, being unsure about herself. Odirile points to how these contradictory feelings cannot be reconciled because she can never completely be sure about herself in the context of her department, instead she mentions that she is left “dealing with this uncertainty about myself ”. In spite of this, she asserts that “I know what I want, I know how I want it and I know when I want it”. e) “people will expect things from you just because you are a smart person. You ‘should have’ been done. You ‘should have’ been working now …I find myself crying, blaming myself ” (Takalani)

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In addition to the academic demands at university, the women also spoke about external pressures and high expectations from their scholarship programme, family, friends and communities. As Takalani repeated two years of study, she explains how she feels increasingly pressured to live up to other people’s expectations of her. Takalani: And you are like, I don’t have [money for my younger sisters]. So it’s, it’s like very hard looking at your age and thinking, oh my word I ‘should have’, been working for like two years now’, like you know I ‘should have’ been doing this and this for my sisters, for my cousins and whatsoever but you end up, you don’t have nothing and they keep on asking … and this thing [degree] is hard so you just have to be patient with me, when I’m done I’ll give you that, whatever it is that you want me to give you and you need. Yeah, that was one of the things as well and people expect so much from you and you’re like working so hard to get those, but they don’t understand. But at the end of the day you realise it’s all just about you sometimes its, yeah, you have to come first. Takalani spoke about the external pressures attached to her roles and expected responsibilities of being the oldest sibling, an academic achiever and the first person in her family to pursue a STEM degree. Takalani: Sometimes people will expect things from you just because you are a smart person. You ‘should have’ been done. You ‘should have’ been working now or probably you’re working now and just trying to keep quiet about it and you’re like, you know how much I want to work and and you’re still saying that. Sometimes it hurts me but it’s one of those things that I’m like you know what, I’m studying aero [aeronautical engineering] and you’re like, I said I don’t have and sometimes you feel that they [her sisters and cousins] now just want to prove a point that you’re not doing what you’re supposed to do. So, it sometimes, it gets, it gets really hard like I find myself crying, blaming myself, that I’m not supposed to like, I’m not, I’m not doing this.

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These external pressures are internalised as the women define themselves in terms of excellent academic performance, culminating in guilt, sadness and self-blame when they do not meet these demands, as Takalani explains, “I find myself crying, blaming myself”. Further,  Kaiya believes that she would disappoint her mother if she did not excel in all aspects of her life which would result in “feeling a lot of guilt and feeling a lot of sadness”. Kaiya: [My mother] expected a lot from us and her expectations with school with everything was high, even gymnastics was high. If you didn’t excel, it was a problem. That for me, I think that also moulded a part of me, always trying to please people, actually thinking about it right now, I’ll always aim, to aim to please or not disappoint anyone because I could see what would happen if I disappointed her, it would be a very tense home, you wouldn’t talk for a week or so, you end up feeling a lot of guilt and feeling a lot of sadness. f ) “It [failure] was devastating. You just feel defeated” (Alala) The women interpreted failing test scores as more than a measure of specific competencies and knowledge, implying something about their value as a person. Their experiences of academic failure thus culminated in feelings of disbelief, shock, anger, sadness, embarrassment, confusion, loneliness, devastation and defeat. Academic failure placed them in a situation in which they needed to reconcile the disjunction between their experiences of academic failure and the discourse of academic talent. The excerpts below illustrate the emotional labour required to navigate their simultaneous membership to a marginal and an elite group which created shifting senses of belonging to and alienation in academic communities aligned with white, male and middle-class normative constructions of Science and scientists  on which the stock story about academic ‘excellence’ is evaluated against. For instance, Welile and Talakani mention that their initial reaction to failure was that of disbelief. Welile: I was just so depressed with the whole chemistry thing [failing chemistry] because I’ve gone from, you know, matriculating top to now failing subjects. I was just in disbelief.

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Talakani: I remember they had marks on the notice board [of students who had failed a test] so I went there and ‘ah!’ my student number like, I felt like they made a mistake. I couldn’t believe, now I’m like, I’m like really at the bottom. I think it was like third one or fourth one from like from the like last person … I didn’t even cry, I was like no this is wrong and then the following day [I went to see my lecturer and he told me] ‘it’s just that you’re struggling to get these concepts, I could see that you studied from the way you wrote’ … I went back to my room and I just cracked up and then I called my mom and I’m like ‘yoh, you won’t believe as much as I think this is hard, it’s worse, it went from bad to the worst thing ever. I’m the last person in class and then my mom was like, ‘no you still have an assignment, you still have a test, you still have another test and the exams. The shock and destabilising effects of failure are vividly recalled by Alala. Alala: It was devastating. You just feel defeated, you know, when you put your all into something and you work hard and then, and then people don’t see that, recognise it when they should … I do know, I was sad. I was mad. I was very angry, very angry, but I was like ‘okay fine I’ll go back, I’ll do it again.’ But then also I mean you worry about what people think, it was, it was embarrassing. It’s upsetting and then you go back … I tried everything when I went back. I tried everything. [My tutor] came, and he helped me, and he sat with me, he worked with me, lots of people helped me. I stayed up, I made models, it was just, it’s just like, ‘what do you want from me?’ … which is why, I mean it’s sad, it hurts that, you know, I didn’t make it through the entire degree but, it’s not, agh, it’s not, ja, I’m not going to jump off a bridge because of it. I mean, it’s sad, you know. Alala expressed that despite “working myself to near death state”, she could not control the outcome.

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g) “I think that pain [of failure] … you have to live with it, it becomes too sinked in … I mean the pain is over, but it becomes a part of you” (Takalani) Takalani’s experience of failure was confusing for her not only because she had always been a top academic achiever, but also because she couldn’t understand “what went wrong, like what changed, what did I do wrong”. Takalani: I failed the [supplementary exam] and I went back in 2009 and it was like, ‘oh God what do you want from me?’, like, ‘ain’t I trying hard here?’ … it was very crazy. It was the year I found myself failing for the first time in my life and you wonder what went wrong, like what changed, what did I do wrong. Is this punishment, is there something I’m supposed to be doing that I’m not doing, and you hardly find answers to that because you are doing exactly what it is you are supposed to do, and you end up so confused. I ended up so confused, feeling so lonely, feeling stupid and all that and I, hmm, like the, the, the one thing that I defined myself is, is I always thought I’m a smart person, like you know, I can do this. I can struggle in all the other ways but academically, I’ll never struggle and finding yourself struggling academically, it was like can this life end or something. But I managed to get through it, I failed my second year. In addition, her experience of failure was particularly difficult to process because she put her support system “on halt” in order to focus on her studies. Takalani: The thing is when you are at [this university] and you’re doing engineering, everything else stops. I think that’s the worst feeling, as well like, your friends, your boyfriend, your family, like you just, like, put them on halt and you just focus on your own life and which, I think it’s a very bad idea … it’s what I chose, so probably I could at least finish quickly and stuff but the thing is you end up so lonely but you don’t want to be lonely and failing at the same time.

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Similarly, Nosakhele realised that she needed the support from her family and friends in order to process her experience of failure. Nosakhele: So, when I failed, I realised that this is not me and the fact that I couldn’t even tell my parents because I’ve never failed any course in my life. I’ve never even failed any test or subject at school, this was my first failure, so it was tough also because, you know, if you have never experienced failure at school, you don’t know how to deal with it. So, I ended up just trying to also even run away from like friends and social life. But I then realised that, that is not going to help me, because I was always crying. Takalani compares the visceral, emotional memory of failure with the physical pain of being “beaten up”. Takalani: Like some of them [students who fail], they feel so beaten up, they just want to give up and just do something else because they feel they have wasted too much energy, so many years, so much life. I think that pain [of failure] it has become so much that you have to live with it, it becomes too sinked in, even if it’s over. I don’t think it ends when you graduate, it doesn’t, I mean the pain is over but it becomes a part of you. As the temporal quality of identity is expressed in recollective narratives (Wengraf, 2011), the past becomes actively alive in the present which not only contributes to the accumulative growth in understanding one’s self and the world but it also resurfaces earlier hurts that could undermine one’s sense of self. How Could This Symbolic Narrative Reality, and Its Psychosocial Effects Be Unmasked? a) “I’m tired of people trying to change me … I’m going to do a book of my ethics” (Alala): An ethical practice of listening to, understanding and addressing students’ moral evaluations of how the university affects their sense of self-worth

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As previously noted, Alala’s reference to the “Book of Life” could be interpreted as the Eurocentric curriculum in which normative theory is used as a standard or principle to indoctrinate students about what is “right” and “wrong”, or how to think and act. In response, Alala mentions that she wants to write a “Book of Ethics” which would act as a reference point when people tell her how she should think or act. Alala: I’m so crazy, years ago I was like to Busisiwe, ‘listen, I’m tired, I’m tired of people trying to change me, I’m going to write a book so that every time like something like that happens, I can go and refer to it’. I was like, a ‘Book of Ethics’, that is what I was going to call it’ … I was like, ‘I’m going to do a book of my ethics.’ In a light-hearted manner, Alala implies that her “Book of Ethics” would be a reference book about her ethical principles, beliefs, values and practices which would provide guidance during challenging circumstances, such as “people trying to change me”. It seems that Alala is advocating for a shift from the normative “Book of Life” theory to an ethical practice in the university in which students and staff need to constantly work against social habits and embedded institutional constraints which are not of their own making. In the wake of the student fallist movements, Luckett and Shay (2017) assert that a major challenge is to “create conditions where ‘critical humanism’ and ‘epistemic pluralism’ (Mbembe, 2015) might flourish and where difference means neither assimilation nor reification” (p. 13). In addition to working against structural causes of injustice, it is critical that the university listens to students’ ethical evaluations of how the university affects their sense of self-worth (Luckett & Shay, 2017). b) “you come in here with your values … you’re putting yourself onto paper, your pieces of yourself [and] you know it’s hatching” (Alala): Teaching and assessment as a social practice driven by a complexity-transdisciplinary frame of reference and a teleological suspension of disciplinarity (Gordon, 2011) Alala implies that the therapeutic process of making art involves the process of losing oneself and sense of time and finding oneself “hatching” something new.

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Alala: I think that’s how we judge it [art] and that’s where the difficulty [with assessment] comes with architecture and how subjective it is because you come in here with your values and how you view architecture and then for me when I see art, I don’t know about it now, when I sat down and drew I just, I just left this world Sabrina. I just left this world, and everything felt fine. It’s like, I don’t know … it’s a type of feeling that you get. You know you can take all those Buddha quotes and they make sense in that moment, when you’re drawing and you’re putting yourself onto paper, your pieces of yourself … you lose track of time and also it’s therapeutic, you know it’s hatching, there’s something about, it’s hatching and doing different techniques. In this sense, creativity is an expression of one’s freedom which is informed by one’s background, as Alala notes, “when you’re drawing and you’re putting yourself onto paper, your pieces of yourself ”. How then could teaching and assessment practices draw on students’ background knowledges and creative processes in which they are encouraged to experiment with different techniques and invent or “hatch” something new? How could teaching and assessment practices be driven by a “complexity frame of reference” (Castellani & Hafferty, 2009) which encourages transdisciplinary thinking and the opening up of analysis and interpretations to uncertainty and indeterminacy; thus, putting at risk all that we believe we know in order to discover something new about the reality of complex systems. Reflecting on the magnitude and complexity of reality, Gordon (2011) explains that, “Failure to appreciate reality sometimes takes the form of recoiling from it” (p. 98) leading to what he calls disciplinary decadence (Gordon, 2006). He explains that although a promising response to disciplinary decadence is “transdisciplinarity, where disciplines work through each other”, this pathway could still lead to decadence if its purpose is not focused on reality (Gordon, 2011, p.  99, original emphasis). Gordon (2011) proposes that a “teleological suspension of disciplinarity” as the “the willingness to go beyond disciplines in the production of knowledge” by either imbuing an existing discipline with new life and vitality or by generating a new discipline (p. 99).

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c) “We have no faces. Just scars and our delicate insides. We have no faces. Just weeping souls. They wear our faces … I must wear the face of a hungry lion” (Alala): Exposing wounds through artistic expression with the aim of “decolonizing sensibilities” (Mignolo & Vázquez, 2013) and charting new theoretical journeys that would “guide us in the direction of liberatory terrain” (hooks, 2013, p. 191). Alala’s “activist-type poetry”, as she calls it, is a way through which she theorises her own reality. Below is a very brief excerpt from her extended poem of 13 stanzas which she read during our conversation: We have no faces just scars and our delicate insides We have no faces Just weeping souls They wear our faces … I must wear the face of a hungry lion … So now I bear this barcode … They have tried to keep us from understanding Price tags all over our auras … The time is now Let us find our way back to our race Who is man? Human.

I’ve chosen to discuss the first three to four phrases from the beginning, middle and ending of Alala’s poem based on the assumption that it provides a framing for the main themes in her poem. There are many ways of interpreting these phrases, many of which may not be similar to Alala’s interpretation of her own poem. The phrase “We have no faces” reminds me of an earlier comment that Alala made; “[Donald] let’s just acknowledge it for what it is, don’t, don’t wear a face for us”. As discussed in Chap. 5, Alala was infuriated that Donald pretended he wasn’t receiving preferential treatment from the directors of the firm as she explains, “for me that’s when Donald made me mad, I was like, ‘Donald get out of my face man’. I mean it’s things like that”. It these kinds of situations or it is “things like that” in which Alala refers to how Black people are treated as if “we have no faces” which produces “just scars and our delicate

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insides”. As Donald was Alala’s friend (“Donald is my friend, we went to school together”), this is an example of an incident which was infuriating and hurtful for Alala. In other words, Alala felt enraged with Donald because as a white subject in privileged and dominant position, he became an appropriate performer of ignorance by wearing a face (Steyn, 2012). By wearing a face, it seems that Donald is a signatory of what Steyn (2012) has called the ignorance contract. As a result, Alala mentions that Black people need to “wear the face of a hungry lion” to affirm their humanity in defiance of a “matrix of domination” (Collins, 2000) that mark their everyday spaces. My reading of Alala’s poem is that it exposes wounds that “chart new theoretical journeys” (hooks, 1994, p. 74) and a map that would “guide us in the direction of liberatory terrain” (hooks, 2013, p. 191). For instance, Alala states: The time is now Let us find our way back to our race Who is man? Human.

Catharine MacKinnon explains that “we know things with our lives, and we live that knowledge, beyond what any theory has yet theorised” (as cited in hooks, 1994, p. 74). hooks (1994) adds that our challenge is thus to create this critical theory from our particular positionalities: For in its productions lies the hope of our liberation, in its production lies the possibility of naming all our pain—of making all our hurt go away. If we create feminist theory, feminist movements that address this pain, we have no difficulty building a mass-based feminist resistance struggle. There will be no gap between feminist theory and feminist practice. (p. 74)

Alala theorises her own reality through her poem and in its production lies a map in the “direction of liberatory terrain” of a new humanism (hooks, 2013, p.  191). One way we theorise embodied knowledges is through the story of a life in response to the question of ‘who’. We theorise living knowledges through the stories we tell about critical moments in our lives which show how we have become other than what and who we were. However, the middle of Alala’s poem could explain why there still exists a gap between feminist practice and feminist theory.

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So now I bear this barcode … They have tried to keep us from understanding Price tags all over our auras …

The “barcode” and “price tags” that Alala refer to reminds me of an earlier comment that she made, “they [architectural firm] had window scales, that’s what, what I was stuck doing, it wasn’t work”. In other words, the “barcode” could represent how Alala felt alienated from the product of her labour (i.e. window scales) because this product was not of her own making but rather a commodity with a “price tag” to be sold (Bulhan, 1985; Marx, 1964). It also seems that Alala’s poem is a way in which she is decolonising sensibilities. As Mingolo explains, “Decolonial aestheSis refers in general to any and every thinking and doing that is geared toward undoing a particular kind of aesthesis, of senses, that is the sensibility of the colonized subject” (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2014, p. 201). How Could This Symbolic Narrative Reality and Its Psychosocial Effects Be Trans-formed? d) “I found myself with no definition [due to failure]. I couldn’t define myself anymore … I learnt that I am me and I can’t be defined by the circumstances around me” (Takalani) As Takalani received formal recognition for being one of the top academic achievers in her province, she defined herself “as being someone who knows, I’m, I’m knowledgeable”. Takalani:

I probably should have mentioned this when I, when I passed my Matric I was one of the top students in my province, I think I was like number twenty-one in the whole province so I defined myself as being someone who knows, I’m, I’m knowledgeable. I’m a genius … And coming here and realising I’m so far, from where I thought I was. So, I found myself with no definition. I couldn’t define myself anymore. But now, I know it wasn’t just, because you don’t have to have definitions for your life, or you don’t have to say ‘I’m this’. I have to live because now what happens when that thing is gone? So being here [at university], I learnt that I am me and I can’t be defined by the circumstances around me and yes, I

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think, it was a very, a great journey though I wouldn’t want to come back here [to this university][laughing], like it’s over, I leave this year, I’m just going to go do my Master’s somewhere else. But it was a great, was a great journey. With the support of her therapist, Takalani could come to terms with failure and view it as an opportunity for reflection and personal growth. Takalani: Okay, then I realised for me coming here [this university], it wasn’t just like probably to study science, to be an engineer or whatever, it was more like growth, for me, because I had to go through so much, not just academically but like emotionally as well, like it got to a point where this whole studying thing affected me, like just me, like you know. I got so emotionally depressed if I can say and it was hard, but I had a therapist she was, hmm, she was appointed to me by the scholarship as well. So I went to her, and she explained to me that I’m not the first one that this thing [failure] has happened to and, hmm, it usually happens, I, and must just see what happens now and stuff and failing the sup [supplementary exam] means the scholarship wasn’t going to sponsor me anymore so it was like ‘ah this is the end’ because they were like, if you fail second year, we always give a second chance so now it was like, it’s all done. So, I got to that turning point when I was like … I was at my edge; there I was at my edge. Takalani reflects on how she needed to redefine her sense of self in a way that was not contingent on external circumstances. Similarly, when Alala asked herself the question, “who am I without the marks?”, she explains that “I defined that person, and that person has got me through [the difficult times]”. e) “this [purple] scarf represents [that] I am worth it, whatever marks I get, whatever hardships I go through, those make me grow … my goal going forward is for me to stretch completely [and] to reach that place where I’m beyond myself ” (Odirile)

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Odirile mentions that her purple scarf is a symbolic reminder of her selfworth as royalty and her ultimate goal of stretching herself ‘beyond herself ’. Odirile:

And then my scarf, I love wearing scarfs. I love purple, so for me this scarf represents the colour that I love and I always say that purple is the colour of royalty and the way I see it that I need to always remind myself that I am royalty, that moving forward I am worth it, whatever marks I get, whatever hardships I go through, those make me grow and hence I chose the scarf because it’s reminding me and showing me the future that I can wear it the way I want to. So, if I want to structure it in a bow then it’s me saying, yes, it’s me wearing a bow today because I’m happy and I’m reminded that things are moving forward and the fact that it’s got length and that you can stretch it and crumble it up and do all these things reminds me that I’m going to get to places and times where I feel like I can’t be stretched and I want to be crumbled up and I want to stay in my cocoon [but] I need to understand those boundaries and understand why I can’t do that [stretch myself ] at that point of time and I need to pace myself accordingly … ultimately what I want from my life, my goal going forward is for me to stretch completely and utilise every inch of myself and to be the best I can be and to reach that place where I’m beyond myself.

Odirile implies that growth happens by going through hardships; a transitional state of space and time in which the elastic self is stretched beyond the limen, boundary or threshold. f ) “I don’t want to be stuck … the early me, who hasn’t changed much. I mean, I still want to learn, just learn, find understanding, a fulfilled life. That’s all I want; a self-sustained fulfilled life” (Alala) From a young age, Alala explains how she had a passion for learning and problem-solving.

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Alala: So, I learnt, and I studied and I listened in class and for me I didn’t have to do that much studying for tests in order to do well because I, I listened in class and I just remembered because I actually enjoyed learning … I enjoyed, I remember biology and art and I enjoy maths. I used to enjoy solving the problems and in biology learning, I just like knowing things and understanding and getting behind, but then art, art, art was something else, it was was spiritual, for me. I just, just zoned out. Nosakhele also expresses her passion for reading and learning, particularly for science. Nosakhele: So, when, like since from an early age, I was very much interested in like reading and learning new things, right, and it was quite weird because uhm most of my cousins were not into school, right, so you’d find that if I had homework and stuff to do, no one else would help me except for my dad, right. So I was always, I can say, I was always the odd one out, from when I was young. Even up to when I got to primary  [school], even up to when I got to high school, I was still the odd one out. Yeah, because I had so much passion for learning, especially, particularly for science. Similarly, Takalani implies that when she had the opportunity to focus on her passion (e.g. learning about how aeroplanes fly) it was easier for her to pass her courses. Takalani: I learnt to see what these planes are, how do they fly, what causes them to fly, like how do they look like, you have to draw them and it was very interesting so my third year was like one of the best years here I think, and yes, I did very well for my first semester, I passed everything. Reflecting back on her younger self, Alala explains that “the early me … hasn’t changed much”.

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Alala: I don’t want to, people are so grumpy at work, people are so grumpy [laughing]. I don’t want to be, I mean, I don’t really believe in happiness any more, I don’t think, I don’t think, I think it’s a non-idea, it’s such a useless word but there is joy and there is there is some ‘positive-ness’ about the world, but happiness, that’s crazy. But people are just unhappy and bitter. There was this man at work, ‘Jo’ and he was just so, he was just so bitter and unhappy, but I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to be stuck. I have to explore stuff. I have to learn more and more and more. I have to grow. I cannot sit in an office every day and just sit there. I, I have to explore stuff and learn, it goes back to what I said, the early me, who hasn’t changed much. I mean, I still want to learn, just learn, find understanding, a fulfilled life. That’s all I want; a self-sustained fulfilled life. Their passion for learning provided the motivation to continually stretch themselves and strategise new ways of manoeuvring themselves through oppressive institutional structures and in doing so, create the conditions to live a life that is meaningful and fulfilling. g) “it’s like a baby, you have to learn again to hold yourself up to get yourself there … a love-hate relationship; so one day I love you [architecture] because of the ideas, but the next day I hate you” (Odirile) In the following excerpt, Odirile reflects on her ambivalent love-hate relationship with architecture. Odirile: I think for me, I always try and go to a place that I can control. I can control my life. I can own what is me and what I want in life. Everything also teaches me how to handle situations and to be stronger. I mean, the one thing I really enjoyed was for the past two years in this programme is being a leader. I think that really stretched me and that really pushed me … I just realised that like others saying to me sometimes I sell myself short … people are always saying how I sell myself short and I know I do, I do it a lot so I’m trying to find a way not to sell myself short and reassure myself, it’s a confidence issue … because of architecture and things that have happened because

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it is so subjective and you’re putting yourself out there and it’s your work, and your ideas and then when they [lecturers] crash them down, it’s directly interlinked to you and I’m an emotional being, very sensitive, emotional and I will take it personally, you know … it has been crushed you know but I’m learning now, it’s like a baby, you have to learn again to hold yourself up, to get yourself there and so and so it like this year, I’m going to take, it’s one step at a time … architecture, now we have a love-hate relationship; so one day I love you because of the ideas, but the next day I hate you. Odirile explains that as an emotional and sensitive being, her work and ideas are inextricably connected with her sense of self. Therefore, when lecturers “crash them down”, she herself feels crushed as a person. She expresses a “love-hate relationship” with architecture in that, “one day I love you [architecture] because of the ideas, but the next day I hate you”. In this sense, Odirile is referring to the ambivalent toroidal movement of a tragic love, in that neither could she completely despair because of her love for learning and longing to know; or genuinely be hopeful because of the conditions in which her ideas are received. On this border which holds unresolvable contradictions in the dialectical interplay between hope and despair, tragedy and love, Odirile points to the importance of movement in the process of repair. She compares the process of repairing her confidence and sense of self-worth with a baby who is learning to hold itself up and walk one step at a time; “it’s like a baby, you have to learn again to hold yourself up, to get yourself there … it’s one step at a time”.

Conclusion This chapter has provided evidence for the argument that the (neo)liberal logic of inclusion in and exclusion from classed entities of knowledge entails histories of colonialism which has made the world “white” in that the “body-at-home is one that can inhabit whiteness” (Ahmed, 2007, p. 153). Identity categories are thus treated as representational and fixed entities which close down human relationality and perceived racial

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“authenticity” leads to the labelling of the new Black middle class as “coconuts” (Matlwa, 2007; McKinney, 2007). (Neo)liberal entities of inclusionexclusion create a narrative reality of institutional timespaces that close individual bodies into separate entities with an inevitable overarching plot of sameness in the form of “academic excellence”. This inclusion logic operates by “schooling” students through the reward of formal recognition to not only confuse the value of education with grade advancement but also to confuse academic “excellence” with their sense of self-worth. This exclusion logic operates through the notion of academic “excellence” as evaluated against white middle-class habitus in which academic failure creates traumatic effects on one’s sense of self-­worth. The psychosocial effects of reforming this symbolic narrative reality is epistemic violence (Spivak, 1988) in that political systems and systems of knowledge work to rationalise and justify a “theodicean grammar” (Gordon, 2008, p. 76). These effects are reproduced through a set of white logic, white methods (Zuberi & BonillaSilva, 2008). This symbolic narrative reality, and its psychosocial effects are masked through disciplinary decadence (Gordon, 2006), assessors’ judgement-making processes as constituted through institutional values which are embedded in regulative rules and procedures (Shay, 2008) and the global university ranking systems which obscure struggles of unequal power relations as struggles for meritocratic recognition of “academic talent”. This symbolic narrative reality, and its psychosocial effects are re-formed through the fear of shattering failure as paralysis. This chapter has also provided evidence for the counter-argument that the symbolic narrative trans-formation of belonging to knowledge communities entails a phenomenology of whiteness (Ahmed, 2007). In this sense, the university could be a place that facilitates the “complex creativity involved in the ‘digestion’ and ‘liberation’ of contrasting spaces” (Harris, as cited in Peterson & Rutherford, 1995, p. 189). The trans-­formation of belonging to communities of learning which practice “distantiation, appropriation, research and articulation” (Slonimsky & Shalem, 2006) could create a symbolic narrative reality of biographical timespaces which open the individual bodies to communities of learning through interconnected networks of metamorphosis-based plots which portray the relationship between political and social life with/in and through personal lives in its moments of crisis and rebirth (Bakhtin, 1981). The

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psychosocial effects of trans-forming this symbolic narrative reality is the construction and enactment of knowledge through Biko’s (2012 [1978]) philosophy of Black Consciousness. This symbolic narrative reality, and its psychosocial effects could be unmasked in the following ways: First, adopting an ethical practice of listening to, understanding and addressing students’ moral evaluations of how the university affects their sense of selfworth. Second, teaching and assessment practices that are driven by a complexity-transdisciplinary frame of reference and a “teleological suspension of disciplinarity” (Gordon, 2011). Third, the exposure of psychic wounds through artistic expression with the aim of “decolonizing sensibilities” (Mignolo & Vázquez, 2013) and charting new theoretical pathways that would “guide us in the direction of liberatory terrain” (hooks, 2013, p. 191). This symbolic narrative reality, and its psychosocial effects could be trans-formed through a tragic love in motion.

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8 Towards a Complex-Reproductive System of (Re)pairing Being, Becoming and Belonging to Knowledge Communities in South Africa

Introduction In Chaps. 5, 6 and 7, I have discussed the re-formations and trans-­ formations of psychosocial pathways at South African universities: What does it entail? What reality does it create? What are the effects of this I use the term “reproductive” not in a physical sense but in a metaphorical and political sense as the symbolic reversal of the burial of the mother (Irigaray, 2002). The Nigerian sociologist Oyèrónké Oyĕwùmí, in her book What Gender is Motherhood? Changing Yorùbá Ideals of Power, Procreation, and Identity in the Age of Modernity, expands the category of motherhood beyond the realm of physical reproduction to encompass humanity, as she asserts: “the Ìyá figure is representative of humanity—they are the archetypal human being from which all humans derive” (p. 62). In African contexts, Oyĕwùmí explains that motherhood is a “collective rather than individually constructed category” (2016, p. 220). In her words: “Humanity cannot reproduce itself without motherhood. Therefore, the institution and everyday practices of mothering humanity must be a collective act, impelled by communal will. The challenge then is how to convince society that motherhood should not be the responsibility of just one woman or just one nuclear family but should be the bedrock on which society is built and the way in which we organize our lives.” (Oyĕwùmí, 2016, p. 220) This notion of motherhood and the practice of mothering is depicted on the cover image of conceiving narrative formations of relational selves. Lewis R. Gordon (2020) explains that in Mdu Ntr language, the foundational word “afri” means from the source, whereas “ka” refers to “life force” and “womb”. Therefore, Gordon shows that the word Africa (Afrika) means “from the source of life or the womb”. © The Author(s) 2020 S. Liccardo, Psychosocial Pathways Towards Reinventing the South African University, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49036-2_8

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reality? How is this reality masked and re-formed, as well as unmasked and potentially trans-formed? These psychosocial pathways, which are grounded in the symbolic narratives and knowledges of the women in this research project, are used to formulate a conceptual-empirical framework that provides an account of the multiple systems, processes and organising principles involved in the material-discursive, storied, and symbolic narrative  practices of (non)being, (not)becoming and (no)belonging to knowledge communities in “post”-apartheid South Africa. The research findings from Chaps. 5, 6 and 7 are interpreted using core principles of systems theory and complexity theory, which govern linear and nonlinear interactions between elements or change and continuity along a psychosocial pathway. We could compare researching complex systems to walking through a maze in “which walls rearrange themselves with every step you take” (Gleick as cited in Van der Westhuizen, 2015, p. 210). Similarly, researching complex systems could be likened to walking through a maze in which the walls constantly rearrange themselves with our every step (Van der Westhuizen, 2015). I use the aforementioned coordinates to map out a dominant pathway into the centre of the Minotaur’s labyrinth. In so doing, I provide a systems theory view of the regulative principles involved in the psychosocial re-formations or continuity along pathways of nonbeing a “person”, notbecoming “modern” people and no-belonging to knowledge communities in “post”-apartheid South Africa. The geometric shape of Manichean hierarchical entities is used as a metaphor for the dominant inertial momentum along three centripetal pathways in a closed system. I continue to use the coordinates to map a resistant pathway away from the centre and “out of ” the labyrinth. In doing so, I will provide a complexity theory view of the guiding principles involved in the psychosocial trans-formations or change along pathways of being  a person, becoming modern peoples and belonging to knowledge communities in “post”-apartheid South Africa. The geometric shape of rhythmical whole infinity networks is used as a metaphor for the resistant inertial momentum along three centrifugal pathways in a complex adaptive system. Using these coordinates to map out a dominant pathway into the centre of the Minotaur’s labyrinth, first, I will explain how Pathway A (the discursive-circulatory system of  zones of  nonbeing a “science person”) is

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structured by the dominance of a color-line (Du Bois, 2007[1903]) that is governed by the principles of “closed and isolated system boundaries” (Skyttner, 2001), “a goal-maintaining system” (Skyttner, 2001), linear “selforganisation” (Cilliers, 2001), predictable “emergent behaviour” (Dekker, 2011) and weak “attractors” (Cilliers, 2001). Second, I will discuss how Pathway B (the storied-nervous system of not-becoming “modern” scientists) is structured by the dominance of hierarchical-­heteropatriarchal lines which are governed by the principles of too clearly defined hierarchies, linear causality, negative feedback “loops” (De Toni & Comello, 2010) and no learning, self-development or growth. Third, I will explain how Pathway C-entre (the narrative-respiratory system of no-belonging to knowledge communities) is structured by the dominance of a (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion which are governed by the principles of “entropy” (von Bertalanffy, 1968), separation of elements, controllability, stability, no change, the maintenance of a predictable order and a state of equilibrium. I will use the same coordinates to map a resistant pathway away from the centre and “out of ” the labyrinth. First, I will explain how Pathway A (the discursive-circulatory system of being a science person) is structured by a resistant form of rhythmical infinity threads which are governed by the principles of strong attractors, nonlinear self-organisation, unpredictable emergent behaviour and multigoal-seeking, reflective and changing complex systems. Second, I will discuss how Pathway B (the storied-nervous system of becoming modern scientists) is structured by a resistant form of whole infinity loops which are governed by the “hologrammatic” principle or holism (De Toni & Comello, 2010), circular causality, retroactive positive feedback loops and learning, self-knowledge and growth. Third, I will explain how Pathway C (the narrative-­respiratory system of belonging to knowledge communities) is structured by a resistant form of rhythmical whole infinity networks which is governed by the principles of negative entropy or “negentropy” (Schrödinger, 1944), the interconnection of interacting elements, uncontrollability, unpredictability, constant change and hovering on the border of chaos in a “thin transition zone” (Marion, 1999, p. 23) of be-longing in between being and becoming. This chapter also offers a visual map as a conceptual-empirical framework that plots psychosocial pathways into the centre and “out of ” the Minotaur’s labyrinth.

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Research Questions This chapter will address three research questions: 1) Drawing on the symbolic narratives or knowledges of the women in this research project, how could we co-map pathways into the centre of the Minotaur’s labyrinth? What are the particular forms and regulative principles which govern the re-formations of zones of nonbeing a “person”, not-becoming “modern” people and no-belonging to knowledge communities in South Africa? 2) Drawing on the symbolic narratives or knowledges of the women in this research project, how could we reinvent pathways away from the centre and “out of ” the Minotaur’s labyrinth? What are the particular forms and guiding principles which govern the trans-formations of being a person, becoming modern peoples and to belonging to knowledge communities in South Africa? 3) How could we use these pathways to formulate a conceptual-empirical framework that provides an account of the multiple systems, processes and organising principles involved in the material-discursive, storied, and symbolic narrative practices of (non)being, (not)becoming and (no)belonging to knowledge communities in “post”-apartheid South Africa?

Complex Systems Theory1 The movement away from positivist methods towards nonlinear perspectives on the interconnectedness and interdependence of systemic societal challenges required a shift in perspective from objects to relationality, from contents to patterns and from the parts to the whole (Capra, 1996). Complexity theory engages with the nonlinear dynamics involved in the  In this chapter I will only draw on the basics of systems theory and complexity theory to pinpoint the organising principles which govern a complex narrative system of (non)being, (not)becoming and (no)belonging to knowledge communities in “post”-apartheid South Africa. An in-depth analysis of  complexity theory in  relation to  no-belonging to  knowledge communities is beyond the scope of this book and will be developed elsewhere. 1

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complex nature of societal challenges (Manson, 2001) and views change as resulting from the nonlinear interactions between system elements (Dolan, Garcia, Diegoli, & Auerbach, 2000). System and structure form part of a subgroup of words that are represented by the heading stand (Partridge, 2006). As society is structured, groups of people are assigned structured positions. A system is the restructuring of several interrelated components which function together as an organised whole. A system could be either open or closed, simple or complex (Cordon, 2013). What is the target set point of a system? On the one hand, closed systems work together to reach its target set point of homeostasis or balance (Cordon, 2013). Self-regulation provides negative feedback into what measures a system needs to take in order to meet its target set point and maximum entropy equilibrium. On the other hand, according to complexity theory, equilibrium is equivalent to death (Cilliers, 2001).2 In open systems, it is the lack of order, stability and state of balance which constantly drives the flow of energy through the system and creates the possibility for gradual change and development (Cilliers, 2001; Walby, 2007). Morrison (2008) describes complexity theory as the ongoing creation of new knowledge: it forces creativity, rather than recycling the old and familiar; it is a theory of perpetual novelty, disequilibrium and creativity; and it is a restatement of the need for humility and humanity in admitting that our knowledge, though only partial and incomplete, may be the best that we can do”. (as cited in Van der Westhuizen, 2015, p. 25)

Whereas the components in biological systems work together to meet its target set point of homeostasis or balance, the target set point in a narrative complex system entails specified social norms in the form of “scripts” (Appiah, 1994) or “story lines” (Bonilla-Silva, Lewis, & Embrick, 2004). The word norm is from the Latin norma meaning “a carpenter’s square, hence a rule of conduct” and forma, “a concrete form, a mould, hence shape” (Partridge, 2006, p. 3275). The adjective normāl means “patterned or made with a carpenter’s square, hence, in [Latin], conforming to rule,  My thanks to Amanda Van der Westhuizen for responding to my questions about complexity theory and for sharing valuable resources with me. 2

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becomes [French] normal” (Partridge, 2006, p. 2147). Social norms could be viewed as forms, shapes or patterns of behaviour that conform to specified principles, rules of conduct or evaluative standards. Social norms are forms of structuration. The word structure is from the Latin struere which contains the following compounds: construere which means to build up or construct, dēstruere is to build down or deconstruct, and reconstruere means to rebuild or reconstruct (Partridge, 2006). Social norms are patterns of structuration which take on dominant and resistant forms. Whereas the Latin superstāre is “to stand over, to dominate, has derivative [adjective] superstes, remaining above or on top”, the word substāre is “to stand under, hence, to resist, to persist, to subsist” (Partridge, 2006, p. 3222). When the constitutive elements in the material-discursive system, storied system and symbolic narrative system are arranged according to the logics of splitting, ranking and separating, then social norms as patterns of structuration take on dominant forms of dividing lines, hierarchical lines and entities which resemble a hierarchal boxed geometric shape (See Fig. 3.2). In other words, I use this geometric shape of Manichean hierarchical entities as a metaphor for the re-formations within and of closed systems of white logic. Conversely, when the constitutive elements of the material-discursive system, storied system and symbolic narrative system are arranged according to the logics of stringing together, relating and connecting, then social norms as patterns of structuration take on disruptive forms of rhythms, boundless wholes and networks which resemble an infinity geometric shape (See Fig. 3.3). I use this geometric shape of rhythmical whole infinity networks as a metaphor for the trans-formations within and of organic and complex adaptive systems which is always changing because it never reacts to external conditions in exactly the same way. De Toni and Comello (2010) compare complexity to “a garden of forking paths, the alternation of continuity and discontinuity, the place where everything is destroyed and recreated around us, the place where we are the first active creators of the reality” (p.  41). Gleick proposes researching of complex systems could be compared to walking through a maze in “which walls rearrange themselves with every step you take” (as cited in Van der Westhuizen, 2015, p. 210). Similarly, researching complex systems could be likened to walking through a maze in which the

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walls constantly rearrange themselves with our every step (Van der Westhuizen, 2015). The complexity approach to research challenges the researcher to move with the uncertainty and unpredictability of rearranging “walls” within a dynamic complex system, which facilitates an understanding of nonlinear dynamics instead of imposing a false logic in order to fulfil a specified traditional purpose of analysis (Patton, 2002). In addressing the research questions in this chapter, I will propose Fig. 8.1 as well as Tables 8.1 and 8.2 as a conceptual-­empirical framework or map that details a way into and “out of” the Minotaur’s labyrinth of racial power.

Fig. 8.1  Co-mapping pathways into the centre and “out of” the Minotaur’s labyrinth

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 o-mapping Pathways into the Centre C of the Minotaur’s Labyrinth: Manichean Hierarchical Entities as a Closed System of Shattering Failure as Paralysis  athway A: The Discursive-Circulatory System P of Zones of Nonbeing a “Science Person”: An Institutional Culture Structured by a color-line  1)3 Body: Bounded Space as Our Tainted Second Skin A Function Through Isolated System Boundaries The bounded space of an institutional culture structured by a color-line (Du Bois, 2007[1903]) entails our tainted second skin. The re-formation of institutional culture entails an absolute conception of bounded space which is attached to ideologically imposed identity categories. This absolute understanding of space serves the ideological function of enclosing and rendering places as bounded and relating them with certain identity categories (Tamboukou, 2003). A color-line takes the form of an absolute conception of bounded space. According to the research findings, the discursive-circulatory system of zones of  nonbeing a “science person” is re-formed in the following three ways: a) “You don’t even remember my name” (Alala): Masculine whiteness and the dominance associated with being named the invisible norm (Dyer, 1997). Being the somatic norm in an institutional culture organised by a colorline is that which is known, visible or recognisable as an individual with an “identity”. For example, Alala alludes to how Donald and Peter, her white and male counterparts, are treated as somatically “normal” embodied subjects who “masquerade as the universal”, while Alala is circumscribed as being “out-of-place” and rendered with no name (Puwar, 2004, p.  8).  This numbering (A1, A2, A3, A4 etc.) in this chapter corresponds to the numbering in Fig. 8.1 and Tables 8.1 and 8.2. 3

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As norms affect the ways in which spaces and bodies are imagined, Donald and Peter are deemed as having the right to belong in the lecture-room and to the science community. b) “I had a terrible breakdown … it was the dynamics of my spaces” (Odirile): One’s sense of being is kept in place or out-of-place in intraaction with material-discursive spaces (Barad, 2007). Itumeleng explains that her entry into male- and white-dominated fields of study was “a battle” because she could not remember whether she was taught by a Black lecturer and there were no role models in her department with whom she could identify. Odirile spoke about her experience of racial segregation in the classroom and how the dynamics of her spaces was psychologically distressing and led to a terrible breakdown because her sense of being emerges in intra-action—in spaces between bodies, chairs, walls and narratives of the classroom setting (Barad, 2007). Furthermore, Odirile explains that “dealing with the issue of colour” in her department was difficult because she believes that there was no formal platform for Black students to publicly voice their experiences of everyday racism in the institution. c) “even the, I mustn’t, white students [agreed that my] work is good enough” (Alala): Whiteness functions as a Catch-22 logic of academic “excellence”. The fabricated contradictions between “black = incapacity, and therefore white = excellence” (Van der Westhuizen, 2018, p. 343) is evident in Alala’s question as to why she received a fail mark if “even the—I mustn’t—the white students [agreed my] work is good enough”. According to a Catch-22 logic that functions according to a color-line, one would need to be considered to be “white” before one’s work is considered to be “good enough” but one’s work cannot be considered “good enough” before one is considered to be “white”. The second skin (space) of institutional culture is tainted by a colorline that follows the principle of “closed and isolated system boundaries” (Skyttner, 2001). Boundaries, as social constructs, determine what is included or left out from a social system (Richardson & Midgley, 2007). Whereas a closed system only receives information or energy into the system, an isolated system is isolated from its environment (Friedman & Allen, 2011).

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 2) Body: Nonbeing as Wounded Skin Function Through A a Goal-Maintaining System An institutional culture structured by a color-line creates the reality of nonbeing as wounded skin. The re-formation of institutional culture creates a lived material-discursive reality of a zone of being “human” and what Fanon (1967) has called a zone of nonbeing or not being “human” enough (Gordon, 2006; Maldonado-Torres, 2008; Wynter, 2003). A color-line takes the form of zones of being and zones of nonbeing. Put differently, the re-formation of the discursive-circulatory system of zones of nonbeing a “science person” creates a lived material-discursive reality with the following four dimensions: a) “sometimes you just, you do need that same love that the others get [from the lecturers].” (Welile): Black students’ bids for love and recognition disrupted by race. Welile, for instance, explains that as her bids for love and recognition were disrupted by race, she did not feel as valued as her white counterparts. b) “[The lecturer] would keep his eyes on me and he’ll always ask if I understand” (Takalani): Normalisation, misrecognition and delegitimisation of Black women’s membership to science communities. As Takalani’s lecturer would “always ask if I understand … did you really get that?”, she becomes a subject of misrecognition or “disrupted recognition” because her race and gender had obstructed her lecturer and peers from recognising and trusting her academic abilities (Johnson, Brown, Carlone, & Cuevas, 2011). In this context,  Black women are ascribed academically deficient identities, which delegitimises their membership in a community of practice (Johnson et al., 2011). c) “I need to be quiet and probably learn how they speak [English]” (Takalani): Whiteness is conflated with English and associated with mind and rationality (Dyer, 1997). Takalani, for example, expressed her concern that if she did not speak “proper [or] fluent English” people would think that she was “unfit to come [to university]” or question her intelligence and academic ability which illustrates how whiteness is conflated with English and associated with mind, rationality, intelligence and a disembodied universal humanity (Dyer, 1997; Weedon, 2004).

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d) “[The lecturers] always made you feel like inferior and just put, put you down” (Odirile): Restricted epistemological access (Morrow, 2007), symbolic violence (Bulhan, 1985) and socially induced feelings of nonexistence for Black students. Odirile is faced with restricted epistemological access (Morrow, 2007) to her discipline because if lecturers in architecture, as she notes, “don’t give me a chance to explain myself or you don’t explain to me [then] how am I supposed to learn?” The inclusion-exclusion logic to normative entities of knowledge is a form of symbolic violence (Bulhan, 1985) in that it not only provides Black women access into a system that rewards those who possess particular forms of cultural capital (i.e. predominantly white men) but also blocks their progression within this system which creates ancillary feelings of nonexistence for young Black women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The skin (nonbeing) of institutional culture is wounded by a color-line that follows the principle of a goal-maintaining regulatory system (Skyttner, 2001) in which there is only one possible response, that is, to achieve a pre-determined goal (Skyttner, 2001, p. 67).

 3) Soul: Social Structure-agency as Our Clogged Blood A Vessels Function Through Linear Self-organisation and Predictable Emergent Behaviour The social structure of an institutional culture organised by a color-line is an effect of our clogged blood vessels. The social effects of re-forming this lived material-discursive reality is generated by (non)material social facts that thwart human needs through the possessive investment in whiteness (Lipsitz, 2006). A color-line takes the form of the possessive investment in whiteness. The re-formation of this lived material-discursive reality creates the following social effect: a) “[Art was] soul work for me … but it’s hard to get back to that point” (Alala): Structures of dehumanisation materialise into prison houses of epistemic “correctness” which alienate Black students from productions of their own meanings (Bulhan, 1985).

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If students are disciplined on how to “do things [in] a certain way” as Alala notes, without allowing for the possibility of putting their selves or creativity into a particular project, then it would perpetuate the “reproduction of sameness” (Essed & Goldberg, 2002, p. 1067) and produce structures of dehumanisation. These structures of dehumanisation materialise into prison houses of epistemic “correctness” which alienates Black students from their own social reality and constitutes a form of social and ideological oppression (Bulhan, 1985). As being is a state of becoming, the social effects of structural dehumanisation legitimise the cultural subjugation of Black peoples. The blood vessels (social structure-agency) of institutional culture is clogged by a color-line that follows the principle of linear “self-­ organisation” (Cilliers, 2001) and predictable “emergent behaviour” (Dekker, 2011) in a closed system. Paul Cilliers (2001) defines self-­ organisation as “a property of complex systems which enables them to develop or change internal structure spontaneously and adaptively in order to cope with, or manipulate, their environment” (p. 90). Emergent behaviour occurs through spontaneous self-organisation or the interaction between various elements in a system as a whole (Cilliers, 2001).

 4) Soul: Dominant Two-dimensional Discourse as Our A Constricted Blood Function as Weak Attractors Dominant two-dimensional discourse of an institutional culture structured by a color-line is masked and re-formed by our constricted blood. These social effects and material-discursive reality are masked through deficient constructions of Black students as “lacking” dominant cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) as well as re-formed through Black students’ restricted financial access to university education and the ignorance contract as set by the white population (Steyn, 2012). This lived material-discursive reality is masked in the following two ways: a) “you’d be like, ‘oh probably I’m not meant to be here [at university]’” (Takalani): The so-called lack of dominant institutionalised capital in the form of background knowledge.

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Students who are situated in middle-classed positions (i.e. those who come from private schools and former Model C high schools) have developed the kind of academic habitus (particularly knowledge-how), which facilitates their epistemological access (Morrow, 2007) to the dominant institutionalised capital in historically white universities. b) “I’d only speak [English] if I was requested to … what if I make a mistake? What if I don’t say it right?” (Takalani): The so-called lack of dominant embodied cultural capital in the form of linguistic capital. English proficiency is associated with whiteness in South Africa and is the most highly valued form of linguistic and cultural capital (Mckinney, 2007), particularly in the context of HWUs. This lived material-discursive reality is  re-formed in the following two ways: c) “[I am my family’s] retirement plan” (Alala): Black students’ restricted financial access to university education. The women mentioned that they would have not had the financial means to attend university if they had not received the Oya scholarship which provided the necessary financial support for the duration of their undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. A few women, who are first-­ generation in their families to attend university, also explained that choosing to pursue a particular degree was influenced by whether it would enable them to financially support their family. d) “[Donald] let’s just acknowledge it for what it is, don’t, don’t wear a face for us” (Alala): Signing the “ignorance contract” (Steyn, 2012) to maintain the size of one’s classed networks and volume of economic and cultural capital. Alala’s comment demonstrates how “ignorance functions as social regulation through forming subjectivities” in which white (and male) subjects in privileged positions become “appropriate performers of ignorance” by wearing a face (Steyn, 2012, p. 8). As masculine whiteness is dominant in a South African society that is structured by racial hierarchies, white (and male) subjects possess large volumes of capital, which enables Donald, for example, to preserve old existing normalised traditional practices in a field by “wearing a face” or “pretend[ing] that it [receiving preferential treatment] wasn’t happening”, as Alala notes. The blood (discourses) of institutional culture is constricted by a colorline that follows the principle of weak “attractors” (Cilliers, 2001) in a

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closed system. Change occurs when a system shifts from one attractor state to another. Within this phase space, the system could move to several possible attractor states (Walton, 2014, Capra, 1996). An attractor is described as the point in which the trajectories of possible states of a system reach a particular state-space (Cilliers, 2001). Attractors could thus be viewed as magnetic forces that pull or attract patterns of actions or interactions in a system towards a specific trajectory (Gilstrap, 2005; Van der Westhuizen, 2015).

 athway B: The Storied-Nervous System of P Not-becoming “Modern” Scientists: Pedagogies Re-formed by Hierarchical-Heteropatriarchal Lines  1) Body: Linear Time as Our Tunnel-Visioned Third Eye B Operates Through Too Clearly Defined Hierarchies The tunnel-visioned time of pedagogy structured by hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines entails our third eye. The re-formation of pedagogy entails Newton’s theorisation of time which functions as a spatial coordinate. The claim to universal truth by Western systems of knowledge and its dependence upon a guarantee of meaning relies on a linear temporal order of space. Hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines take the form of time which functions as a spatial coordinate. According to the research findings, the storied-nervous system of notbecoming “modern” scientists is re-formed in the following two ways: a) “The problem is they [lecturers] try and shape us into what they want us to be” (Alala): Women’s entry into science as surrogates who are expected to conform to Eurocentric norms and pedagogies (Roach, 1996). Institutions endure because people conform to normative practices and preform the characters that are scripted to them, similar to “surrogation” (Roach, 1996, p. 2) in which people step into the roles of those who have departed. b) “You’ve got to understand why, why they needed housing, where they come from, I mean it’s the whole story, narratives” (Alala): The production of knowledge as an individual possession that is disconnected from people’s needs, reality and sense of humanity.

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Architectural design, for example, must not be created with an intention rooted in the possessive investment in whiteness (Lipsitz, 2006)”, but rather knowledge production must be in tune with people’s needs, reality and sense of humanity. The third eye (linear time) of pedagogy has tunnel vision due to rigid hierarchies that are hetero-patriarchal, and are too clearly defined or permanent in a system. Although hierarchies are necessary for elements within a system to function, if hierarchies are permanent or too clearly defined, then the system becomes rigid and invariable (Cilliers,  2001; Van der Westhuizen, 2015).

 2) Body: Not-Becoming as Our Wilfully Short-Sighted Eyes B Function Through Linear Causality Pedagogies structured by hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines create the reality of not-becoming as our wilfully short-sighted eyes. The re-­ formation of pedagogy creates a told storied reality of “[b]ecoming white as an institutional line [that] is closely related to the vertical promise of class mobility” (Ahmed, 2007, p.  160). Hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines take the form of masculine whiteness as a linear trajectory of “progress”. The re-formation of not-becoming modern scientists creates a told storied reality with the following two dimensions: a) “Hi Donald, you are the future of William and Smith’s Architects” (Alala): “Cultural cloning” (Essed & Goldberg, 2002) and masculine whiteness as a linear trajectory of “progress” to the apex of the hierarchy. The dynamics of existing knowledge systems means that institutions such as William and Smith’s Architects are often in the business of what Essed and Goldberg (2002) call cultural cloning in which institutions systematically reproduce sameness through a conception of temporality that follows a linear trajectory of progress in which individual agency is positioned within an autonomous, independent and rational mode of subjectivity (Venn, 2000). b) “I sort of lost my voice and I was like, ‘okay, whatever you have for me I’ll do it’” (Alala): Alienation from the product of labour and the act of production itself (Bulhan, 1985; Marx, 1964).

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The women’s sense of alienation from the product of work and the act of production itself is attributed to being treated as if “who I am?” As not becoming or belonging to the future. Being given minimal responsibilities at work, as Alala noted, or struggling for two years to find employment after graduating with their honour’s degree does not create the conditions in which young professionals are able to do meaningful work that would affect society and the future of STEM disciplines. The eyes (becoming) of pedagogy are wilfully short-sighted by hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines that follow the principle of linear causality in a system. Nonlinear cause-and-effect explanations are needed to understand complex systems (De Toni & Comello, 2010).

 3) Soul: Sedimented Cultural Memory as Our Unmalleable B Spinal Cord Function Through Negative Feedback Loops The sedimented cultural memory of pedagogies structured by hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines is an effect of our unmalleable spinal cord. The psychical effects of the re-formation of this told storied reality is that cultural definitions of humanity are instruments of racial power to create cultural boundaries defined along the lines of racial, national, geographical or linguistic divisions (Bolaffi, Bracalenti, Braham, & Gindro, 2003; Payne, 2010). Hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines takes the form of cultural boundaries defined along categories of social divisions. The re-formation of this told storied reality creates the following psychical effects which is twofold: a) “ I’d rather not do anything than, than to be forced to be, to sort of like constantly kill my passion” (Alala): The attainment of “full personhood” through assimilation into the dominant culture’s sense of value means the separate deaths of oneself (Lugones, 2003; Lugones & Price, 1995). The women’s experiences of being forced to assimilate into normative entities of cultural values have meant the separate deaths of their selves (Lugones, 2003;  Lugones & Price, 1995). This constitutes a form of social and cultural oppression in that they were constantly force-fed normalised “truths” of the dominant culture which devalues their sense of self, backgrounds and cultures (Hook, 2004).

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b) “[My mother’s dream] it’s a faith thing, you’re putting in the effort [but] it doesn’t always come out the way you want it to be” (Alala): The dignity of struggle and the tragic hope in remaining strong-willed even after devastating losses and disappointments (Eagleton, 2015). Alala’s mother plants and waters a seed in hope that she will reap a harvest which could be symbolic of how mothers invest in their children’s education with their middle-class aspiration that they will distribute the harvest to their family. However, the farmers (families) in South Africa do not always reap the same harvest because they do not compete on a level playing field as the material spaces that comprise the field are mutually structured and shaped by uneven social relations. The spinal cord (cultural memory) of pedagogy is unmalleable because of hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines that follow the principle of negative feedback loops in a system. As the output from the interaction between elements alters the input back into the system, feedback loops can either disrupt or regulate a system (Cilliers, 2001; Friedman & Allen, 2011). Learning within complex systems are created by feedback loops (Sterman, 2006). Amanda Van der Westhuizen (2015) explains that negative feedback loops could “have a self-corrective, adaptive, and stabilising effect on the system (Anderson et al., 1999, p. 37; Skyttner, 2001) aimed at restoring balance in the system after changes or perturbance to the system” (p.  49). Put differently, negative feedback could obstruct change in a system because of its attempt to maintain equilibrium and homeostasis (Byrne, 1998; Walby, 2007).

 4) Soul: Single Story Scripts as Our Narrow-minded Brain B Function Through No Learning, Self-Development or Growth Single story scripts of pedagogies structured by hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines are masked and re-formed with our narrow-minded brain. These psychical effects and told storied reality are masked and re-formed through rehearsing, preforming or acting out deeply entrenched and sedimented ideological “scripts” (Appiah, 1994), “story lines” (Bonilla-Silva et al., 2004) or a “story stock” (Linde, 2009). Hierarchical-­heteropatriarchal lines take the form of scripts, story lines or a stock story.

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This told storied reality is masked in the following three ways: a) “if you have slept with a guy or if you have a baby by 21 … they [family]  won’t even throw you a [21st] party” (Nosakhele): Rehearsing script one—Being a “baby girl”. Women’s sexuality is culturally and socially produced and inextricably connected with power and domination as a woman’s virginity is monitored through cultural and religious practices (Chisale & Moyo, 2016; Wynn & Hassanein, 2017). b) “I was seen as the perfect girl at home, so [my sister] was just waiting for that moment to turn me in” (Mamoratwa): Rehearsing script two—Being a “good girl”. The entrenched roles and expectations of gendered existence in the script of being “the perfect girl” was not only isolating but also a form of imprisonment because it creates the conditions in which, as Mamoratwa explains, her sister “was just waiting for that moment to turn [her] in”. c) “for males, they can do whenever, they don’t have to look after kids” (Ambani): Rehearsing script three—Child-rearing as solely a female’s responsibility. Women have historically faced restricted options of educational opportunities and gaining footholds in the public realm because they have generally carried the important responsibility of childrearing (Mama, 2003). This told storied reality is re-formed in the following two ways: d) “no, we will not stay for tea because you have done us wrong, you have ruined [impregnated] our girl” (Welile): The Western distinction between the masculine and the feminine and the social construction of honour and shame at the core of virginity control (Awwad, 2011). Virginity is “an element of normative patriarchal restrictions on women’s sexuality” (Matswetu & Bhana, 2018, p. 2). The Western distinction between masculine and feminine is a crucial element in the functioning of the social construct of honour and shame in which shame is constructed as a “feminine quality” where women are ascribed the duty to protect chastity so as to ensure that a family’s honour is not “ruined” or “damaged”, as mentioned by Welile (Awwad, 2011).

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e) “Rob said that if the child is a boy, the child is going to be Rob Junior, but if it is a girl that I can just name it” (Welile): The patriarchal family as an administrative base unit in socio-political and economic state structures (Ortner, 1978). The patriarchal social structure of the extended family domesticates men, as husbands, fathers and sons to take responsibility for their family units, not just economically but also in terms of “political accountability” (Ortner, 1978). In this sense, the family unit “became the base, and often the only base, of his jural status” (Ortner, 1978, p. 29). The brain (stories) of pedagogy is narrow-minded by hierarchicalheteropatriarchal lines that follow the principle of no learning or evolving in a system. Sterman (2006) proposes that as the human mind is overwhelmed by the impossibility of processing reality in all its complexity, humans tend to “fall back on rote procedures, habit, rules of thumb, and simple mental models” (as cited Van der Westhuizen, 2015, p. 60).

 athway C-entre: The Narrative-Respiratory System P of No-Belonging to Knowledge Communities: Social Scientific Research Re-formed by (Neo)liberal Entities of Inclusion-Exclusion  1) Body: Chronotopes Expressed Through One-dimensional C Symbols as the Stale Air We Breathe Function Through Entropy The chronotopes (symbols) of research that is structured by (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion entails the stale air we breathe. The re-­ formation of research entails histories of colonialism which continue to make the world “white” in that the “body-at-home is one that can inhabit whiteness” (Ahmed, 2007, p.  153). (Neo)liberal entities of inclusionexclusion takes the form of whiteness which works as  a “straightening device” (p.  159) and “the habitual as a form of inheritance” (Ahmed, 2007, p. 156).

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According to the research findings, the inclusion-exclusion logic to classed entities of knowledge entails the following three elements: a) “I’ll stick to my kind … who you fit in with … was dictated by the religion that you are in, your race and your culture, all of that. I think those were very set ideas” (Amirah): Identity categories as representational entities that are fixed and close-down relationality and connection. The identification with subject positions that social discourses of difference such as race, ethnicity, and religion construct for us, dictates what or “who you are, who you fit in with” (Amirah) which closes down human relationality. b) “some of my cousins they, they called me ‘white’ now, and well they’ve been calling me ‘white’ since I came to [this HWU]” (Nosakhele): Perceived racial “authenticity” and labelling the new Black middle class as “coconuts” (Matlwa, 2007; McKinney, 2007). By calling Nosakhele “white” and labelling her a “coconut”, her cousins are implying that she has “become contaminated by ‘whiteness’ through too much contact with its ways”, for example, through shifting class positions (Vincent, 2008, p. 1435). c) “[Labels] are a horrible weapon, its destructive, the adjectives that describe these labels can tear the person apart for life” (Kaiya): The socialisation into cultural values of whiteness via mass media. Mass media bombards people with as Kaiya explains, “image[s] of what is ‘beautiful’ and ‘accepted’ in society”. The adjectives used to describe these labels, such as “white coconut”, make up an image of what Kaiya calls “the negative you” which is disabling because despite being an agentic subject who overcomes obstacles, she concludes, “you will never be satisfied at your accomplishments, there’s always going to be a problem”. In this way, she is describing her lived experience of being socially constructed as a problem (Du Bois, 2007[1903]). The air (chronotopes) of research is stale because of (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion that follow through “entropy” which comes to a halt at a chemical or thermodynamic equilibrium (von Bertalanffy, 1968, p. 39). Marcel Van der Watt (2018) explains that unlike the deterioration that occurs in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, “Life processes of living creatures, as open systems, continue to move towards greater complexity and diversity” (p. 341).

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 2) Body: The (Neo)liberal Inclusion-Exclusion Logic C (i.e. No-belonging) as Our Breathlessness Function Through the Separation of Elements Research that is structured by (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion create a reality of breathlessness. The re-formation of research produces a symbolic narrative reality of institutional timespaces that close the individual body in separate unchanging entities with an inevitable overarching plot of sameness in the form of “academic excellence” or “academic talent” which is evaluated against white middle-class habitus. (Neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion takes the form of institutional timespaces in which space and time is made meaningless because nothing changes between the starting and ending points of the narrative. On the one hand, this inclusion logic functions in two ways: a) “I realised that [education is important] because they were starting to give us, to give out rewards, awards. So, if you do well, you are recognised” (Ambani): Inclusion as ‘schooling’ students through the reward of formal recognition to confuse the value of education with grade advancement or academic “excellence”. The recognition of shared characteristics with other individuals who have risen to the top of a hierarchy of honour in a merit-based culture provides a sense of inclusion into an exclusive group of academically talented achievers. b) “I defined myself as being someone who knows. I’m knowledgeable” (Takalani): Inclusion as “schooling” students to confuse academic “excellence” with their sense of self-worth. The formal reward of recognition that the women received for their academic performance defined who they believed themselves to be. What the reward of recognition was doing is “school” students to confuse studying with learning, academic marks with competence, academic awards with the ability to innovate, grade enhancement with the value of education and academic “excellence” with their sense of self-worth. On the other hand, this exclusion logic functions in two ways: c) “I don’t think overthinking is a problem. I don’t think you fail a person for overthinking” (Alala): Exclusion as the mystery of failing for “overthinking” which implies the mastery of the lecturer who is typically a white mister and missus (Ahrentzen & Anthony, 1993).

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The “Mister Mastery Mystery Phenomenon” (Ahrentzen & Anthony, 1993) demonstrates that instead of making explicit the implicit rules of enquiry and the construction of knowledge in a discipline, lecturers keep their practices a mystery by saying, “you are just not there yet [or I had] over thought it’”, as Alala notes. d) “they must give the scholarship to somebody else who is more deserving because I am just a failure” (Welile): Exclusion as the evaluation of academic “excellence” against white middle-class habitus and the traumatic effects of academic failure on one’s sense of self-worth. From an early age, the education system has socialised these women into an ideology of individualism and meritocracy. As a result, they were led to believe that their advancement in science is solely dependent on their academic ability and hard work, and that the ideological categories of race, gender and class which are constitutive of subject positions would not interfere in their pursuit of a STEM degree. Research that is re-formed by (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion create a sense of breathlessness by separating elements in a system which cannot interact, change or grow.

 3) Soul: Atrophied Knowledge as Our Punctured Lungs C Function Through Controllability, Predictability and No Change Our punctured lungs is an effect of research that is structured by (neo) liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion. The psychosocial effects of re-­ forming this symbolic narrative reality is that political systems and systems of knowledge work to rationalise and justify a “theodicean grammar” in which the “appeal to blacks as problem-people is an assertion of their ultimate location outside the systems of order and rationality” (Gordon, 2008, p. 76). (Neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion takes the form of the secularisation of theodicy in which political systems and systems of knowledge serve to justify, rationalise and maintain social inequalities and injustices. The re-formation of this narrative reality creates psychosocial effects which are twofold:

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a) “we have to incorporate what has been, what has been kept quiet for so long” (Alala): The historical context, which is written into the very core of institutions, bears upon culture like a “dead weight” (Thaver, 2006). The women point to how disciplinary and institutional cultures remain obdurate as they are treated like guests instead of critical members of the university community who are actively creating new ways of belonging to and remaking its tradition (Thaver, 2006). b) “we have to fight for our ideas to be heard. We still have to fight for a stake. We still have to fight with ourselves” (Alala): “Epistemic violence” (Spivak, 1988) reproduced through a set of “white logic, white methods” (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008). The “white logic” (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008) which informs the inclusion into and exclusion from classed entities of knowledge creates a symbolic narrative reality of “epistemic violence” (Spivak, 1988) in that these women are forced to struggle against a socially induced sense of nonexistence, as Odirile states, “[The lecturers] always made you feel like inferior and just put, put you down [like] you not worth your being here”. The lungs (knowledge) of research is punctured by (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion that follow the principle of controllability, predictability and no change. Instead of attempting to predict the future state of a complex system and “managing change” (Wallace, Fertig, & Schneller, 2007), complexity requires that one embrace “the possibility, the surprise and the novelty” (De Toni & Comello, 2010, p, 41).

 4) Predictable Symbolic Narratives as Our Shattered Heart C Function Through the Maintenance of Predictable Order, Stability and a State of Equilibrium Predictable research that is structured by (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion is like our shattered heart. Firstly, these psychosocial effects and symbolic narrative reality are masked through teaching and assessment practices that are driven by disciplinary decadence (Gordon, 2006) and meritocratic recognition of “academic talent”. Secondly, these psychosocial effects and symbolic  narrative reality are re-formed through the fear of  shattering failure as paralysis. (Neo)liberal entities

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of inclusion-exclusion takes the form of disciplinary decadence (Gordon, 2006), meritocratic recognition and shattering failure as paralysis. This symbolic narrative reality is masked in the following three ways: a) “you don’t try and say ‘eat this, this is the Book of Life, eat, this is what I’m telling you’” (Alala): Disciplinary decadence (Gordon, 2006) and the internalisation of regulative rules, consumption of lifeless knowledge and regurgitation of methods committed to colour-blind individualism and meritocracy. Alala’s reference to the “Book of Life” could be likened to the Eurocentric curriculum, which is based on normative theory and used by lecturers as a principle or moral rule to influence students’ thinking and acting. This “Book of Life” refers to Western “standards” that set up rules of behaviour in which living knowledges are not digested, rather normative theory is consumed. This alerts us to the fact that when a discipline is not grounded in reality, it is treated like the “Book of Life” which leads to disciplinary decadence (Gordon, 2006). b) “they [lecturers] mark on ‘feeling’ and you’d be like, ‘but I don’t understand what that means’” (Itumeleng): Assessors’ judgement-making processes are a social practice constituted through disciplinary, departmental and institutional values which are embedded in regulative rules and procedures (Shay, 2008). As assessment is a social practice which is concerned with people’s habitual acts of judgement making, assessors would be unable to fully articulate their judgement-making processes if they have not reflected on that which generates their activities of classifying the world (Shay, 2008). c) “it’s people defining you … It doesn’t matter if it’s not a big number next to my name or a shiny star on my forehead” (Alala): Global university ranking systems obscure struggles of unequal power relations as struggles for meritocratic recognition of “academic talent” which preserves the legacy of racial hierarchy and perpetuates social inequality. In the context of global university ranking systems, the notions of “quality” and “excellence” are affected by neoliberal discourses around capitals and institutionalised through meritocratic recognition of “academic talent” in which differently positioned institutions and agents compete in an endless struggle to realise their interests (Bourdieu, 1998). This symbolic narrative reality is re-formed in the following ways:

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d) “dealing with this uncertainty about myself … how can I get a Master’s if I’m so unsure about myself ” (Odirile). Odirile attempts to regain her confidence by “prepping myself and pepping myself up” in order to reconcile the contradictory feelings of obtaining a Master’s degree but still being unsure about herself. e) “people will expect things from you just because you are a smart person. You ‘should have’ been done. You ‘should have’ been working now … I find myself crying, blaming myself ” (Takalani). These external pressures are internalised as the women define themselves in terms of excellent academic performance, culminating in guilt, sadness and self-blame when they do not meet these demands. f ) “It [failure] was devastating. You just feel defeated” (Alala). The women interpreted failing test scores as more than a measure of specific competencies and knowledge, implying something about their value as a person. Their experiences of academic failure thus culminated in feelings of disbelief, shock, anger, sadness, embarrassment, confusion, loneliness, devastation and defeat. g) “I think that pain [of failure] … you have to live with it, it becomes too sinked in … I mean the pain is over, but it becomes a part of you” (Takalani). The past becomes actively alive in the present through the temporal quality of identity which is expressed in recollective narratives (Wengraf, 2011) that not only contributes to self-understanding but also resurfaces earlier hurts that could undermine one’s sense of confidence. Stillborn: The heart (predictable  symbolic narratives) of knowledge communities is shattered by (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion that maintains predictable order, stability and a state of equilibrium. This severs the relationship between science, art, and human reality. Art has a far-reaching transformative impact on humanity through its rare acts of transcendence (hooks, 1995). A purpose of art is “to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible” (Tolstoy, 1904, p. 102). Therefore, a misguided path in science causes a correspondingly misguided path in art. According to systems theory, a system adapts and adjusts to changing conditions in its environment to maintain order, stability and a state of balance or equilibrium (Skyttner, 2001). In this way, Manichean hierarchical entities of shattering failure as paralysis is a closed system which maintains predictable order, stability and a state of equilibrium.

What does the material-discursive re-formation of zones of nonbeing a “science person” entail? A1) Bounded space as our tainted second skin: The absolute conception of bounded space which is attached to ideologically imposed identity categories. a) “You don’t even remember my name” (Alala): Whiteness and the dominance associated with being named the invisible norm (Dyer, 1997). b) “I had a terrible breakdown … it was the dynamics of my spaces” (Odirile): One’s sense of being is kept in place or out-of-place in the intra-action of one’s body with materialdiscursive spaces (Barad, 2007). c) “even the, I mustn’t, white students [agreed that my] work is good enough” (Alala): Whiteness is normalised as the standard of achievement.

Psychosocial-Pathway C-entre) Narrativerespiratory system of no-belonging to knowledge communities: Social scientific research structured by (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion

What does the symbolic narrative re-formation What does the storied re-formation of notof the principle logic of inclusion in and becoming “modern” scientists entail? exclusion from to classed entities of B1) Linear time as our tunnel-visioned third eye: knowledge entail? Newton’s theorisation of time which functions as a C1) Chronotopes (Bakhtin, 1981) expressed spatial coordinate. through one-dimensional symbols as the stale a) “The problem is they [lecturers] try and shape us air, we breathe: Histories of colonialism have into what they want us to be” (Alala): Women’s made the world “white” in that the entry into science as surrogates who are expected “body-at-home is one that can inhabit to conform to Eurocentric norms and pedagogies whiteness” (Ahmed, 2007, p. 165). (Roach, 1996). a) “I’ll stick to my kind … who you fit in with … b) “You’ve got to understand why, why they was dictated by the religion that you are in, needed housing, where they come from, I mean your race and your culture, all of that. I think it’s the whole story, narratives” (Alala): those were very set ideas” (Amirah): Identity Knowledge production as an individual possession categories as representational entities that is disconnected from people’s needs, reality and are fixed and close-down human relating and sense of humanity. connecting.

Social-Pathway A) Discursive-circulatory system of zones of nonbeing a “science person”: An Psychic-Pathway B) Storied-nervous system of institutional culture structured by a color-line (Du not-becoming “modern” scientists: Pedagogies Bois, 2007[1903]) structured by hierarchical-­heteropatriarchal lines

Table 8.1  Co-mapping pathways into the centre of the Minotaur’s labyrinth: Manichean hierarchical entities of shattering failure as paralysis

The second skin (bounded space) of institutional culture is tainted by a color-line that follows the principle of “closed and isolated system boundaries” (Skyttner, 2001).

The third eye (linear time) of pedagogy is tunnel visioned due to rigid hierarchies that are heteropatriarchal, too clearly defined or permanent in closed systems.

(continued)

b) “some of my cousins they, they called me ‘white’ now, and well they’ve been calling me ‘white’ since I came to [this university]” (Nosakhele): Perceived racial “authenticity” and labelling the new Black middle class as “coconuts” (Matlwa, 2007; McKinney, 2007). c) “[Labels] are a horrible weapon, its destructive, the adjectives that describe these labels can tear the person apart for life” (Kaiya): The socialisation into cultural values of whiteness via mass media. The air (chronotopes) of research is stale because of (neo)liberal entities of inclusionexclusion that follow through “entropy” which comes to a halt at a chemical or thermodynamic equilibrium in closed systems (von Bertalanffy, 1968).

What symbolic narrative reality does the What told storied reality does the re-formation of re-formation of the principle logic of inclusion not-becoming “modern” scientists create? How is in and exclusion from classed entities of the principle logic of inclusion in and exclusion knowledge create? How is the principle logic from normative entities of cultural knowledge of inclusion in and exclusion from classed produced and what does this form of excluding entities of knowledge produced and what knowing-why do? does this form of excluding knowing-that do? B2) Not-becoming as our wilfully short-­sighted eyes: C2) The (neo)liberal inclusion-exclusion logic “Becoming white as an institutional line is closely (i.e. no-belonging) as our breathlessness: related to the vertical promise of class mobility” Institutional timespaces that close the (Ahmed, 2007, p. 160). individual body in separate unchanging a) “Hi Donald, you are the future of William and entities with an inevitable overarching plot of Smith’s Architects” (Alala): Cultural cloning (Essed sameness in the form of & Goldberg, 2002) and masculine whiteness as a academic “excellence” or “academic talent” linear trajectory of “progress” at the apex of the which is evaluated against white middle-class hierarchy. habitus. b) “I sort of lost my voice, and I was like, ‘okay, a) “I realised that [education is important] whatever you have for me I’ll do it’” (Alala): because they were starting to give us, to give Alienation from the product of labour and the act out rewards, awards. So, if you do well, you of production itself (Bulhan, 1985; Marx, 1964). are recognised” (Ambani): Inclusion as “schooling” students through the reward of formal recognition to confuse the value of education with grade advancement or academic “excellence”.

What lived material-discursive reality does the re-formation of a zone of nonbeing a “science person” create? How is the principle logic of inclusion in and exclusion from normative entities of discursive knowledge produced and what does this form of excluding knowinghow do? A2) Nonbeing as wounded skin: The production of the zone of being “human” (Gordon, 2006; Maldonado-Torres, 2008; Wynter, 2003) and the zone of nonbeing (Fanon, 1967) or not being “human” enough. Metaphysical catastrophe as the production of a zone below the zone of being and zone of nonbeing (Maldonado-Torres, 2008; 2016). a) “sometimes you just, you do need that same love that the others get” (Welile): Black students’ bids for love and recognition are disrupted by race

Psychosocial-Pathway C-entre) Narrativerespiratory system of no-belonging to knowledge communities: Social scientific research structured by (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion

Psychic-Pathway B) Storied-nervous system of not-becoming “modern” scientists: Pedagogies structured by hierarchical-­ heteropatriarchal lines

Social-Pathway A) Discursive-circulatory system of zones of nonbeing a “science person”: An institutional culture structured by a color-line (Du Bois, 2007[1903])

Table 8.1 (continued)

The eyes (becoming) of pedagogy are wilfully b) “[The lecturer] would keep his eyes on me short-sighted by hierarchical-heteropatriarchal and he’ll always ask if I understand” lines that follow the principle of linear causality in (Takalani): Normalisation, misrecognition and closed systems. delegitimisation of Black women’s membership to science communities. c) “I need to be quiet and probably learn how they speak [English]…so you could fit in” (Takalani): Whiteness is conflated with English and associated with mind and rationality (Dyer, 1997). d) “[The lecturers] always made you feel like inferior and just put, put you down [like] you not worth your being here” (Odirile): Restricted epistemological access (Morrow, 2007), symbolic violence (Bulhan, 1985) and socially induced feelings of nonexistence for Black students. The skin (nonbeing) of institutional culture is wounded by a color-line that follows the principle of a “goal-maintaining system” (Skyttner, 2001).

(continued)

b) “I defined myself as being someone who knows. I’m knowledgeable. I’m a genius” (Takalani): Inclusion as “schooling” students to confuse academic “excellence” with their sense of self-worth. c) “I don’t think overthinking is a problem. I don’t think you fail a person for overthinking” (Alala): Exclusion as the mystery of failing for overthinking which implies the mastery of the lecturer who is typically a white mister and missus (Ahrentzen & Anthony, 1993). d) “they must give the scholarship to somebody else who is more deserving because I am just a failure” (Welile): Exclusion as the evaluation of academic “excellence” against white middle-class habitus and the traumatic effects of academic failure on one’s sense of self-worth. Research structured by (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion creates a sense of breathlessness by separating elements in a system which cannot interact, change or grow.

Psychic-Pathway B) Storied-nervous system of not-becoming “modern” scientists: Pedagogies structured by hierarchical-­ heteropatriarchal lines What are the psychical effects of the re-formation of this told storied reality? B3) Sedimented cultural memory as our unmalleable spinal cord: Cultural definitions of humanity along the lines of racial, national, geographical or linguistic divisions are used as instruments of political power (Payne, 2010). a) “I’d rather not do anything than, than to be forced to be, to sort of like constantly kill my passion” (Alala): The attainment of “full personhood” through assimilation into the dominant culture’s sense of value means the separate deaths of one’s self (Lugones, 2003; Lugones & Price, 1995). b) “[My mother’s dream] it’s a faith thing, you’re putting in the effort [but] it doesn’t always come out the way you want it to be” (Alala): The dignity of struggle and the tragic hope in remaining strong-willed even after devastating losses and disappointments (Eagleton, 2015). The spinal cord (sedimented cultural memory) of pedagogy is unmalleable by hierarchical-­ heteropatriarchal lines that follow the principle of negative feedback loops in closed systems.

Social-Pathway A) Discursive-circulatory system of zones of nonbeing a “science person”: An institutional culture structured by a color-line (Du Bois, 2007[1903])

What are the social effects of the re-formation of this lived material-discursive reality? A3) Social structure-agency as our clogged blood vessels: Generating (non)material social facts that thwart human needs through the possessive investment in whiteness (Lipsitz, 2006). a) “[Art was] soul work for me … but it’s hard to get back to that point” (Alala): Structures of dehumanisation are materialised into prison houses of epistemic “correctness” which alienate Black students from productions of their own meanings (Bulhan, 1985). The blood vessels (social structure) of institutional culture is clogged by a color-line that follows the principle of linear “selforganisation” (Cilliers, 2001) and predictable “emergent behaviour” (Dekker, 2011) in closed systems.

Table 8.1 (continued)

What are the psychosocial effects of the re-formation of this symbolic narrative reality? C3) Atrophied knowledge as our punctured lungs: Theodicy has been secularised and extends to political systems and systems of knowledge which work to rationalise and justify a “theodicean grammar” in which the “appeal to blacks as problem-people is an assertion of their ultimate location outside the systems of order and rationality” (Gordon, 2008, p. 76). a) “we have to incorporate what has been, what has been kept quiet for so long” (Alala): The historical context, which is written into the very core of institutions, bears upon culture like a dead weight (Thaver, 2006). b) “we have to fight for our ideas to be heard. We still have to fight for a stake. We still have to fight with ourselves” (Alala): Epistemic violence (Spivak, 1988) reproduced through white ideological methodology (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008). The lungs (atrophied knowledge) of research is punctured by (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion that follow the principle of controllability, predictability and no change.

Psychosocial-Pathway C-entre) Narrativerespiratory system of no-belonging to knowledge communities: Social scientific research structured by (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion

How is this material-discursive reality, and its social effects masked and re-formed? A4) Dominant two-dimensional discourse as our constricted blood: Masked through deficient constructions of Black students as “lacking” dominant cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986). a) “you’d be like, ‘oh probably I’m not meant to be here [at university]’” (Takalani): The so-called “lack” of dominant institutionalised capital in the form of background knowledge b) “I’d only speak [English] if I was requested to … what if I make a mistake? What if I don’t get it right?” (Takalani): The so-called “lack” of dominant embodied cultural capital in the form of linguistic capital. Re-formed through Black students’ restricted financial access to university education and the ignorance contract as deliberately set by the white population (Steyn, 2012). c) “[I am my family’s] retirement plan” (Alala): Black students’ restricted financial access to university education.

How is this told storied reality, and its psychical effects masked and re-formed? B4) Single story scripts as our narrow-minded brain: Masked through rehearsing, preforming or acting out ready-made, thought-out ideological “scripts” (Appiah, 1994), “story lines” (Bonilla-Silva et al., 2004) or a “story stock” (Linde, 2009). a) “if you have slept with a guy or if you have a baby by 21 … they [family] won’t even throw you a [21st] party” (Nosakhele): Rehearsing script one—Being a “baby girl”. b) “I was seen as the perfect girl at home, so [my sister] was just waiting for that moment to turn me in” (Mamoratwa): Rehearsing script two— Being a “good girl”. c) “for males, they can do whenever, they don’t have to look after kids” (Ambani): Rehearsing script three—Child-­rearing as solely a female’s responsibility. Re-­formed through deeply entrenched and sedimented ideological “scripts” (Appiah, 1994), “story lines” (Bonilla-Silva et al., 2004) or a “story stock” (Linde, 2009).

(continued)

How is this symbolic narrative reality and its psychosocial effects masked and re-formed? C4) Predictable symbolic narratives as our shattered heart: Masked through assessment practices driven by disciplinary decadence (Gordon, 2006) and meritocratic recognition of “academic talent”. a) “you don’t try and say ‘eat this, this is the Book of Life, eat, this is what I’m telling you’”(Alala): Disciplinary decadence (Gordon, 2006), the internalisation of regulative rules, consumption of lifeless knowledge and the regurgitation of methods committed to colour-blind individualism and meritocracy. b) “they [lecturers] mark on ‘feeling’ and you’d be like, ‘but I don’t understand what that means’” (Itumeleng): Assessors’ judgementmaking processes are a social practice constituted through institutional, departmental and disciplinary values which are embedded in regulative rules and procedures (Shay, 2008). c) “it’s people defining you … It doesn’t matter if it’s not a big number next to my name or a shiny star on my forehead” (Alala): Global university ranking systems obscure struggles of unequal power relations as struggles for meritocratic recognition (Amsler & Bolsmann, 2012) of “academic talent” which preserves the legacy of racial hierarchy and perpetuates inequalities. Re-formed through the fear of shattering failure as paralysis.

Psychic-Pathway B) Storied-nervous system of not-becoming “modern” scientists: Pedagogies structured by hierarchical-­ heteropatriarchal lines

d) “[Donald] let’s just acknowledge it for what it d) “no, we will not stay for tea because you have done us wrong, you have ruined [impregnated] is, don’t, don’t wear a face for us” (Alala): our girl” (Welile): The Western distinction between Deliberately signing the ignorance contract the masculine and the feminine, and the social (Steyn, 2012) to maintain the size of one’s construction of honour and shame at the core of classed networks and volume of economic and virginity control (Awwad, 2011). cultural capital. e) “Rob said that if the child is a boy, the child is The blood (discourses) of institutional culture is going to be Rob Junior, but if it is a girl that I can constricted by a color-line that utilises just name it” (Welile): The patriarchal family as an dominant two-­dimensional discourses as weak administrative base unit in political-economic state “attractors” (Cilliers, 2001) in closed systems. structures (Ortner, 1978). The brain (single story scripts) of pedagogy is narrow-minded by hierarchical-­heteropatriarchal lines that follow the principle of no learning, self-development or growth in closed systems.

Social-Pathway A) Discursive-circulatory system of zones of nonbeing a “science person”: An institutional culture structured by a color-line (Du Bois, 2007[1903])

Table 8.1 (continued)

d) “dealing with this uncertainty about myself … how can I get a Masters if I’m so unsure about myself” (Odirile). e) “people will expect things from you just because you are a smart person. You ‘should have’ been done. You ‘should have’ been working now … I find myself crying, blaming myself” (Takalani). f) “It [failure] was devastating. You just feel defeated” (Alala). g) “I think that pain [of failure] … you have to live with it, it becomes too sinked in … I mean the pain is over, but it becomes a part of you” (Takalani). Stillborn: The heart (predictable symbolic narratives) of knowledge communities is shattered by closed systems of Manichean hierarchical entities; failure as paralysis, which sustains a dominant inertial momentum that severs the relationship between science, art, and human reality.

Psychosocial-Pathway C-entre) Narrativerespiratory system of no-belonging to knowledge communities: Social scientific research structured by (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion

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 einventing Pathways Away from the Centre R and “Out of” the Minotaur’s Labyrinth: Rhythmical Whole Infinity Networks as a Complex Adaptive System of Tragic Love in Motion  athway C-entre: The Narrative-Respiratory System P of Belonging to Knowledge Communities: Decentring and Overwriting (Neo)liberal Entities of InclusionExclusion with Rhythmical Whole Infinity Networks  4) Soul: Unpredictable Symbolic Narratives that Hovers C on the Border of Chaos as Our Webwork Heart Research that is trans-formed by rhythmical whole infinity networks could be an effect of our webwork heart. First, the symbolic narrative reality and its psychosocial effects could potentially be unmasked through teaching and assessment practices driven by a teleological suspension of disciplinarity (Gordon, 2011) and exposing psychic wounds through artistic expression that makes us feel and understand that which might be incomprehensible and unknowable. Second, the symbolic narrative reality and its psychosocial effects could potentially be trans-formed through tragic love in motion. Rhythmical whole infinity networks take the form of a teleological suspension of disciplinarity (Gordon, 2011), exposing psychic wounds through artistic expression and tragic love in motion. This symbolic  narrative reality could be unmasked in the following three ways, according to the research findings: a) “I’m tired of people trying to change me … I’m going to do a book of my ethics” (Alala): An ethical practice of listening to, understanding and addressing students’ moral evaluations of how the university affects their sense of self-worth. The women advocate for a shift from normative theory to an ethical practice in which universities create the “conditions where ‘critical

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humanism’ and ‘epistemic pluralism’ (Mbembe, 2016) might flourish and where difference means neither assimilation nor reification” (Luckett & Shay, 2017, p. 13). b) “you come in here with your values … you’re putting yourself onto paper, your pieces of yourself [and] you know it’s hatching” (Alala): Teaching and assessment as a social practice driven by a complexity-transdisciplinary frame of reference and a teleological suspension of disciplinarity (Gordon, 2011). Gordon (2011) proposes that a teleological suspension of disciplinarity in which we are willing to move within the margins of disciplinary boundaries in the production of knowledge by either imbuing an existing discipline with new life and vitality or by generating a new discipline. c) “We have no faces. Just scars and our delicate insides. We have no faces. Just weeping souls. They wear our faces” (Alala): Exposing psychic wounds through poetry that “chart new theoretical journeys” and a map in the “direction of liberatory terrain” (hooks, 1994, 2013). In her poem, Alala alludes to how Black people need to “wear the face of a hungry lion” to affirm their humanity in defiance of a  “matrix of domination” (Collins, 2000) that mark their everyday spaces. The theorisation of one’s psychic wounds through artistic expression could potentially create a social map in the “direction of liberatory terrain” of a new humanism (hooks, 2013, p. 191). This symbolic narrative reality is trans-formed in the following ways: d) “I found myself with no definition [due to failure]. I couldn’t define myself anymore … I learnt that I am me and I can’t be defined by the circumstances around me” (Takalani). The women emphasised the importance of defining one’s sense of self in a way that is not contingent on external circumstances. e) “this [purple] scarf represents [that] I am worth it, whatever marks I get, whatever hardships I go through, those make me grow … my goal going forward is for me to stretch completely [and] to reach that place where I’m beyond myself ” (Odirile). Many of the women alluded to how growth happens by going through hardships; a transitional state of space and time in which the elastic self is stretched beyond the limen, boundary or threshold.

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f ) “I don’t want to be stuck … the early me, who hasn’t changed much. I mean, I still want to learn, just learn, find understanding, a fulfilled life. That’s all I want; a self-sustained fulfilled life” (Alala). Their passion for learning provided the motivation to strategise new ways of manoeuvring themselves within conditions of impossibilities. g) “it’s like a baby, you have to learn again to hold yourself up to get yourself there … a love-hate relationship; so, one day I love you [architecture] because of the ideas but the next day I hate you” (Odirile). Many of the women reflected on the ambivalence of a tragic love in motion, in that neither could they completely despair because of their love for learning and longing to understand; or genuinely be hopeful because of the conditions in which their ideas are received. In this space which holds unresolvable contradictions in the dialectical interplay between both hope and despair, tragedy and love, Odirile points to the importance of movement in the process of repair; “it’s like a baby, you have to learn again to hold yourself up, to get yourself there … it’s one step at a time”. Brainchild: (Re)pairing the shattered heart (unpredictable  symbolic narratives) of knowledge communities with rhythmical whole infinity networks that follow the principle of hovering on the border of chaos. According to complexity theory, equilibrium is equivalent to death (Cilliers, 2001). It is the lack of order and stability which drives the continuous flow of energy through a system which creates the possibility for self-organisation, gradual change and development (Cilliers, 2001; Walby, 2007). It is at the edge of chaos, a space between predictable stability and chaos where complex systems are able to galvanise enough diversity to innovate and remain stable enough for steady growth (De Toni & Comello, 2010, p. 34). The edge of chaos is the “thin transition zone”4 (Marion, 1999, p.  23) at the “border between rigid order and randomness” (Horgan, 1995, p.  105). Chaos theory, as a contributory theory to complexity science, shows that patterned results emerge in a chaotic system which is seemingly “predictably unpredictable” (Horgan,  Maldonado-Torres (2020) notes that Ethnic Studies, for example, “seek to create border zones of decolonial activity” (para. 19) with the liminal freedom to work in between the university and various collectivities outside of it. 4

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1995, p. 104). Chaos is “necessary to new creative ordering” (Wheatley, 2006) because it not only “disintegrates the current structure, [but] it also creates the conditions for new order to emerge” (Cordon, 2013, p. 17—18). In this sense, rhythmical whole infinity networks of tragic love in motion could be viewed as a complex adaptive system that hovers on the border of chaos in a thin transitional zone of be-longing in between being and becoming. This creates the conditions for a new spontaneous order to emerge. What is this border? This border constitutes a line which separates the discursive-circulatory system of being and the storied-­nervous system of becoming. The thin transitional zone inbetween being and becoming comprises the narrative-respiratory system of be-­longing. In other words, be-longing could be understood as an embodied form of being and becoming. The narrative-respiratory system of be-longing is produced through the dialectical interplay between the discursive-circulatory system of being and the storied-nervous system of becoming. In other words, the dialectics of space and time is embodied in chronotopes as symbols; the dialectics of being and becoming is embodied in belonging; the dialectics of social structureagency and cultural memory is embodied in knowledge and; the dialectics of discourse and stories is embodied in narratives. Put differently, this is a transitional zone which takes the form of chronotopes or symbols (as the fold between space and time), belonging (as the fold between being and becoming), knowledge (as the fold between social structureagency and cultural memory) and narratives (as the fold between discourses and stories). What does it mean to hover on the border of chaos? As mentioned, Lugones (2006) explains that there are two realities at work; the one is the logic of oppression, and the other has the logic of resistance and transformation. The logic of oppression could be viewed as Manichean hierarchical entities which maintains  or re-forms zones of nonbeing  a “person”, not-becoming “modern” people  and no-belonging  to knowledge communities. The logic of resistance could be viewed as rhythmical whole infinity networks that create the conditions for the trans-­formation and reinvention of new forms of being a person, becoming modern peoples  and belonging to knowledge communities  to emerge. Therefore,

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there are transitional zones of belonging (as sites of resistance) as well as a sedimented zones of no-belonging (as sites of oppression). What exactly constitutes a sedimented zone of no-belonging? This sedimented zone is represented in Pathway C in Table  8.1. In other words, this sedimented zone comprises one-dimensional chronotopes as symbols, secular knowledge and predictable narratives. Conversely, what constitutes a transitional zone of be-longing? This transitional zone is represented in Pathway C in Table  8.2. Hovering on the border of chaos is to linger in the thin transitional zone of resistance which comprises chronotopes as  multi-dimensional symbols, belonging, knowledge that is constructed and enacted through the philosophy of Black Consciousness, and unpredictable narratives. The transitional zone of be-­ longing (or trans-formation) constantly disrupts the sedimented zone of no-belonging (or oppression). Therefore, the dialectical tension between Manichean hierarchical entities in relation to rhythmical whole infinity networks produce the dissonance, unresolved contradictions and surplus possibilities necessary for understanding and navigating the complexity of reality.

 3) Soul: Living Knowledges as Our Heartened Lungs C Function Through Uncontrollability, Unpredictability and Constant Change Our heartened lungs could be an effect of research that is trans-formed by rhythmical whole infinity networks. The psychosocial effects of transforming this symbolic narrative reality would be the attainment of what Biko calls “the envisaged self ” in his philosophy of Black Consciousness which “expresses group pride and the determination by the blacks to rise and attain the envisaged self ” (Biko, 2012 [1978], p. 68). Rhythmical whole infinity networks take the form of what Biko describes as “the envisaged self ” in his philosophy of Black Consciousness. Trans-forming this symbolic narrative reality could potentially create the following three psychosocial effects:

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a) “Engaging with critical thinking and asserting myself ” (Odirile): Constructing and enacting knowledge through the philosophy of Black Consciousness. The women indicated that their engagement with critical race theory and black feminism sharpened their ability to critically make sense of the structural processes of their localities, articulate theories of human oppression, conceptualise strategies to bring about social change and engage in political reflection and action. b) “science is to learn techniques. We don’t learn to be smart; we learn to be able to do experiments … I learnt to be creative and innovative” (Nosakhele): Designing experiments, making new discoveries, altering existing knowledges and shifting normative constructions of Science and scientists on which the stock story about academic “excellence” is evaluated against. Making new discoveries in science depends on researchers’ ability to innovate and creatively design their own experiments. Research as the interplay between distantiation and appropriation requires that scientists justify their choices and interpret negative results in order to show that their research findings are reliable, valid and warranted (Slonimsky & Shalem, 2006). c) “I love this project [it has] potential to have like a major impact in terms of our economy and also in improving the way we live” (Nosakhele): The cultivation of new ecologies of knowledges (de Sousa Santos, 2007) with the potential to enrich and change the world, its inhabitants and generations yet to come. By challenging this marginal “outlier” position, the formation of a new social grouping of Black South African women in higher education in the Sciences could potentially articulate a “cultural politics of difference” (Rutherford, 1990) in which new ecologies of knowledges (de Sousa Santos, 2007) are cultivated by communities of learning across gendered, racialised, class and national divides. We could potentially repair5 the punctured lungs (atrophied knowledge) of research with rhythmical whole infinity networks that follow the  The word “repair” means to “restore [something] that is broken, damaged or torn to good condition” or to “say or do [something] in order to improve a bad or unpleasant situation” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2018). Achille Mbembe delivered a keynote address at the 5

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principle of uncontrollability, unpredictability and constant change. As there are countless possible behaviours in a complex system, it is therefore impossible to predict with absolute certainty its future state (De Toni & Comello, 2010).

 2) Body: Belonging as Our Regenerative Breath Function C Through Interconnecting and Interacting Elements Research that is trans-formed by rhythmical whole infinity networks could create the reality of belonging to knowledge communities as our regenerative breath. The trans-formation of belonging to knowledge communities creates a symbolic  narrative reality of biographical timespaces that open the body to communities of learning through interconnected networks of plots based on metamorphosis and that portray the relationship between socio-political life with and through individual lives in its moments of crisis and rebirth (Bakhtin, 1981). Rhythmical whole infinity networks take the form of biographical timespaces in which narratives “flesh out” the passing of time in space to

Recognition, Reparation and Reconciliation Conference (2017) at Stellenbosch University where he spoke about how Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, under conditions of captivity when he was a political prisoner of a racist state “was able to redesign the landscapes of his inner self ” by slowly shedding parts of his old self and recovering traces of his past to refigure them. Mbembe states that Nelson Mandela “underwent a profound metamorphosis, even a transfiguration”. Mbembe refers to this “political interiority” as a kind of method, discipline, and pedagogy that involves “serious demanding work on one’s self, [not only] as a political subject but also oneself as a beautiful human being”. He goes on to talk about the process of care and repair in which he states that “this becoming something else, this becoming somebody else, that is how we heal trauma; in nurturing the capacity to become somebody else”. I have mentioned that there is a dialectical relationship between sociopolitical pathways that are embodied with/in and through personal lived realities. Therefore, the term “repair” in a psychosocial sense could refer to the process of people and institutions doing demanding collective memory work (Haug, 1992) by interrogating traces of our past into our present in order to refigure them, to shed parts of our old self, to nurture the capacity to “become somebody else” by potentially reinventing the landscapes of our inner selves and social world. However, as mentioned, these possibilities can only be realised through concrete institutional actions of dismantling structures of oppression and eradicating the countless ways in which white wealth is directly dependent on Black poverty. In other words, I use the term “repair” to refer to the process of (re)pairing pieces of our shattered psychosocial selves. This is an endless struggle of reinventing symbols, rituals, memory, meanings and relational selves in working through the problem of finding a “way out” of the Minatour’s labyrinth.

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describe the characters’ psychological growth in her moments of crisis and rebirth. Belonging to symbolic knowledge communities could create a symbolic narrative reality with the following three dimensions: a) “[Awards] is what made me … that shadow that I walked with … I had to go back and redefine myself, as who you are. I always liked to create” (Alala): Disconnecting one’s sense of self-worth from the reproduction of sameness (Essed & Goldberg, 2002) and reconnecting with the uniqueness of the narratable self (Cavarero, 2014). Alala, for example, likens the materiality of academic awards and certificates to “that shadow that I walked with”. In this sense, that which was being rewarded is the reproduction of sameness (Essed & Goldberg, 2002, p. 1067) according to illusive and unobtainable standards of academic “excellence” that is evaluated against white middle-class habitus in South Africa. b) “my supportive teachers at school, they pushed me and encouraged me … then I fell in love with genetics” (Nosakhele): Developing a passion for learning through the encouragement and support of teachers. These women reported that the support and encouragement from their high school teachers to explore topics of interest, led to an emotional investment in the form of “going to the library, reading more about genetics” (Nosakhele) and developing their passion for science. c) “the ability to communicate and express to others, you can only do that when you understand something” (Kaiya): Communities of learning and the academic practice of understanding as “distantiation, appropriation, research and articulation” (Slonimsky & Shalem, 2006). By working with and appropriating knowledge, the women were able to position themselves within the current knowledge base and develop a perspective of their own. Furthermore, the women’s articulation and communication of their research findings has meant that their knowledges becomes the object and means of reflection for their peers, lecturers as well as wider local and global communities (Slonimsky & Shalem, 2006). We could potentially facilitate breathing (belonging) with rhythmical whole infinity networks that follow the principle of interconnecting and

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interacting elements which contribute to changes within and growth of complex systems. Both interconnectivity and interaction need to be present in order for complexity, growth and changes to emerge within complex systems (Friedman & Allen, 2011; Marion, 1999). According to Mitleton-Kelly (2003) complex behaviour is rooted in an “intricate inter-­ twining or interconnectivity within a system and between a system and its environment” (as cited in Van der Westhuizen, p. 47).

 1) Body: Chronotopes Expressed Through Multi-Dimensional C Symbols as the Fresh or Spirited Air We Breathe Function Through Negative Entropy The chronotopes (symbols) of research that are trans-formed by rhythmical whole infinity networks could entail the fresh or spirited air we breathe. The symbolic narrative trans-formation of belonging to knowledge communities entails a phenomenology of whiteness as sitting with and digesting what is habitual and routine in a world that is made “white” by colonialism (Ahmed, 2007). Rhythmic whole infinity networks take the form of a “phenomenology of whiteness [which] helps us to notice institutional habits; it brings what is behind, what does not get seen as the background to social action, to the surface in a certain way” (Ahmed, 2007, p. 165). Belonging to knowledge communities would entail the following two elements: a) “I don’t even know why I do certain things because I grew up just doing it … you don’t question such things, I mean it’s religion, it’s who you are” (Amirah): The university as a place that could potentially facilitate the “complex creativity involved in the “digestion” and “liberation” of contrasting spaces”(Harris, as cited in Peterson & Rutherford, 1995, p. 189). The engagement with a “cultural mix” (Amirah) and deep bodies of knowledge at university provide the women with the opportunity to participate in the complexity and creativity involved in the digestion of contradictions within multiple realities. b) “[The Oya programme] it’s like your mom who raised you and stuff and now she is like, ‘Okay child, go out, go do your thing’” (Amirah): A homeplace

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as a safe place to heal the wounds inflicted on Black people by the culture of white supremacy (hooks, 2015). The formation of affective bonds between the women in the Oya programme created a safe space at the university that stabilised their sense of self. We could potentially repair the stale air (chronotopes) of research with rhythmical whole infinity networks that follow the principle of negative entropy or “negentropy” (Schrödinger, 1944) in complex systems. Negentropy in an open system is the importation of energy, information or matter to modify its interactions with the environment, to avoid entropy and to stay alive (McKelvey, 2003; Van der Watt, 2018).

 athway B: The Storied-Nervous System P of Becoming Modern Scientists: Dismantling Hierarchical-­Heteropatriarchal Lines with Whole Infinity Loops  4) Soul: A plurality of Stories as Our Broad-Minded Brain B Function Through Learning, Self-knowledge and Growth Single story scripts of pedagogy could be unmasked and trans-formed by whole infinity loops of a plurality of stories as our broad-minded brain. This told storied reality, and psychical effects could possibly be unmasked and trans-formed through sitting with and (re)pairing fragments of ourselves through critical psychosocial mnemonics (Duncan, Stevens, & Canham, 2014) and collective memory work (Haug, 1992) as rituals of meaning-spirit making which shape individual lives as a question and collective cultural patterns of symbolisation. Whole infinity loops take the form of critical psychosocial mnemonics and collective memory work. According to the research findings, this told storied reality could be unmasked in the following way: a) “When my water broke, my heart broke” (Welile): Sitting with fragmented pieces of our shattered selves.

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Welile’s heart-wrenching statement, “when my water broke, my heart broke” reminds me of an image in  one of Kei Miller’s6 poems in his book, There is an Anger that Moves, which reads “we are bruised into ourselves”. In an interview, Kei Miller (2013), a Jamaican poet, fiction writer, and essayist was asked whether this phrase reflected his perspective of contemporary Caribbean history and politics to which he responded: It is reaching out much further than that and trying to understand a fundamental part of our humanity. Perhaps you see “fragmentation”, or “brokenness” as I put in in the poem, as a bad thing. I don’t. I think this is exactly what connects all of us—that in some way, in some place, each of us carry around different hurts and insecurities and profoundly deep longings, and it is these things what make us human, that make us our most honest and noble and beautiful selves. (p. 115)7

This told storied reality could be trans-formed in the following way: b) “it’s a network, like Avatar … a breathing system, a network breathing space” (Alala): (Re)pairing fragments of our-selves in the form of network storymazes and cultural patterns of symbolisation. I have argued that it may be important to discuss the features which complicate the level of connectivity within a told story because it might enable us to gain a better understanding of the various ways in which stories are used as a sense-making or cognitive tool to narrate the complexity of a life, (re)pair fragmented pieces of one’s sense of self and establish a semblance of meaning in one’s life. Narrating the complexity of life or shaping a life in a story form that resembles the structure of a network comprises four main features: (1) the narrator provides an account of being “what I am” in relation to how she has become “who I am” and “where I feel a sense of belonging”, (2) the story is told in a non-linear fashion in which the narrator attempts to make meaning from her (dis) continuous and unfolding sense of self through the activity of emplotment, (3) there is a tension between “concordance” and “discordance” in the told story which creates a gradual build-up of suspense and a sense of  My thanks to Pamela Nichols for introducing me to Kei Miller’s work.  My thanks to Sharon Sibanda for sharing this passage with me.

6 7

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instability and uncertainty about the evaluative endpoints of a story (Gergen & Gergen, 1986; Ricoeur, 1984) and (4) there are entangled motifs and metaphors in the told story which are not only personal “marks” that are retold over a life course but also marks which are symbolic of human action. We could potentially repair the narrow-minded brain (stories) of pedagogy with whole infinity loops that follow the principle of feedback loops, pluralism, (un)learning and evolving in a complex system. Stories function as a complex system in that our lives feed into a complex system of cultural memory and a complex system of cultural memory feed back into our lives, changing the stories we tell about our-selves and thus our interpretations of being and becoming in the symbolic world. Put differently, “all learning depends on feedback” (Sterman, 2006, p. 509) which we use in the meaning-making of information. In this way, stories and complex systems are not only about practices but of them.

 3) Soul: (R)evolving Cultural Memory as Our Malleable B Spinal Cord Function Through Positive Feedback Loops The (r)evolving cultural memory of a pedagogy trans-formed by whole infinity loops could be an effect of our malleable spinal cord. This told storied reality would produce the psychical effects of understanding human beings through communities and as co-creators of dialectically evolving set of values (Gordon, 2008). Whole infinity loops take the form of a dialectically evolving set of values within communities. Trans-forming this told storied reality could potentially create the following psychical effect: a) “it’s a garden where you are taking care of your plants [not saying] ‘grow this way and grow that way’” (Alala): The growth of living knowledges, widening of the human imagination and the evolution of culture as new unfolding worlds. The university could be likened to a garden where people nurture each other’s ideas of how to innovate and create living knowledges that address

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societal challenges and alter the world as we know it. By altering the world, our interpretation of it changes. We could potentially repair the unmalleable spinal cord (sedimented cultural memory) of pedagogy with whole infinity loops that follow the principle of positive feedback loops in a complex system. Positive feedback loops are self-reinforcing (Eidelson, 1997) and have an “amplifying” effect (Boisot & McKelvey, 2011) on activities in the sense that prior information is reinforced, and thus, change is incrementally amplified in a complex system.

 2) Body: Becoming as Our Farsighted Eyes Function B Through Circular Causality and Retroactive Loops Pedagogy that is trans-formed by whole infinity loops could create the reality of becoming as our farsighted eyes. The trans-­formation of becoming modern scientists could potentially create a told storied reality of the “body as narratively unruly [or undisciplined]” which resists overarching patterns and narrative closure (Punday, 2003, p.  94). Whole infinity loops take the form of a narratively unruly body which resists narrative closure. The trans-formation of becoming modern scientists could potentially create a told storied reality with the following two dimensions: a) “even when you when you draw a line, you put your self into that, you put your soul into that” (Alala): Expressing one’s humanness by transforming objects through meaningful soul work, which in turn transform us (Bulhan, 1985; Marx, 1964). In addition to designing buildings that are technically sound, students should also be given the freedom to produce knowledge that is an expression of their values and aesthetics which is informed by their different backgrounds. Through meaningful work, people leave their mark in the world, transforming objects around them, which in turn transform them (Bulhan, 1985; Marx, 1964). b) “put some faith in the upcoming professionals … we are so young and so excited about things [and] we still have this energy” (Alala): The role of

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leadership in making forward-looking action meaningful through narrating imaginative storylines of a projected future. If the leadership of an institution are more attuned to constructing imaginative narratives of the future that invest confidence and resources in upcoming professionals, it might create the material conditions in which the youth are treated as if “who am I” is valued, heard, seen and who belong to the future. We could potentially repair the wilfully short-sighted eyes (becoming) of pedagogy with whole infinity loops that follow the principle of circular causality and retroactive “loops” (De Toni & Comello, 2010, p. 46). In a complex system, the circular action between cultural memory (stories) and time (becoming) illustrate how cause-and-effect relationships are interconnected, layered and multidirectional to form retroactive “loops” (De Toni & Comello, 2010, p. 46) between being as a state of becoming, becoming as a state of belonging and belonging as a state of being in a complex system.

 1) Body: Circular Time as Our Visionary Third Eye Function B Through the Hologrammatic Principle or Holism The circular time of pedagogy trans-formed by whole infinity loops could entail our visionary third eye. The storied trans-­formation of becoming modern scientists entails Einstein’s theorisation of relativity in which space and time are twin siblings in that space takes into account the relations between positions of being within changing sequences of actions and events which are always in the process of becoming (Faist, 2005, p. 763). Whole infinity loops take the form of relativity in which space and time are twin siblings. The trans-formation of becoming modern scientists entails the following two elements: a) “it was also overcoming that whole thing of like ‘oh I’d been knocked down and everyone had laughed about it” (Alala): A plot based on metamorphosis which involves infinite moments of crisis and spiritual rebirth (Bakhtin, 1981).

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In an environment where Black women’s background knowledges are not recognised as legitimate, where lecturers “try and shape us into what they want us to be” (Alala), where men in positions of influence delegitimate women’s existence and intellectual contributions in the workplace as Odirile noted, then it would seem that the trans-formation of becoming modern scientists would entail a plot based on metamorphosis which involves infinite moments of crisis and spiritual rebirth. b) “Working hard and seeing the progress … I think that feeling will just make me sleep at night” (Takalani): Shifting one’s focus on the outcome to the process of learning requires a letting go of the future. For the women who faced a moment of crisis in the form of academic failure, they emphasised the importance of shifting one’s focus on the outcome of completing a degree to the process of working through challenges and coming to understand the significance of their journey. We could potentially repair the tunnel-visioned third eye (linear time) of pedagogy with whole infinity loops that follow the “hologrammatic principle” or holism (De Toni & Comello, 2010) in a complex system. Just as stem cells are not only a part of one’s body but contain information about the entire body, the hologrammatic principle could be described as “The part is in the whole. The whole is in the part” (De Toni & Comello, 2010, p. 36). To view a system holistically is to not only see the linearity but also the nonlinearity of how individual systems are rooted within subsystems which  are  “oriented more towards capturing flow and movement” and interact in “vertical and horizontal and circular” ways (Morgan, 2005, p. 4).

 athway A: The Discursive-Circulatory System of Being P a Science Person: Puncturing a color-line with Rhythmical Infinity Threads  4) Soul: Multi-Dimensional Discourses as Our Fluid Blood A Function as Strong Attractors Dominant two-dimensional discourses of an institutional culture could be unmasked and trans-formed by rhythmical infinity threads of multidimensional discourses as our fluid blood. This material-discursive

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reality, and its social effects could be unmasked and trans-formed by shifting the research lens away from a deficit view of Black students as “lacking” dominant cultural capital to learning from the value of their community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005). Rhythmic infinity threads take the form of community cultural wealth. Based on the research findings, this lived material-discursive reality is unmasked in four particular ways: a) “There’s no Welile without her mother” (Welile): The value of their “familial capital” in the form of a mother’s strength, courage, resilience, sacrifice, joyfulness, unwavering support and unconditional love. The women reflected on how they developed their strength of character through their mother’s “unwavering support and unconditional love” (Takalani), “resilience and joyfulness” (Takalani) and “continuous source of strength” (Welile). b) “It’s like people holding your hand even when you’re in the dark” (Alala): The value of their “social capital” in the form of women’s support. Although these women belong to diverse collectivities and form multiple communities, the friendships that developed with one another created a homeplace (hooks, 2015) in opposition to the matrix of domination (Collins, 2000) in which they collectively reconstructed alternative subjectivities through narratives that linked them to others and new trajectories of possibilities. c) “But when I got to second year, I still felt like, ‘okay who is going to hire me?’” (Nosakhele): The value of their “navigational capital” in the form of proactivity and resourcefulness. They exercised their individual agency within the institutional constraints of limited funding through their connections to social networks that facilitated their navigation through spaces within the university and the job market (Yosso, 2005, p. 80). d) “I will give back, that’s what I want to do” (Takalani): The value of their “aspirational capital” in the form of being of service to humanity. These women also spoke about how they perceived their scientific knowledge, skills and life experiences as inseparable from their altruistic ambitions and desire to be of service to humanity.

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This lived material-discursive reality is trans-formed in the following ways: e) “The word [‘disadvantage’] has got a little ghost hanging around it” (Alala): The value of their “linguistic capital” and “resistant capital” in challenging deep-seated racialised beliefs and attitudes that are masked through misrepresentations and deficient constructions of Black students. Alala explains that deficient terms, such as “disadvantaged” or “poor” which are used to describe Black communities is dehumanising because one needs to work extra hard to not only “show that you are not ‘disadvantaged’” but also to show that “we are people, we are human”. The deficit analytical lens on Black communities as places of cultural poverty “disadvantages” needs to be shifted to the multiplicity of their cultural knowledges, cultural resources, talents, abilities, skills and networks (Yosso, 2005). We could potentially repair the constricted blood (dominant twodimensional discourse) of institutional culture with rhythmical infinity threads that follow the principle of strong “attractors” (Cilliers, 2001) in a complex system.

 3) Soul: Social Structure-Agency as Our Unclogged Blood A Vessels Function Through Nonlinear Self-Organisation and Unpredictable Emergent Behaviour The unclogged blood vessels of institutional culture could be an effect of structure-agency that has been trans-formed by rhythmical infinity threads. This lived material-discursive reality would produce the social effects of agents altering the discursive constructions of subjectivity and subject positionings, within conditions of impossibility (Vincent, 2015). Rhythmical flows of infinity threads take the form of agency. The trans-formation of this lived material-discursive reality creates the following social effects: a) “I know what I’m doing … this is my way and let it be my way” (Takalani): Refusing to accept the terms of recognition that define humanity through the rapid lucrative value of university degrees.

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The women referred to the importance that society places on the lucrative market value of obtaining one’s degree in the shortest timeframe possible. However, the women resigned from searching for recognition from structures of dehumanisation which validate the rapid lucrative market value of her degree, and thus, they are altering these structures by refusing to accept the terms of how recognition takes place through defining humanity by the lucrative value of university degrees (MaldonadoTorres, 2016). We could potentially repair the clogged blood vessels (social structure) of institutional culture with rhythmical infinity threads that follow the principle of nonlinear “self-organisation” (Cilliers, 2001) and unpredictable “emergent behaviour” (Dekker, 2011) in a complex system. Small actions in an interaction can stimulate large reactions in the whole system (Cilliers, 2001). As everything and anything is possible in a complex system, complexity could be viewed as “the space of possibility” (p. 40), the “mother of freedom of change” (p. 41) which “requires the acceptance of the possibility, the surprise and the novelty” (De Toni & Comello, 2010, p. 410).

 2) Body: Being as Our Sutured Skin Function Through A Multigoal-Seeking, Reflective and Changing Complex Systems An institutional culture trans-formed by rhythmical infinity threads could create the reality of being as our sutured skin. The trans-formation of being a science person creates a lived material-discursive reality of keeping one’s body open to the ongoing process of articulating questions (Maldonado-Torres, 2016). In other words, the trans-formation of being a science person could potentially create a lived material-discursive reality with the following two dimensions: a) “the little things that paint you [are] a horrible weapon” (Kaiya): Identification of the subject with ideological categories is “a process of articulation, a suturing, an over-determination not a subsumption” (Hall, 1996, p. 3).

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Mass media inscribes power on to the body through painting or inflicting labels onto people which can “tear the person apart for life”, as Kaiya notes. By peeling away the layers of labels that mass media have used to paint one’s body, Kaiya, for example, strives to create the possibility of re-painting and creating her sense of belonging through which being and becoming as the canvas of her “identity” is always “under erasure” (Hall, 1996, p. 1). b) “It was honestly never about being a ‘Black woman in science’, it was about what I as, just as Kaiya, wanted to bring in science” (Kaiya): Stepping with the colonial inventions of race and gender and against their reification. Kaiya questions why I, through this research, am labelling her as a “Black woman scientist” instead of  recognising her as a scientist. She questions why I recognise her race and gender locations before I recognise her, Kaiya, and what she wants to bring to science as an individual. The question she is essentially posing is how we could break the impasse of stepping with and against the colonial inventions of race and gender. How could we create new forms, contexts and concepts of change? How can we articulate a new language of change? We could potentially repair the wounded skin (nonbeing) of institutional culture with rhythmical infinity threads that follow the principle of “multigoal-seeking, reflective and changing complex systems” (Skyttner, 2001). These living systems are able to reflect on prior learning, choose from a variety of actions to respond to external conditions to fulfil the goal of a system and anticipate a projected future (Skyttner, 2001; Van der Westhuizen, 2015).

 1) Body: Unbounded Space as Our Infinitely Open Second A Skin Function Through Open and Permeable System Boundaries The space of an institutional culture trans-formed by rhythmical infinity threads could entail our infinitely open second skin. The material-discursive trans-formation of being a science person entails a relativist conceptualisation of space as constituted through

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human practices in which place is contested and fluid due to the fact that its “ever shifting boundaries are effects of strong power relations at play” (Tamboukou, 2003, p. 55). Rhythmical infinity threads takes the form of a relativist conceptualisation of space. The trans-formation of being a science person entails the following conception of space: a) I’ve always had it [my iPod] in my hand. I’ve always had the sound system of the future in my hand … this is how you want your life to go, you can tune it (Odirile): Sensing the rising and falling intonation of existence as musicality and reinventing a sense of self-worth. When the intonation of our being in the world falls out of tune and into self-doubt,  Odirile points to the importance of unpredictability, spontaneity and intuitive creativity in “play[ing] your tunes and put[ing] your chords appropriately”  thus, reinventing one’s  sense of self-worth that bends itself to the musicality of existence. b) “it’s [architecture] a human thing, it is so important in our lives, it’s a social art” (Alala): Conceptions of space as a social art that shape humanity’s image of itself. Instead of conceiving space as monuments that reflect one’s ego, space should be viewed as a “social art [in service of ] humanity” (Alala) which would facilitate the power of flows of capital instead of the flows of capital power (Castells, 2011). We could potentially repair the tainted second skin (bounded space) of institutional culture with rhythmical infinity threads that follow the principle of “open system boundaries” (Skyttner, 2001) which enable the constant flow of communication and information between the system and its environment through permeable boundaries (Friedman & Allen, 2011; Skyttner, 2001). Information is continually modified through the interpenetration of boundaries which fuel positive feedback loops because what goes into a system is rarely identical to that which leaves a system (Skyttner, 2001).

How could this symbolic narrative reality, and its psychosocial effects be unmasked and trans-formed? C4) Unpredictable symbolic narratives that hovers on the border of chaos as our webwork heart: Trans-formed through tragic love in motion. d) “I found myself with no definition [due to failure]. I couldn’t define myself anymore … I learnt that I am me and I can’t be defined by the circumstances around me” (Takalani). e) “this [purple] scarf represents [that] I am worth it, whatever marks I get, whatever hardships I go through, those make me grow … my goal going forward is for me to stretch completely [and] to reach that place where I’m beyond myself” (Odirile). e) “I don’t want to be stuck … the early me, who hasn’t changed much. I mean, I still want to learn, just learn, find understanding, a fulfilled life. That’s all I want; a self-sustained fulfilled life” (Alala). f) “it’s like a baby, you have to learn again to hold yourself up to get yourself there … a love-hate relationship; so, one day I love you [architecture] because of the ideas but the next day I hate you” (Odirile). Unmasked through teaching and assessment practices driven by a teleological suspension of disciplinarity (Gordon, 2011) and exposing psychic wounds through artistic expression which gives one a sense of “the mystery that lies at the heart of all selfhood” (Smith, 2019, p. 19); that which is incomprehensible and ultimately unknowable.

Psychosocial-Pathway C-entre) Narrative-respiratory system of belonging to knowledge communities: Decentring and overwriting (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion with the rhythmical ebb and flow of whole infinity networks How could this told storied reality, and its psychical effects be unmasked and trans-formed? B4) A plurality of stories as our broadminded brain: Trans-forming or (re)pairing fragments of our-selves through critical psychosocial mnemonics (Duncan et al., 2014) and collective memory work (Haug, 1992) as rituals of meaning-spirit making which shape individual lives as a question and collective cultural patterns of symbolisation. b) “it’s a network, like Avatar … a breathing system, a network breathing space” (Alala): (Re)pairing fragments of our-selves in the form of network storymazes and cultural patterns of symbolisation. Unmasked through sitting with fragmented pieces of our shattered selves a) “When my water broke, my heart broke” (Welile): Sitting with fragmented pieces of our shattered selves.

Psychic-Pathway B) Storied-­ nervous system of becoming modern scientists: Dismantling hierarchicalheteropatriarchal lines with whole infinity loops

(continued)

How could material-discursive reality and its social effects be unmasked and trans-formed? A4) Multi-dimensional discourses as our fluid blood: Trans-formed through shifting the research lens away from a deficit view of Black students as “lacking” dominant cultural capital to learning from the value of their community cultural wealth in the form of linguistic and resistant capital (Yosso, 2005). e) “The word [‘disadvantage’] has got a little ghost hanging around it” (Alala): The value of their linguistic capital and resistant (and innovational) capital in challenging deep-seated racialised beliefs and attitudes that are masked through misrepresentations and deficient constructions of Black students. Unmasked through shifting the research lens away from a deficit view of Black students as “lacking” dominant cultural capital to learning from the value of their community cultural wealth in the form of familial, social, navigational and aspirational capital (Yosso, 2005).

Social-Pathway A) Discursive-circulatory system of being a science person: Puncturing the color-line (Du Bois, 2007[1903]) with rhythmical infinity threads

Table 8.2  Reinventing pathways “out of” the Minotaur’s labyrinth: Rhythmic whole infinity networks of tragic love in motion

Psychic-Pathway B) Storied-­ nervous system of becoming modern scientists: Dismantling hierarchicalheteropatriarchal lines with whole infinity loops

a) “I’m tired of people trying to change me … I’m going to Repairing the narrow-minded brain do a book of my ethics” (Alala): An ethical practice of (stories) of pedagogy with whole infinity listening to, understanding and addressing students’ moral loops that follow the principle of evaluations of how the university affects their sense of learning, self-knowledge and growth. self-worth. b) “you come in here with your values … you’re putting yourself onto paper, your pieces of yourself [and] you know it’s hatching” (Alala): Teaching and assessment as a social practice driven by a complexity-transdisciplinary frame of reference and a teleological suspension of disciplinarity (Gordon, 2011). c) “We have no faces. Just scars and our delicate insides. We have no faces. Just weeping souls. They wear our faces … I must wear the face of a hungry lion” (Alala): Exposing psychic wounds through artistic expression with the aim of (Mignolo & Vázquez, 2013) and charting new theoretical pathways in the “direction of liberatory terrain” (hooks, 2013, p. 191). Brainchild: (Re)pairing the shattered heart (symbolic narratives) of knowledge communities with a complex adaptive system of rhythmical whole infinity networks that hovers on the border of chaos at the (re)turning and crossing thresholds between the breaking points and interstices of our webwork heart; a tragic love which sustains a resistant inertial momentum for the rebirth of new directions and liberatory pathways in science, art, and human reality to emerge.

Psychosocial-Pathway C-entre) Narrative-respiratory system of belonging to knowledge communities: Decentring and overwriting (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion with the rhythmical ebb and flow of whole infinity networks

Table 8.2 (continued)

a) “There’s no Welile without her mother” (Welile): The value of their familial capital in the form of their mother’s strength, courage, resilience, sacrifice, joyfulness, unwavering support and unconditional love. b) “It’s like people holding your hand even when you’re in the dark” (Alala): The value of their social capital in the form of women’s support. c) “But when I got to second year, I still felt like, ‘okay who is going to hire me?’” (Nosakhele): The value of their navigational capital in the form of proactivity and resourcefulness. d) “I will give back, that’s what I want to do” (Takalani): The value of their “aspirational capital” in the form of being of service to humanity. Repairing the constricted blood (dominant discourses) of institutional culture with rhythmical infinity threads in which discourses act as strong “attractors” (Cilliers, 2001) in complex systems.

Social-Pathway A) Discursive-circulatory system of being a science person: Puncturing the color-line (Du Bois, 2007[1903]) with rhythmical infinity threads

What would the psychosocial effects of the trans-formation of this symbolic narrative reality potentially be? C3) Living knowledge as our heartened lungs: Biko’s philosophy of Black Consciousness which “expresses group pride and the determination by the blacks to rise and attain the envisaged self” (Biko, 2012 [1978], p. 68). a) “Engaging with critical thinking and asserting myself” (Odirile): Constructing and enacting knowledge through the philosophy of Black Consciousness. b) “science is to learn techniques. We don’t learn to be smart; we learn to be able to do experiments … I learnt to be creative and innovative” (Nosakhele): Designing experiments, making new discoveries, altering existing knowledges and shifting normative constructions of Science and scientists on which the stock story about academic “excellence” is evaluated against. c) “I love this project [it has] potential to have like a major impact in terms of our economy and also in improving the way we live” (Nosakhele): The cultivation of new ecologies of knowledges (de Sousa Santos, 2007) with the potential to enrich and change the world, its inhabitants and generations yet to come. Repairing the punctured lungs (knowledge) of research with rhythmical whole infinity networks that follow the principle of uncontrollability, unpredictability and constant change. What would the psychical effects of the trans-formation of this told storied reality potentially be? B3) (R)evolving cultural memory as our malleable spinal cord: Understanding human beings through communities and as co-creators of dialectically evolving sets of values (Gordon, 2008). a) “it’s a garden where you are taking care of your plants [not saying] ‘grow this way and grow that way’” (Alala): The growth of living knowledges, widening of the human imagination and the evolution of culture as new unfolding worlds. Repairing the unmalleable spinal cord (cultural memory) of pedagogy with whole infinity loops that follow the principle of positive feedback loops in complex systems.

(continued)

What would the social effects of the trans-­formation of this lived materialdiscursive reality potentially be? A3) Social structure-agency as our unclogged blood vessels: Agency as the possibility for altering the discursive constructions of subjectivity and subject positionings within conditions of impossibility (Vincent, 2015). a) “I know what I’m doing … this is my way and let it be my way” (Takalani): Refusing to accept the terms of recognition that define humanity through the rapid lucrative value of university degrees. Repairing the clogged blood vessels (social structure-agency) of institutional culture with rhythmical infinity threads that follow the principle of nonlinear “self-organisation” (Cilliers, 2001) and unpredictable “emergent behaviour” (Dekker, 2011) in complex systems.

What symbolic narrative reality would the trans-formation of belonging to symbolic and imagined knowledge communities create? How is belonging (as a state of being) to networks of symbolic knowledge produced and what does the valuing of this knowing-that do? C2) Belonging as our regenerative breath: Biographical timespaces that open the body to communities of learning through interconnected networks of plots based on metamorphosis that portray the dialectical relationship between political and social life with/in and through personal lives in its moments of crisis and rebirth (Bakhtin, 1981). a) “[Awards] is what made me … that shadow that I walked with … I had to go back and redefine myself, as who you are. I always liked to create” (Alala): Disconnecting one’s sense of self-worth from the reproduction of sameness (Essed & Goldberg, 2002) and reconnecting with the uniqueness of the narratable self (Cavarero, 2014). b) “my supportive teachers at school, they pushed me and encouraged me … then I fell in love with genetics” (Nosakhele): Developing a passion for learning through teacher’s encouragement and support c) “the ability to communicate and express to others, you can only do that when you understand something” (Kaiya): Communities of learning and the academic practice of understanding as “distantiation, appropriation, research and articulation” (Slonimsky & Shalem, 2006). Facilitate regenerative breath (belonging) with rhythmical whole infinity networks that follow the principle of interconnecting and interacting elements which contribute to changes within and growth of complex systems.

Psychosocial-Pathway C-entre) Narrative-respiratory system of belonging to knowledge communities: Decentring and overwriting (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion with the rhythmical ebb and flow of whole infinity networks

Table 8.2 (continued)

What told storied reality would the trans-formation of becoming modern scientists create? How is belonging (as a state of becoming) to networks of cultural values produced and what does the valuing of this knowing-why do? B2) Becoming as our farsighted eyes: The “body as narratively unruly [or undisciplined]” which resists semantic patterns and narrative closure (Punday, 2003, p. 94). a) “even when you when you draw a line, you put your self into that, you put your soul into that” (Alala): Expressing one’s humanness by transforming objects through meaningful soul work, which in turn transform us (Bulhan, 1985; Marx, 1964). b) “put some faith in the upcoming professionals … we are so young and so excited about things [and] we still have this energy” (Alala): The role of leadership in making forward-looking action meaningful through narrating imaginative storylines of a projected future. Repairing the short-sighted eyes (becoming) of pedagogy with whole infinity loops that follow the principle of circular causality and retroactive “loops” (De Toni & Comello, 2010) between being-­becoming-­belonging in complex systems.

Psychic-Pathway B) Storied-­ nervous system of becoming modern scientists: Dismantling hierarchicalheteropatriarchal lines with whole infinity loops

What lived material-discursive reality would the trans-formation of being a science person potentially create? How is belonging (as a state of being) to networks of discursive knowledge produced and what does the valuing of this knowing-how do? A2) Being as our sutured skin: Keeping one’s body open to the process of articulating questions and reflections (Maldonado-Torres, 2016). a) “the little things that paint you [are] a horrible weapon” (Kaiya): Identification of the subject with ideological categories is “a process of articulation, a suturing, an over-determination not a subsumption” (Hall, 1996, p. 3). b) “It was honestly never about being a ‘Black woman in science’, it was about what I as, just as Kaiya, wanted to bring in science” (Kaiya): Stepping with the colonial inventions of race and gender and against their reification. Repairing the wounded skin (nonbeing) of institutional culture with rhythmical infinity threads that follow the principle of multigoal-seeking, reflective and changing complex systems (Skyttner, 2001).

Social-Pathway A) Discursive-circulatory system of being a science person: Puncturing the color-line (Du Bois, 2007[1903]) with rhythmical infinity threads

What would the symbolic narrative trans-formation of belonging to knowledge communities entail? C1) “Chronotopes” (Bakhtin, 1981) expressed through multi-dimensional as the fresh or spirited air, we breathe: “A phenomenology of whiteness” as sitting with and digesting what is habitual and routine in a world that is made “white” by colonialism (Ahmed, 2007). a) “I don’t even know why I do certain things because I grew up just doing it … you don’t question such things, I mean it’s religion, it’s who you are” (Amirah): The university as a place that could potentially facilitate the “complex creativity involved in the digestion and liberation of contrasting spaces” (Harris, as cited in Peterson & Rutherford, 1995, p. 189). b) “[The Oya programme] it’s like your mom who raised you and stuff and now she is like, ‘Okay child, go out, go do your thing’” (Amirah): A homeplace as a safe place to heal the wounds inflicted on Black people by the culture of white supremacy (hooks, 2015). Repairing the stale air (chronotopes) of research with rhythmical whole infinity networks that follow the principle of negative entropy or “negentropy” (Schrödinger, 1944) in complex systems. What would the storied trans-­formation of becoming modern scientists entail? B1) Circular time as our visionary third eye: Einstein’s theorisation of relativity in which space and time are twin siblings. a) “it was also overcoming that whole thing of like ‘oh I’d been knocked down and everyone had laughed about it” (Alala): A plot based on metamorphosis which involves infinite moments of crisis, breaking points, crossing thresholds and spiritual rebirth (Bakhtin, 1981). b) “Working hard and seeing the progress … I think that feeling will just make me sleep at night” (Takalani): Shifting one’s focus on the outcome to the process of learning requires a letting go of the future. Repairing the third eye (tunnel-visioned linear time) of pedagogy with whole infinity loops that follow the “hologrammatic principle” or holism (De Toni & Comello, 2010) in complex systems.

What would the material-discursive trans-­formation of being a science person entail? A1) Unbounded space as our infinitely open second skin: Relativist conceptualisation of space as constituted through human practices in which its boundaries are always shifting as a result of power relations at play. a) “I’ve always had it [my iPod] in my hand. I’ve always had the sound system of the future in my hand … this is how you want your life to go, you can tune it” (Odirile): Sensing the rising and falling intonation of existence as musicality and reinventing a sense of self-worth. b) “it’s [architecture] a human thing, it is so important in our lives, it’s a social art” (Alala): Conceptions of space as a social art that shape humanity’s image of itself. Repairing the tainted second skin (space) of institutional culture with rhythmical infinity threads that follow the principle of open and permeable system boundaries (Skyttner, 2001).

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Conclusion Drawing on systems theory and the symbolic narratives or knowledges of the women in this research project, I have co-mapped pathways into the centre of the Minotaur’s labyrinth which account for the processes, principles and practices involved in the re-formations of zones of nonbeing a “person”, not-becoming “modern”  people  and no-belonging to knowledge communities in “post”-apartheid South Africa. First, I explored how Pathway A (the discursive-circulatory system of zones of nonbeing a “science person”) functions according to the following principles: bounded space as our tainted second skin function through closed and isolated system boundaries, nonbeing as our wounded skin function through a goal-maintaining system, social structure-agency as our clogged blood vessels function through linear self-organisation and predictable emergent behaviour and dominant two-dimensional discourse as our constricted blood function as weak attractors. Second, I have discussed how Pathway B (the storied-nervous system of not-becoming “modern” scientists) operates according to the following principles: linear time as our tunnel-visioned third eye operates through too clearly defined hierarchies, not-becoming as our wilfully short-sighted eyes function through linear causality, sedimented cultural memory as our unmalleable spinal cord function through negative feedback loops and single story scripts as our narrow-minded brain function through no learning, self-development or growth. Last, Pathway C-entre (the narrative-­respiratory system of no-belonging to knowledge communities) is structured by a number of guiding principles: chronotopes (Bakhtin, 1981) expressed through one-dimensional symbols as the stale air we breathe function through entropy, the (neo)liberal inclusion-exclusion logic (i.e. no-belonging) as our breathlessness function through the separation of elements, atrophied knowledge as our punctured lungs function through controllability, predictability and no change and predictable symbolic narratives as our shattered heart function through the maintenance of predictable order, stability and a state of equilibrium. Drawing on complexity theory and the women’s narratives, I have comapped pathways “out of ” the Minotaur’s labyrinth which account for

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the processes, principles and practices involved in the trans-formation of being, becoming and belonging to knowledge communities in South Africa. First, I explored how Pathway A (the discursive-circulatory system of being a science person) function according to the following principles: unbounded space as our open second skin function through permeable system boundaries, being as our sutured skin function through multigoal-seeking, reflective and changing complex systems, structure-agency as our unclogged blood vessels function through nonlinear self-organisation and unpredictable emergent behaviour and multi-dimensional discourses as our fluid blood function as strong attractors. Second, I have discussed how Pathway B (the storied-nervous system of becoming modern scientists) operate according to the following principles: circular time as our visionary third eye function through the hologrammatic principle or holism, becoming as our farsighted eyes function through circular causality and retroactive loops, (r)evolving cultural memory as our malleable spinal cord function through positive feedback loops and a plurality of stories as our broad-minded brain function through learning, self-knowledge and growth. Last, I explored how Pathway C-entre (the narrativerespiratory system of no-belonging to knowledge communities) is structured by the following guiding principles: Chronotopes expressed through multi-dimensional symbols as the fresh or spirited air we breathe function through negative entropy, belonging as our breath-fullness function through interconnecting and interacting elements, living knowledges as our heartened lungs function through uncontrollability, unpredictability and constant change and unpredictable symbolic narratives that hovers on the border of chaos is our webwork heart.

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9 The Toroidal-Maze of Tragic Love in Motion: Proposing a Complex Systems Programme Model for Translating Theoretical Pathways into Social Praxis

Introduction In this chapter, I plot the regulative principles of systems theory which fuel the dominant inertial momentum along a centripetal pathway in a closed system onto the geometric shape of Manichean hierarchical entities to illustrate how white logic models sustain its direction and increase its speed along a pathway by providing simple linear cause-and-effect explanations to societal challenges. Conversely, I plot the guiding principles of complexity theory that sustain a resistant inertial momentum along a centrifugal pathway in a complex adaptive system onto the geometric shape of an infinity symbol in order to develop a complex systems programme model or strategy that disrupts white logic. In exploring how to construct theories of change in a complex intervention, Mason and Barnes (2007) remind us of the importance of providing narratives of change instead of logic models that present simple linear cause-and-effect explanations to societal challenges. The inertial momentum of rhythmic whole infinity networks, as a complex systems programme model, could potentially disrupt the dominant power structure’s momentum and redirect that path. These principles would guide © The Author(s) 2020 S. Liccardo, Psychosocial Pathways Towards Reinventing the South African University, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49036-2_9

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the formation of responsive strategies and patterns of emergent behaviour without being overly prescriptive and stifling creativity. In other words, this chapter aims to translate the conceptual-empirical framework and recommendations from this research into social praxis by proposing a complex systems programme model that engages with the nonlinear dynamics involved in the complex nature of the material-­ discursive, storied, and symbolic narrative practices of (non)being, (not) becoming and (no)belonging to knowledge communities in “post”-apartheid South Africa. By way of ending this theoretical work and beginning to collectively translate its ideas into social praxis, this book concludes with an artwork as a narrative symbol for the proposed programme (social change initiative), the Toroidal-maze of tragic love in motion.

Research Questions How could the regulative principles of disempowerment which govern the re-formations of zones of  non-being  a “person”, not-becoming  “modern” people and no-belonging to knowledge communities help us understand the operating system of white logic models? Conversely, how could we utilise the guiding principles of empowerment which govern the transformations of being a person, becoming modern peoples and belonging to knowledge communities to develop a complex systems programme model which disrupts white logic and reinvents innovative pathways in the direction towards liberatory terrain? How could we translate the proposed conceptual-empirical framework into social praxis or a workable social programme that is governed by the guiding principles of empowerment and trans-formations? The Minotaur’s labyrinth takes the form of Manichean hierarchical entities of shattering failure as paralysis, which maintains predictable order in a closed system of white logic. Conversely, this chapter will propose a programme called the Toroidal-maze of tragic love in motion; the  rhythmical ebb and flow of whole infinity networks as a complex adaptive system that hovers on the border of chaos.

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Programme Model As mentioned, the Apartheid Archives project (AAP) was established in 2009 and explores the narratives of apartheid life by South Africans via a virtual space (Stevens, Duncan, & Hook, 2013). Carolissen and Kiguwa (2018) explain that AAP has not “explicitly focused on narratives of (non) belonging in education, and the ways in which intergenerational storytelling infuses learning-teaching processes in the present post-Apartheid context” (p. 4). Therefore, the proposed social programme aims to focus on narratives of (non)being, (not)becoming and (no)belonging to knowledge communities in the present post-Apartheid context. The goal of this proposed programme (social change initiative) is to utilise the conceptual-­ empirical framework presented in Chap. 8 to develop an embodied social praxis of forging psychosocial pathways towards being, becoming and belonging to knowledge communities in “post”-apartheid South Africa. In other words, the goal of the programme is to develop psychosocial pathways towards reinventing the soul of South African universities. How could we design a programme model or strategy that would continuously lead us in the direction towards this “end goal”? The emphasis is on the direction and not the “end goal”. The aim is not to “arrive at” this “end goal” because the meanings we attach to “home” are always contested, shifting and entangled with systems of domination. How could we design a programme model that would best facilitate the conception of liminal spaces in a dialectic reality which, as Lugones (2006) explains, “involves this going back and forth from domination, negotiating that movement so as to maximize our freedom in an unfree situation [and where we] see the need for coalition: a loving connection toward liberation” (p. 79). In exploring how to construct theories of change in a complex intervention, Mason and Barnes (2007) remind us of the importance of providing narratives of change instead of logic models that present simple linear cause-and-effect explanations to societal challenges. While adopting a holistic approach to complex issues, Pinnegar (2006) suggests that a complex programme may be “too difficult to explain its objectives in

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tangible terms, too amorphous to deliver, and too difficult to meaningfully evaluate” (p. 4). An alternative approach to presenting causal logic models is the articulation of core principles that guide the formation of responsive strategies and patterns of emergent behaviour, as Eoyang & Berkas (1998) note: “A complex adaptive system (CAS) consists of interdependent agents. The behavior of each agent conforms to a short list of simple rules, and the group of agents exhibits emergent, system-­wide patterns of behaviour” (as cited in Rogers, 2008, p. 43). The articulation of core guiding principles would provide a framework that would enable us to focus on the aims of the programme without being overly prescriptive, which would stifle creativity and innovation. Based on the research findings, Chap. 8 provided a narrative for the material-discursive, storied, and symbolic narrative practices of psychosocial re-formation and trans-formation at South African universities. This symbolic  narrative of psychosocial re-formation and trans-formation takes on particular forms that are regulated and guided by key principles from systems theory and complexity theory. On the one hand, the form of Manichean hierarchical entities of shattering failure as paralysis was used as a metaphor for the re-formations within and of closed systems of white logic and method. On the other hand, the form of rhythmical whole infinity networks of tragic love in motion was used as a counter metaphor for the trans-formations within and of complex adaptive systems. Figure 9.1 provides an illustration of a white logic model, whereas Fig. 9.2 depicts a complex systems programme model that disrupts white logic within an institution. In his article, “Making Educational Development and Change Sustainable: Insights from Complexity Theory”, Mark Mason (2009) argues that the notion of inertial momentum, which is connected to the phenomenon of power, conceptually links the principle of emergent behaviour in complexity theory and the idea of socio-historical change in society. Drawing on the insights of complexity theory, Mason (2009) defines power as the directional force of a particular phenomenon that has “the dominant inertial momentum over other competing phenomena” (p. 119). He uses the concept of inertial momentum from physics which he defines in simplified terms as “the resistance of an object in

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A1) Bounded space (tainted second skin) function through isolated system boundaries A2) Nonbeing (wounded skin) function through a goal-maintaining system A3) Social structure-agency (clogged blood vessels) function through linear self-organisation and predictable emergent behaviour A4) Dominant two-dimensional discourses (constricted blood) function as weak attractors B1) Linear time (tunnel-visioned third eye) functions through too clearly defined hierarchies B2) Not-becoming (wilfully short-sighted eyes) function through linear causality B3) Sedimented cultural memory (unmalleable spinal cord) function through negative feedback loops B4) Single story scripts (narrow-minded brain) function through no learning, self-development or growth C1) Chronotopes (one-dimensional symbols) as the stale air we breathe function through entropy C2) The (neo)liberal inclusion-exclusion logic (i.e. no-belonging as our breathlessness) function through the separation of elements C3) Atrophied knowledge (punctured lungs) function through controllability, predictability and no change C4) Predictable symbolic narratives (shattered heart) function through the maintenance of predictable order, stability and a state of equilibrium

Fig. 9.1  A white logic model

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C4) Unpredictable symbolic narratives (webwork heart) hovers on the border of chaos C3) Living knowledges (heartened lungs) function through uncontrollability, unpredictability and constant change C2) Belonging (regenerative breath) function through interconnecting and interacting elements C1) Chronotopes (multi-dimensional symbols) as the fresh or spirited air we breathe function through negative entropy B4) Plurality of stories (broad-minded brain) function through learning, self-knowledge, growth, and maturity B3) (R)evolving cultural memory (malleable spinal cord) function through positive feedback loops B2) Becoming (farsighted eyes) function through circular causality and retroactive loops B1) Circular time (visionary third eye) function through the hologrammatic principle or holism A4) Multi-dimensional discourses (fluid blood) function as strong attractors A3) Social structure-agency (unclogged blood vessels) function through nonlinear self-organisation and unpredictable emergent behaviour A2) Being (sutured skin) function through multigoal-seeking, reflective and changing complex systems A1) Unbounded space (infinitely open second skin) function through open and permeable system boundaries Fig. 9.2  A complex systems programme model that disrupts white logic

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motion to changes in its velocity” (Mason, 2009, p. 119). The prevailing power structure’s momentum along a particular path will increase its dominance unless a sufficient amount of momentum is garnered in an-­ other direction and is sustained by the increasingly adaptive complex state of its networks (Mason, 2009). Mason (2009) explains that whether a power shift is radical or not would depend “on the degree of difference in strength and direction—as in velocity or in vector analysis, but rather more amorphously—between the existing and the emerging power structures” (p.  119). Put differently, the path dependency and lock-in of a phenomenon that has dominant inertial momentum would sustain its direction and increase its speed along a particular path until the inertial momentum of a competing phenomenon could disrupt and redirect that path (Mason, 2009). Manichean hierarchal entities could be understood as the entrenched rules of practice within an institution. Institutions consist of a collection of enduring norms, values, practices, beliefs and rules which are not only embedded in structures of resources and meaning but are also resilient to the particularities and idiosyncratic expectations of individuals (March, 2006). Figure  9.1 (and  the pathways to the centre of Fig. 8.1) depicts how dominant regulative principles within an institution provide a set of parameters for a centripetal directional force towards a dominant path which ultimately leads to a centre of paralysis, immobility and re-­ formations within the university as a closed system of white logic. These institutional regulative principles which govern Manichean hierarchical entities are as follows: isolated system boundaries, goal-maintaining systems, linear self-organisation, predictable emergent behaviour, weak attractors, too clearly defined hierarchies, negative feedback loops, linear causality, no learning, entropy, controllability, predictability separation of elements and the maintenance of predictable order and no change. Conversely, I suggest that the resistant inertial momentum of rhythmical whole infinity networks, as a complex systems programme model, could potentially disrupt the dominant power structure’s momentum and redirect that path. In other words, Fig. 9.2 (and the pathways “out of ” from the centre in Fig. 8.1) depicts how particular guiding principles within an institution could provide a set of parameters for a centrifugal directional force away from the centre which facilitates mobility towards

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an alternative path of trans-formations within the university as a complex adaptive system. These institutional guiding principles which govern rhythmical whole infinity networks, as a complex systems programme model, are as follows: open system boundaries, multi-goal-seeking and changing complex systems, nonlinear self-organisation, unpredictable emergent behaviour, strong attractors, holism, circular causality, positive feedback loops, learning, negative entropy, interacting elements, uncontrollability, unpredictability, hovering on the border of chaos and constant change.

Programme Goals I will now present three layers of programme goals and the corresponding aims and components that are recommended in moving in the direction towards decolonising and trans-forming institutional culture, pedagogy and social scientific research methods. But where do we start? Which opening in this maze do we enter? It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what are the root causes of the university system’s failure, or what strategies would be most effective in addressing these societal challenges. It would seem that the best strategy for disrupting the dominant power structure’s momentum would be to address these societal challenges from as many layers, perspectives, angles, intersections and positions as possible (Mason, 2009). However, the cover image may provide a clue as to where to begin, namely, at the intersection between the spinal cord and heart of the proposed programme (i.e. Pathway B and C-entre). Whereas (r)evolving cultural memory would be the malleable spinal cord of the programme which is connected to its broad-minded brain (plurality of  stories), unpredictable  symbolic narratives would be the webwork  heart of the programme which is connected to its heartened  lungs (living  knowledges). The plurality of stories and living knowledges generated by the programme would potentially open our eyes (becoming) to new pathways or visions of time (third eye) and create fresh air (chronotopes as multi-­dimensional symbols) to breathe (belong). This symbolic narratives in the fluid blood (multi-dimensional discourses) of the programme

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would flow through its unclogged blood vessels (structure-agency) and potentially create the conditions for  unbounded spaces (infinitely open second skin) of being (sutured skin) to flourish. I will now discuss a number of possible angles that could address the societal challenges as identified in this book. The goals of the proposed programme (social change initiative), are aligned with the layers of institutional culture (Pathway A), pedagogy (Pathway B) and social scientific research methods (Pathway C-entre). Within each layer, four aims are presented with the intent of repairing particular elements within institutional culture, pedagogy and research. Each aim is guided by a particular principle. In working towards these aims, several programme components or recommendations that are based on the research findings will also be provided.

 athway A: The Discursive-Circulatory System P of Being a Science Person  oal 1: Puncturing a color-line with Rhythmic G Infinity Threads In this section, I will discuss four aims in relation to 11 programme components that are recommended in working towards the goal of puncturing an institutional culture structured by the dominance of a color-line.

 1) Body: Repairing the Tainted Second Skin (Bounded A Space) of Institutional Culture Through Open System Boundaries A societal challenge identified in this research entails the absolute conception of bounded space which is attached to ideologically imposed identity categories that are isolated from its environment. As a result, there is no exchange of energy, matter or information across its boundaries. The following four programme components are recommended in working towards repairing the tainted second skin (bounded space) of

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institutional culture: (1) Intensifying efforts to recruit and retain Black academics, (2) Unmasking and contesting the practices of whiteness and the workings of normalised micro-social experiences of everyday racism and (3) Recreating material-discursive spaces as a social art in service of humanity. First, although there has been institutional reform in South African higher education institutions and changes in employment policies, universities need to intensify the recruitment and retainment of Black academics, particularly Black women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Second, more research that focuses on whiteness, as an institutional form and a structural position, needs to be done in order to unmask and contest the workings of normalised micro-social experiences of everyday racism within South African universities (Van der Westhuizen, 2018). Research would need to unmask what inheres in the practices of whiteness, the ways in which masculine whiteness is privileged as the invisible norm (Dyer, 1997) and how prevailing mindsets in and of particular institutions could be transformed (Vincent, 2015). It is critical to interrogate how practices of whiteness are enacted through, for instance, the interaction between university staff members and students. Universities must not tolerate the ways in which Black women’s membership to science communities are delegitimised through everyday acts of misrecognition. Universities need to constantly revisit and rework grievance procedures in order for Black staff and students to report incidences of discrimination. Third, if chronotopes “stand as monuments to the community itself, as symbols of it, as forces operating to shape its members’ images of themselves” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 7), then how could universities recreate social spaces that are symbolic of and represent the values of staff and students from different backgrounds? Universities need to recognise the value of conceptualising material-discursive spaces as a “social art [in service of ] humanity” instead of erecting monuments that reflect one’s ego, as Alala has noted. Universities in Africa, as a leading scholar in decolonial theory, African history and development studies Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013) argues, must be “radically transformed into African universities thorough the decolonisation of curriculum and institutional frameworks as well as

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faculty members. The process must include careful and deep thinking on what values should distinguish and underpin an African university” (p. 49–50). A possible strategy to address this problem could entail a relativist conceptualisation of space which is constituted through human practices; thus spaces are continually modified through the interpenetration of boundaries and the constant exchange of energy, matter or information with its environment. As a result, space as our infinitely open second skin would function through permeable system boundaries.

 2) Body: Repairing the Wounded Skin (Nonbeing) A of Institutional Culture Through Multigoal-Seeking, Reflective and Changing Complex Systems The devastating reality that this societal challenge creates for the material-­ discursive body of the university is that the pre-determined goal of a color-line is to maintain an absolute conception of bounded space through the reproduction of a zone of nonbeing (Fanon, 1967) and a zone of being (Gordon, 2006; Maldonado-Torres, 2008; Wynter, 2003). The following three programme components are recommended in working towards repairing the wounded skin (nonbeing) of institutional culture: (1) Grappling with the ways in which language functions as an identity marker and as an ideology, (2) Widening epistemological access (Morrow, 2007) so that students are inducted into STEM disciplines and (3) Creating a learning environment where all student contributions are recognised and valued. First, the modus operandi of historically White English-speaking universities continues to be English-centric. Language extends beyond the academic achievement discourse and it partly encompasses student identity, power, dominance and interpersonal relationships. Therefore, universities need to acknowledge that language is both an academic and social intermediary of experience and that it functions as both an identity marker and as an ideology that permeates both the university and the wider society (Dominguez-Whitehead, Botsis, & Liccardo, 2013).

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Second, it is imperative that the government prioritise the issue of funding in higher education in order to meet the financial needs of those  Black students whose families have scarce financial resources. Further, gaining entry into university and established bodies of knowledge is not enough, epistemological access (Morrow, 2007) needs to be widened so that students are inducted into STEM disciplines. Academic staff members need to make visible the commonly taken-for-granted academic practices that require students to have practical academic knowledge. Universities need to expand their view of access that not only affords students a physical place but also critically interrogates the ways in which their practices contribute to restricting epistemological access (Morrow, 2007) and perpetuating symbolic violence (Bulhan,  1985) by creating socially induced feelings of nonexistence for Black students. Third, the women in this research project experienced racial and gender discrimination through the perceived preferential treatment that white and male students received from academic staff members. How could academic staff members create a learning environment where all student contributions are recognised and valued? The reality that these effects could potentially create for the material-­ discursive body of the university is that people would keep their bodies open to the process of articulating questions and reflections (Maldonado-­ Torres, 2016) which would enable living systems to reflect on prior learning, choose from a variety of actions to respond to external conditions and shape anticipated futures.

 3) Soul: Repairing the Clogged Blood Vessels (Social A Structure-agency) of Institutional Culture Through Nonlinear Self-Organisation and Unpredictable Emergent Behaviour The linear self-organisation of material and non-material social facts which thwart human needs effectively results in the predictable emergent behaviour of reproducing economic benefits to white people in South Africa through the possessive investment in whiteness (Lipsitz, 2006). The following programme component is recommended in working towards repairing the clogged blood vessels (social structure-agency) of

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institutional culture: (1) Cultivating an institutional culture where new trajectories of knowledge and “psychosocial citizenship” may emerge (Carolissen & Kiguwa, 2018). Universities need to reflect on how they embrace a superficial form of transformation which aims to protect the economic value of degrees and in which new people are only welcomed into their space if they preserve their social, intellectual and economic capital (Botsis, Dominguez-­ Whitehead, & Liccardo, 2013). Instead of maintaining a culture in which the lucrative market value of obtaining one’s degree in the shortest timeframe possible is emphasised and valued, universities need to foster “spaces where hopeful possibilities for future trajectories of knowledge-­ making and active socio-economic and psychosocial citizenship, may emerge” (Carolissen & Kiguwa, 2018, p. 4). New trajectories of knowledge are created through diverse and innovative ways of knowing how to approach a problem from different angles. How could students be encouraged to develop their creative potential and reflective judgement so that they are able to offer novel interpretations of the world? Nonlinear spontaneous self-organisation in the form of agency could create interactions between various elements in the system, unpredictable emergent behaviour and new patterns of interactions and possibilities for altering the discursive constructions of subjectivity and subject positionings. As a result, structure-agency as our unclogged blood vessels could effectively function through nonlinear self-organisation and unpredictable emergent behaviour.

 4) Soul: Repairing the Constricted Blood (Dominant A Two-­Dimensional Discourse) of Institutional Culture Through Multi-Dimensional Discourses as Strong Attractors The shattered material-discursive soul of the university is masked and re-­ formed through dominant discourses that construct deficient misrepresentations of Black students as “lacking” dominant cultural capital. These discourses act as weak attractors or a magnetic force that pulls a system towards a linear trajectory of a color-line and keeps the ignorance contract (Steyn, 2012) intact.

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The following three programme components are recommended in working towards repairing the constricted blood (dominant two-­ dimensional discourse) of institutional culture: (1) Shifting the research lens from away from a deficient view of Black students “lacking” dominant cultural capital, (2) learning from Black students’ community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) and (3) the constant interrogation and reflection by white South Africans of their positions of unjustly conferred privilege and the consequences of their political practices. First, universities, staff and students must continuously expose and obliterate  deficient constructions of Black students as “lacking” dominant institutionalised and embodied cultural capital. Second, universities should learn from Black students’ community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) by focusing on the value of their “familial capital”, “social capital”, “navigational capital”, “aspirational capital”, “linguistic capital” and “resistant capital”. Third, the ignorance contract is characterised by a refusal to acknowledge that horrific injustices and past suffering are perpetuated daily (Steyn, 2012). While it is important that this book concludes with practical recommendations, Dreama Moon and Lisa Flores caution that “while we cannot avoid taking an action step, neither can we become so committed to our particular vision for change that we fail to see the possibility that every strategy for change can also become oppressive” (as cited in Applebaum, 2010, p. 186). Therefore, white South Africans and middle-­class academics who are committed to issues of social justice need to constantly  reflect on their positions of dominance and interrogate the consequences of their political practices. The shattered material-discursive soul of the university could be unmasked and trans-formed through multi-dimensional discourses which focus on learning from the value of Black students’ community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005). These discourses would act as strong attractors or a magnetic force that pulls a system towards a nonlinear spontaneous trajectory of rhythmical infinity threads which puncture the color-line and ignorance contract (Steyn, 2012) in the long-term behaviour of a complex system.

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 athway B: The Storied-Nervous System P of Becoming Modern Scientists  oal 2: Dismantling Hierarchical-Heteropatriarchal G Lines with Whole Infinity Loops I will discuss four aims in relation to seven programme components that are recommended in working towards the goal of dismantling pedagogies structured by hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines

 1) Body: Repairing the Tunnel-Visioned Third Eye (Linear B Time) of Pedagogy Through the Hologrammatic Principle or Holism Another societal challenge identified in this research entails a conception of time which functions as a spatial coordinate of rigidly defined ideological categories that depend on a guarantee of meaning. In other words, meaning cannot be generated within a linear temporal order of space because meaning arises from a circular movement with/in time. The following programme component is recommended in working towards repairing the tunnel-visioned third eye (linear time) of pedagogy: Recognising students’ background knowledges and memories as a valuable archive of images to envisage multiple futures. Universities need to address how institutional practices force students, particularly Black students to conform to and internalise Eurocentric norms and pedagogies which do not recognise their background knowledges as legitimate. Students should not be viewed as surrogates who are expected to conform to Eurocentric norms but rather as co-creators of new trajectories of knowledge. How could students’ background knowledges and memories be mobilised as a valuable archive of images to envisage possible futures? Could their stories challenge the material-discursive constraints in their everyday lives and create the conditions to build a different future?

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A possible strategy to address this problem could entail Einstein’s theorisation of relativity in which time and space are parts of a whole that interact in horizontal, vertical and circular ways. As a result of this multidirectional causality, relations between positions of being in space are forever changing in the process of becoming with time.

 2) Body: Repairing the Wilfully Short-Sighted Eyes B (Not-­Becoming) Of Pedagogy Through Circular Causality and Retroactive Loops The reality that this problem could create for the storied body of the university is a systematic reproduction of sameness or cultural cloning (Essed & Goldberg, 2002) through the linear causality between an institutional line of becoming “white” and “the vertical promise of class mobility” (Ahmed, 2007, p. 160). The following three programme components are recommended in working towards repairing the wilfully short-sighted eyes (not-becoming) of pedagogy: (1) Approaching learning and memory as meaning-based which is informed by students’ background knowledges, (2) providing leadership in the form of narratives that invest confidence in students as upcoming professionals and visionary citizens and (3) interrogating how whiteness normalises itself invisibly at the apex of the hierarchy as the standard of “excellence” and achievement. First, architectural students, for example, should be given the freedom to design buildings that are not only technically sound but also an expression of their aesthetics and values which are informed by their different backgrounds, memories and cultures. The production of knowledge must not be treated as an individual possession that is rooted in a possessive investment in whiteness (Lipsitz, 2006) but rather it must be in tune with people’s needs, reality and sense of humanity. Alala provides an example of walking “around the house [instead of ] enter[ing] in the front of a  house” to illustrate why her understanding of architecture as “a human thing, [a] social art” is inextricably tied to her background. In addition, universities should create the conditions in which students and staff members are able to develop their skills and emotional intelligence

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in order to understand how to constantly mourn the death of their old selves and create a new vocabulary to voice and rebirth renewed ones. Second, if the university management constructs narratives in the future perfect tense that invest confidence in students as upcoming professionals, then these narratives might inform the conceptualisation and implementation of actual programmes in which new trajectories of knowledge and psychosocial citizenship may emerge (Carolissen & Kiguwa, 2018). Third, universities need to interrogate and eliminate the ways in which whiteness is entangled with heteropatriarchal hierarchies and middle-­ class privilege and how it normalises itself invisibly as the standard of “excellence” and achievement (Van der Westhuizen, 2018). The reality that these effects could create for the storied body of the university is that people’s bodies would become “narratively unruly” (Punday, 2003, p. 94) and resist the overarching plot of sameness because to address the question of “Who” is to tell a story of a life that involves multidirectional, fragmented and interconnected retroactive loops of being, becoming and longing to belong.

 3) Soul: Repairing the Unmalleable Spinal Cord (Sedimented B Cultural Memory) of Pedagogy Through Positive Feedback Loops The negative feedback loops in the form of cultural definitions of humanity defined along the lines of racial, national, geographical or linguistic divisions serve to regulate a system in which one can only attain “full personhood” through assimilation into the dominant culture’s sense of value, which in effect means the separate deaths of one’s self (Lugones, 2003; Lugones & Price, 1995). The following two programme components are recommended in working towards repairing the unmalleable spinal cord (sedimented cultural memory) of pedagogy: (1) Disrupting the long-standing patterns of power which are sedimented and fossilised (Vygotsky, 1978) in normative entities of knowledge, (2) Nurturing students’ unique talents and passion for learning.

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First, universities need to address the ways in which implicit rules serve to maintain existing institutional practices that reproduce material benefits to dominant/normative groups that embody white, masculine, and middle-class dispositions. The long-standing patterns of power and privilege in society which are sedimented and fossilised (Vygotsky, 1978) in normative entities of knowledge and institutional practices need to be disrupted, dismantled and overwritten. Second, if students represent seeds of possibility in the university garden, then it is the university’s responsibility to water or nurture their talents instead of telling them to “grow this way and grow that way”, as Alala has noted. The alteration of old worlds and discovery of new proposed worlds can only happen through nurturing students’ unique talents and passion for learning. Positive feedback loops are created when human beings are understood as co-creators of dialectically evolving set of values (Gordon, 2008) which in effect could  disrupt equilibrium, increase the level of connectivity between elements in a complex system and escalate change.

 4) Soul: Repairing the Narrow-Minded Brain (Single Story B Scripts) of Pedagogy Through Learning, Self-Knowledge, Growth and Maturity The shattered storied soul of the university is masked and re-formed by enstoring our lives through deeply entrenched and sedimented ideological “scripts” or “story lines” and acting out these stories. In doing so, we not only reproduce systems of oppression but we also close ourselves off from the vital feedback generated by emotional encounters with a sense of unfamiliarity, discomfort, and strangeness or “estrangement from our own normalcy” (Vincent, 2015, p. 29). As a result no learning, understanding, self-development or change occurs. The following programme component is recommended in working towards repairing the unmalleable brain (stories) of pedagogy: Critical psychosocial mnemonics (Duncan, Stevens, & Canham, 2014) and collective memory work (Haug, 1992) as a method to work through fragmented pieces of one’s selves and dismantle ready-made single story scripts.

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The commitment to interrogating personal and collective remembering as expressed through stories is the cornerstone of the Apartheid Archive Project which, as Duncan et al. (2014) explain, aims to contribute to a critical psychosocial mnemonics which could be understood as a form of collective memory work (Haug, 1992). The method of collective memory work could be a means through which universities create “psychological spaces” in which staff and students are able to collectively sit with, work through and make meaning from fragmented pieces of their selves. Collective memory work overcomes the drawback of storytelling or consciousness raising as largely located in the individual’s psychological journey of emancipation (Vincent, 2015). The shattered storied soul of the university could be unmasked and trans-formed through sitting with fragmented pieces of our selves and keeping our bodies open to emotional encounters with uncertainty, unfamiliarity, discomfort and strangeness. By collectively feeding this information back into our selves through critical psychosocial mnemonics (Duncan et al., 2014) and collective memory work (Haug, 1992), individual lives would be reshaped as a question and cultural patterns of symbolisation would be reformulated. This would not only result in learning, understanding, self-development and change but the process of building “a practical community of inquiry” (Torbert, 1991, p. 232) would contribute to dismantling and overwriting ready-made single story scripts.

 athway C-entre: The Narrative-Respiratory P System of Belonging to Knowledge Communities  oal 3: Decentring and Overwriting (Neo)liberal G Entities of Inclusion-Exclusion with Rhythmical Whole Infinity Networks In this section, I will discuss four aims in relation to 12 programme components that are recommended in working towards the goal of decentring and overwriting (neo)liberal entities of inclusion-exclusion.

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 1) Body: Repairing the Stale Air (Chronotopes as C one-­dimensional symbols) of Research Through Negative Entropy Another identified societal challenge entails a path dependency of (neo) liberal entities which move towards the predictable end state of entropy equilibrium in the form of a “body-at-home [as] one that can inhabit whiteness” (Ahmed, 2007, p. 153). The following two programme components are recommended in working towards repairing the stale air (chronotopes) of research: (1) Strategising new ways of working with the colonial constructs of race and gender and against their reification and (2) Establishing homeplace[s] (hooks, 2015) as a safe place to heal psychic wounds inflicted on Black people by the culture of white supremacy. First, without losing sight of how social categories shape our lived material realities, staff and students need to continually strategise new ways of working with the cultural constructs of race and gender and against their reification. Universities need to continually render social divisions visible and understand how recognition “of social power axes, not of social identities—is of crucial emancipatory importance” (Yuval-­ Davis, 2006, p. 201). All staff and students should be exposed to cultural studies so that they could develop the critical thinking skills to identify the various ways in which categories of social divisions are reproduced through mass media and create strategies to counteract these lines of dehumanisation. Second, labels, such as “white coconut” is a “horrible weapon” that can “wound” people’s bodies and “tear” their sense of self-worth apart, as Kaiya has noted. How could universities establish homeplace[s] (hooks, 2015) as a safe space for marginalised and excluded groupings, particularly Black students and staff to heal psychological wounds inflicted by the culture of white supremacy? A possible strategy to address this problem could  entail negative entropy as keeping one’s body open to sitting with and digesting the “habitual and routine in ‘the what’ of the world” (Ahmed, 2007, p. 165) that has been made “white” by colonialism to not only change habits but also avoid entropy as the state of being stuck.

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 2) Body: Facilitating Regenerative Breath (Belonging) C Through Interconnecting and Interacting Elements The reality that this problem creates for the symbolic narrative body of the university is that the inclusion-exclusion logic encloses the individual body into separate entities so that individual bodies (of self-knowledge) cannot interact, change or grow because it is confined to an inevitable overarching plot of sameness in the form of “academic excellence” or “academic talent” as evaluated against white middle-class habitus. The following two programme components are recommended in working towards facilitating breathing (belonging): (1) An urgent reflection on how universities evaluate academic “excellence” against white middle-class habitus and what role formal recognition plays in this process, (2) Working towards a reflexive pedagogic practice in which students as active agents are encouraged to reformulate their own sets of questions about the world and (3) Improving the relations between academic staff members and students. First, universities need to urgently reflect on the ways in which they evaluate academic “excellence” against white middle-class habitus and how the reward of formal recognition is used as a tool to “school” students to confuse the value of education with grade advancement. There are catastrophic consequences when students are “schooled” to confuse academic “excellence” with their sense of self-worth. Staff and students need to continually identify how key stories of whiteness function to fabricate a contradiction between blackness and excellence, how whiteness maintains itself invisibly and is normalised as the standard of achievement at the apex of a hierarchy (Van der Westhuizen, 2018) and how these master narratives in effect value and judge collective social identity categories differently and disproportionately. Second, academic staff members need to constantly work against the sedimented and fossilised (Vygotsky, 1978) pedagogical traditions that encourage them to “force feed” students’ normative theory from what Alala calls “the Book of life”. Students are not passive consumers of knowledge but rather active agents who are continually reformulating their own sets of questions about the world. A reflexive pedagogic practice is thus needed in which academic staff members help induct new

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students into bodies of knowledges so that they could develop their “knowledge-how” and produce their own “knowledge-that” (Ryle, 1945). Third, academic staff members should remember that the process of meaning-making and knowledge production is inextricably connected to students’ sense of self, as emotional and sensitive beings. Although all the women spoke about the support and encouragement they received from their high school teachers, only four women mentioned the positive role that their lectures played during their university studies. What strategies could the university implement to improve relations between academic staff members and students in order to create spaces where people can explore their passion for learning, make new discoveries and find understanding? The reality that these effects could create for the symbolic  narrative body of the university is biographical timespaces that open a person’s body to knowledge communities through interconnecting and interacting networks of metamorphosis-based plots that follow the principle of circular causality in which socio-political life retroactively “loop” back into individual lives in its moments of crisis and rebirth (Bakhtin, 1981).

 3) Soul: Repairing the Punctured Lungs (Atrophied C Knowledge) of Research Through Uncontrollability, Unpredictability and Constant Change Political systems and systems of knowledge that control this symbolic narrative reality with predicable “theodicean grammar” (Gordon, 2008, p. 76) in effect serves to rationalise, justify and maintain the reproduction of social inequalities and injustices. The following four programme components are recommended in working towards repairing the punctured lungs (atrophied knowledge) of research: (1) Institutionalising undergraduate modules across all disciplines focused on critical race theory, black feminism, decoloniality postcolonial studies, African philosophy and other traditions; (2) constructing and enacting knowledge through Biko’s philosophy of Black Consciousness as a means of confronting an epistemology of ignorance (Mills, 2007) and “white ideological methodology” (Zuberi

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& Bonilla-Silva, 2008); (3) making academic excellence or innovation, equity and multiplicity co-­requirements of one another and (4) identifying and eliminating barriers that face Black South African women in their pursuit for STEM degrees. First, universities should ensure that students are introduced to and engage with critical race theory, black feminism, decoloniality, postcolonial studies, African philosophy and other traditions during their undergraduate studies so that they may continue to develop the critical thinking skills to make sense of the structural processes of their localities and conceptualise strategies to bring about educational and broader social change. Staff members need to be proficient in these traditions so that they can meaningfully engage with students in political reflection and action. Second, constructing and enacting knowledge through the philosophy of Black Consciousness as a means of confronting epistemic violence (Spivak, 1988) reproduced through an epistemology of ignorance (Mills, 2007) and white ideological methodology (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008). In Biko’s words, “Black Consciousness is an attitude of mind and a way of life” (2012 [1978], p. 91). Black Consciousness movements in South Africa is a means of confronting its historical context, which bears upon the very core of institutional cultures like a dead weight (Thaver, 2006) and a political vision to, as Biko stated “attain the envisaged self ” (2012 [1978], p. 68). In her article, "Heeding the 'Corpse in the Cargo’: The Writing Centre and the Need to Listen”, Nichols (2014, p. 894) argues “the primacy of the art of listening and the welcoming of opportunities for reflecting on dissonance” could be a strategy for resisting and disrupting the inertia of embedded knowledge and thus opening up spaces that facilitate change. Third, making new discoveries in science is dependent on a researcher’s ability to innovate and creatively design her own experiments. Innovation in science and technology is driven by creative problem-solving, which requires scientists to collaboratively approach questions from different, diverse and transdisciplinary perspectives. How could we disengage with a form of academic “excellence” that is evaluated against white middle-­ class habitus? How could academic excellence or innovation, equity and multiplicity be co-requirements of one another? How could difference

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and diverse perspectives serve as an impetus to problem-solving activities, scientific explanations and innovation in science and technology? How could innovative research and creative problem-solving be embodied in social praxis? Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013) maintains that “the African university must be distinguishable by its innovative fields of study and research agendas that are directly informed by the desire to solve pressing African problems and challenges” (p. 50). Fourth, universities should ensure that all barriers, particularly facing Black women in STEM disciplines, are eliminated so that all students can creatively and collaboratively design innovative experiments, make new discoveries, adapt existing knowledge and, in doing so, shift and overwrite normative constructions of Science and scientists. These barriers include (but are not limited to) university fees and access, unequal power relations, Eurocentric curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, the devaluing of different forms of background knowledges and hostile working environments. As a result, the spīritus of living thought would potentially reach the breadth of human knowledge through the depths of self-understanding, which is constantly changing as we endlessly recreate our selves.

 4) Soul: (Re)pairing Fragmented Pieces of Our Shattered C Heart Through Unpredictable Symbolic Narratives that Hovers on the Border of Chaos The shattered symbolic narrative soul of the university is masked and re-­formed through disciplinary decadence (Gordon, 2006) and assessment practices which maintain a state of balance or equilibrium in the form of an overarching plot of sameness. This plot is reproduced through the meritocratic recognition of “academic talent” as evaluated against white middle-class habitus which inevitably leads to shattering failure as paralysis and severs the relation between science, art, and human reality. The following five programme components are recommended in working towards repairing the shattered heart (symbolic narratives) of knowledge

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communities: (1) A critical reflection on how assessors’ judgement-making processes is constituted through disciplinary values which are embedded in regulative rules and procedures (Shay, 2008), (2) Practising a teleological suspension of disciplinarity (Gordon, 2011) to either imbue existing disciplines with new life or generate a new discipline, (3) Establishing formal platforms where students’ moral evaluations of how the university affects their sense of self-worth is heard and addressed, (4) Interrogating who determines what, under which conditions, qualifies as a “positive Black exemplar” (Ioanide, 2018) and (5) Interrogating how the university uses the reward of formal recognition as a tool for staff and students to conflate intellectual capital with their sense of self-worth. First, academic staff members, as insiders to normative practices in their discipline, need to constantly reflect on how their embodied sense of actions and activities are embedded in particular norms, regulative rules and procedures of their disciplines and the university. In so doing, academic staff would be able to fully articulate their judgement-making processes and assessment practices. Second, how could teaching and assessment practices draw on students’ background knowledges and creative processes in which they are encouraged to experiment with different techniques and invent or “hatch” something new? How could teaching and assessment practices and new technologies nurture learning communities through the academic practice of “distantiation, appropriation, research and articulation” (Slonimsky & Shalem, 2006)? How could teaching and assessment practices be driven by a “complexity frame of reference” (Castellani & Hafferty, 2009) which encourages transdisciplinary thinking and the opening up of analysis and interpretations to uncertainty and indeterminacy? How could we put at risk all that we believe we know in order to discover something new about the reality of complex systems? By practicing what Gordon (2011) calls a teleological suspension of disciplinarity, we could either imbue existing disciplines with new life or generate a new discipline. For example, new trajectories of knowledges would be facilitated by shifting the focus from STEM to “STEAM” which includes STEM plus the arts.

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Third, universities need to establish formal platforms in which students’ moral evaluations of how the universities affect their sense of self-­ worth is heard and addressed. Put differently, how could universities create the conditions “where ‘critical humanism’ and ‘epistemic pluralism’ (Mbembe, 2016) might flourish and where difference means neither assimilation nor reification” (Luckett & Shay, 2017, p. 13)? Fourth, academic success is often put down to individual effort, based on a system of meritocracy, with structural factors being disregarded, leading to a discourse of “academic talent” and exceptionalism particularly for young, Black women to succeed in STEM disciplines. Elite spaces, particularly at HWUs in South Africa, continue to conflate race, class and academic ability (Botsis et  al., 2013). Staff and students need to constantly question who determines what, under which conditions, qualifies as a “positive Black exemplar” (Ioanide, 2018). Ioanide (2018) explains that this exemplar is expected to maintain a level of perfectionism which is almost impossible to fulfil in lived reality, not only because Eurocentric racial regimes define the criteria of perfectionism, exceptionalism or “academic talent” but it also “reserves for itself the prerogative to accept or reject what kind of Black people might fall into such categories” (p. 8). Research evidence suggests that the “right kind” of Black candidates are carefully identified by their familiarity with the university’s existing “way of doing things” and whether their embodied dispositions reflect the dominant white middle-class institutional cultures. These candidates are recognised or approved by white senior academics as legitimate candidates for their inclusion into academia. However, their “inclusion” into academia is a form of exclusion because these “approved” candidates who embody the dominant dispositions are still made to feel excluded, rejected and invisible when they attempt to interrupt the dominant institutional culture of the university (Booi, Vincent, & Liccardo, 2017). Universities need to acknowledge and address the various ways in which global university ranking systems obscure struggles of unequal power relations as struggles for meritocratic recognition (Amsler & Bolsmann, 2012) of “academic talent” and how these practices preserve the legacy of racial hierarchy and perpetuate social inequality.

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Fifth, universities need to reflect on how their institutional practices shape students’ interpretation of failing test scores as more than a measure of specific competencies, but rather implying something about their value as human beings. If failure is that which we understand, then how could our stories of failure reveal weaknesses in the system and expand the frontiers of freedom and social justice in the academy? (Gordon, 2015). Universities need to investigate how the tacit processes of unequal valuation are performed through continuous acts of recognition, nonrecognition and misrecognition and how these practices do the work of including and excluding particular social groupings from classed entities of knowledge. How do universities use the reward of formal recognition as a tool through which academic staff and students conflate intellectual capital with their sense of self-worth? How could universities create the conditions for students and staff to disconnect their sense of themselves from the reproduction of sameness (Essed & Goldberg, 2002) and reconnect with the uniqueness of their narratable self? (Cavarero, 2014). The complex adaptive system of rhythmical whole infinity networks hovers on the border of chaos at the (re)turning and crossing thresholds between the breaking points and interstices of our webwork heart. A broken heart. A never-ending struggle of picking up its pieces, of picking up our-selves. An infinite pathway of reinventing the shape of Love, the way we love without knowing where this path may lead. Maybe this is the driving force which keeps our embodied liquid gyroscope in sync with the spiral arms of whole galaxies. Maybe it is this constant flow of energy through a complex system that increases its ability to navigate through turbulent (extra)terrestrial waters and transition to increasingly adaptive and complex streams of consciousness. Maybe this tragic love in motion could sustain a resistant inertial momentum for the rebirth of a liberatory network of  paths in science, art, and human reality to emerge. The Toroidal-maze of tragic love in motion (Fig.  9.3);  the twin  birth of a newborn stillborn, yet to be reborn? A seedbed of our love stories, borne out of loss.

Fig. 9.3  The Toroidal-maze of tragic love in motion: A narrative symbol

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Index1

A

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, 295, 296 African, 1n1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 20–21, 23, 26, 29, 32, 34, 37, 39, 49–65, 112, 117, 118, 123, 145–184, 189, 194n3, 212, 215, 216, 219, 237, 326, 327, 331, 343–346, 363, 382, 421, 433, 491, 492, 498, 499, 502, 510–512 Agency, 27, 38, 62, 81, 86, 87, 96, 111, 222, 223, 282, 299, 300, 303, 304, 307, 330, 388, 435, 468, 469, 501 Ahmed, Sara, 135n5, 15n20, 207, 258, 261, 27–30, 281, 317, 326, 327, 33, 34, 340, 341, 389, 389n5, 410, 411, 435, 439, 453, 461, 504, 508

Alienation, 9, 27, 63, 65, 93, 129, 205, 283, 284, 317, 397, 435, 436 Althusser, Louis, 90, 191 Analytics of coloniality, 13, 14, 40, 74, 103, 106, 133 Analytics of decoloniality, 13, 16, 74, 103, 106, 133 Anderson, Benedict, 101, 181, 246, 437 Andrews, Molly, 19, 86, 88, 96, 97, 110, 113, 122 Andrews, Penelope, 53 Anthias, Floya, 351, 61, 62, 62n11, 65, 9, 93 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 61, 83, 342 Apartheid, 7n10, 50–53, 55, 59, 60, 62, 112, 135n9, 186, 187, 194n3, 262, 332, 378, 491 Apartheid Archives project (AAP), 491

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 S. Liccardo, Psychosocial Pathways Towards Reinventing the South African University, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49036-2

553

554 Index

Appiah, Anthony K., 27, 295, 317, 425, 437 Archer, Margaret S., 87 Assessments, 31, 32, 203, 326, 327, 332, 371, 392, 401, 402, 412, 443, 444, 453, 454, 512, 513 Assimilation, 27, 28, 64, 228, 289, 290, 317, 401, 436, 454, 505, 514 Atrophied knowledge, 16, 29–30, 326n1, 442–443, 458, 478, 510–512 Augustine, Saint, 5n5, 270 Axiology, 12, 74, 88, 95–102 B

Badat, Saleem, 54 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 33–35, 104, 131, 134n4, 274, 277, 326, 339, 340, 352–354, 411, 459, 466, 478, 498, 510 Baldwin, James A., 3n3, 4, 10, 73, 78–80, 348 Bantu Education Act (1953), 52 Barad, Karen, 24, 84, 200, 201, 205, 206, 429 Barthes, Roland, 86 Bauman, Zygmunt, 56, 84, 309 Becoming, 8, 12–14, 16, 28, 31, 32, 34–36, 40, 41, 49, 58, 74, 77, 81, 84–113, 115, 117, 118, 121–134, 134n2, 158, 172, 181, 187, 217, 218, 225, 227, 245, 257–259, 263–318, 351, 421–479, 490, 491, 496, 503–507 Becoming as our eyes (B2), 279–287 Being as our skin (A2), 206–220

Belonging, 9, 12–14, 15n21, 16, 22, 31–33, 40, 41, 63, 65, 74, 77, 84–104, 106–117, 121, 123–134, 134n2, 181, 186, 187, 206, 215, 218, 269, 279, 284, 295, 296, 311, 325–328, 332–411, 421–479, 490, 491, 507–517 Belonging as our breath (C2), 351–354 Big stories, 124, 132 Biko, Steve, 33, 327, 375, 378, 379, 383, 412, 457, 510, 511 Biographical timespaces, 33, 34, 327, 411, 459, 510 Black Consciousness, 33, 327, 375, 379, 381, 383, 412, 457, 458, 510, 511 Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo, 258, 260, 27, 295, 30, 30n32, 377, 380, 380n4, 381, 411, 425, 437, 443, 511 Border of chaos, 32–34, 327, 423, 455–457, 479, 490, 496, 512–517 Botsis, Hannah, 54, 56, 64, 81, 85, 92, 93, 111, 133, 187, 212, 216, 217, 229, 234, 235, 295, 330, 331, 346, 363, 499, 501, 514 Bounded space, 15, 15n21, 23–25, 183, 184, 249, 428–429, 472, 478, 497–499 Boundless whole infinity loops, 266–267 Bourdieu, Pierre, 25, 26, 59, 90, 184, 187, 193, 228–230, 238, 250, 316, 330, 334, 335, 362, 391, 394, 432, 444, 501, 502

 Index 

Bradbury, Jill, 8, 49, 58, 59, 62, 75, 76, 91, 109, 111, 113, 125, 316, 349 Breathlessness, 13, 14, 15n21, 16, 29, 103, 104, 133, 326, 352, 441–442, 478 Broad-minded brain, 16, 35, 462–464, 479 Brockmeier, Jens, 313 Bruner, Jerome, 11, 85, 96, 104, 280 Buffalo bull head, 1, 2 Bulhan, Hussein Abdilahi, 24, 25, 27, 35, 205, 213, 214, 222, 223, 226, 249, 250, 283, 285, 286, 317, 405, 431, 432, 435, 465, 500 Butler, Judith, 81, 85, 111, 187, 266, 299, 300 C

Canham, Hugo, 35, 54, 111, 259, 462, 506 Capital, 3, 37, 54, 80, 199, 205, 221, 227, 229–231, 234, 236, 238, 239, 242, 248, 250, 281, 330, 334–337, 345, 358, 389, 391, 393, 394, 432, 433, 444, 472, 501, 513, 515 Capitalism, 79, 80, 205, 217 Carlone, Heidi B, 64, 65, 210, 430 Carolissen, Ronelle, 111–113, 19, 231, 231n5, 491, 501, 505, 56 Castells, Manuel, 205, 335, 337, 472 Cavarero, Adriana, 33, 327, 363, 364, 460, 515 Centrifugal directional force, 495 Centripetal directional force, 495

555

Change and continuity, 14, 21, 41, 105, 422 Chronotopes as multi-dimensional symbols, 16, 32–34, 327, 461–462, 479 Chronotopes as one-dimensional symbols, 15n21, 16, 29, 326 Chronotopes or symbols as the air we breathe (C1), 106, 339–351 Circular causality, 34, 35, 423, 465–466, 479, 496, 504–505, 510 Circular time, 16, 35–36, 259, 466–467, 479 Class, 27, 28, 40, 50–53, 56, 58, 59, 62, 64, 66, 79, 80, 90, 118, 135n8, 146, 164, 174, 198, 200, 201, 209, 210, 213, 216, 219, 221, 222, 229, 233–235, 245, 258, 275, 281, 317, 325, 331, 332, 335, 344, 349, 356, 362, 363, 368, 369, 377, 383, 387, 398, 408, 438, 440, 442, 458, 504, 514 Clogged blood vessels, 15, 25, 184, 431–432, 470, 478 Closed and isolated system boundaries, 23, 24, 423, 429, 478 Closed systems, 5n5, 21–31, 22n27, 38, 182, 337, 422, 425, 426, 428–446, 489, 490, 492, 495 Cognitive tool, 12, 95, 133, 260, 295, 296 Collins, Patricia Hill, 61, 63, 118, 135n8, 207, 404, 454, 468

556 Index

Colonial/colonialism/coloniality, 103, 104, 10n14, 13, 14, 17, 179, 181, 187, 189, 189n1, 190, 213, 218, 220, 22n26, 250, 266, 29, 326, 327, 33, 34, 340, 37, 380, 391, 40, 410, 439, 461, 471, 5, 508, 51n5, 52, 55, 59, 60, 79–81, 7n9 Color-line (Du Bois), vii, 23, 23n28, 25, 26, 36, 38, 40, 51n5, 56, 82, 106, 114, 183–185, 188–194, 346, 423, 428–433, 440, 467, 468, 497–502 Communicative speech act, 12, 223, 230 Communities of learning, 33, 369, 371, 387, 411, 458–460 Complex adaptive systems (CAS), 21, 22n27, 31–39, 182, 422, 426, 453–473, 489, 490, 492, 496, 515 Complex-reproductive system, 41 Complex systems programme model, 38–39, 41, 117, 181, 489–517 Complex system theory, 424–427 Consciousness, 10n14, 12, 18, 64n14, 84–87, 104, 231, 237, 262, 263, 289, 299, 507 Constricted blood, 15, 25–26, 89, 184, 432–434, 469, 478 Controllability, predictability and no change, 29–30, 442–443, 478 Crenshaw, Kimberlé W., 8, 9, 50, 60–62 Cultural capital, 25, 26, 37, 65, 184, 185, 215, 228–230, 234, 235, 237, 238, 250, 334, 380, 431–433, 501, 502

Cultural evolution, 269 Cultural memory as our spinal cord (B3), 288–294 D

Damnés, 13, 13n18, 14, 17, 22n26, 103, 104 de Sousa Santos, Boaventura, 385, 387, 458, 50, 64, 64n14 Decolonial/decolonisation/ decoloniality, 10n13, 14, 40, 81, 103, 112, 208, 382, 455n4, 510, 511 Dehumanisation, 25, 223, 225–227, 249, 380, 431, 432, 508 Democracy, 282, 362 Derrida, Jacques, 75, 217, 265, 338 Dialectic/s, 75–84, 88, 96, 97, 100, 109, 196, 205, 280, 338–410, 456, 491 Dichotomous thinking, 191 Dignity, 27, 290, 292, 296, 388, 437 Discourses, 4n4, 12–14, 14n19, 26, 38, 52n7, 56, 62, 63, 74, 77, 86–91, 93, 96, 97, 102, 104, 105, 112, 124, 128, 133, 134, 181, 184, 187, 193–194, 206, 207, 223, 228, 230, 231, 248, 267–316, 330, 331, 336, 341, 363, 375, 376, 380, 387, 389, 394, 397, 433, 440, 444, 456, 496, 499, 501, 502, 514 Discourses as our blood (A4), 228–249 Discursive-circulatory system, 13–17, 23, 36, 40, 102, 106–108, 113, 134, 183–250, 422, 423, 428–434, 456, 467–469, 478, 479, 497–502

 Index 

Dominant inertial momentum, 21, 22, 22n27, 38, 422, 495 Dominant two-dimensional discourse, 15, 25–26, 432–434, 467, 469, 478, 501–502 Du Bois, W. E. B., 23, 23n28, 36, 38, 40, 51n5, 56, 106, 183, 184, 188, 346, 423, 428, 440, 502 Duncan, Norman, 35, 36, 50n1, 52, 112, 259, 262, 318, 462, 491, 506, 507 Dyer, Richard, 3, 24, 59, 187, 190, 197, 199, 203, 210, 213, 220, 249, 428, 430, 498 E

Eagleton, Terry, 27, 290, 292, 437 Educational policies, 53, 498 Elitism, 330, 331 Ellison, Ralph W., 2–4, 22n26 Emotional attachments, 12, 74, 85, 87, 88, 91–94, 96, 97, 102, 112, 124, 206, 351 Enstoried lives, 107–113, 121, 124, 130, 296 Entropy, 28–30, 32–34, 423, 425, 439–440, 461–462, 478, 479, 495, 496, 508 Epistemic violence (Spivak), 30, 377, 380, 411, 443, 511 Epistemological access, 24, 213, 214, 234, 249, 431, 433, 499, 500 Epistemology, 12, 74, 88, 91–94, 102, 375, 377, 381, 510, 511 Erasmus, Zimitri, 194n4, 202 Essed, Philomena, 27, 28, 33, 187, 225, 282, 317, 327, 363, 364, 432, 435, 460, 504, 515

557

Ethnicity, 79, 90, 135n8, 189n1, 341, 346, 440 Eurocentrism, 80, 390 European values, 265 F

Failure as paralysis, 21–31, 182, 326, 411, 428–446, 490, 492, 512 Fanon, Frantz, 103, 104, 13, 10n13, 13n18, 14, 15n21, 18, 184, 189, 207, 222, 22n26, 24, 249, 24n29, 25, 290, 340, 344, 379, 380, 392, 430, 499, 51n5 Farsighted eyes, 16, 35, 259, 465–466, 479 Fathi, Mastoureh, 9, 62, 63, 65, 86, 91, 335, 336 Fay, Brian, 12, 18, 84, 85, 107, 108, 124, 130, 280, 340 Fees Must Fall student-movement, viii, 5, 49, 55–58, 181, 237, 383 Feminine, 27, 265, 266, 300, 304, 317, 438 Fernández‐Balboa, Juan‐Miguel, 261 Fluid blood, 17, 37, 89, 185, 467–469, 479 Forms, 5, 54, 145, 183, 257, 325, 490 Foucault, Michel, 207, 230, 266 Fragments, 18, 35, 100, 259, 268, 280, 296, 309, 313, 462, 463 Frankl, Viktor E, 292 Freeman, Mark, 18, 76, 111, 112, 124, 280 Fresh or spirited air, 33–34, 461–462, 479

558 Index G

Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 18, 289, 337 Gender, 8, 9, 37, 39, 40, 50, 58, 61–64, 79, 90, 117, 135n8, 210, 218–221, 250, 257, 263, 266, 272, 298–300, 304, 306, 349, 362, 382, 383, 387, 430, 442, 471, 500, 508 Gender-based violence, 304 Ghost of a bull, 1–41 Global ranking industry, 330, 334 Goal-maintaining system, 23, 24, 423, 430–431, 478, 495 Goldberg, David Theo, 27, 28, 33, 51n5, 56, 225, 282, 317, 327, 363, 364, 432, 435, 460, 504, 515 Gordon, Lewis R, 15n20, 184, 189, 190, 207, 24, 249, 25, 259, 288, 288n2, 30, 31, 326, 326n1, 327, 33, 35, 36, 375, 387, 388, 390, 392, 401, 402, 411, 412, 430, 442–444, 453, 454, 464, 499, 506, 510, 512, 513, 515 Gqola, Pumla Dineo, 306 Gramsci, Antonio, 267 Grosfoguel, Ramón, 10n13, 189, 189n1 H

Habitus, 29, 30, 54, 228, 229, 234, 281, 326, 331, 335, 361, 362, 364, 411, 433, 441, 442, 460, 509, 511, 512 Hall, Stuart, 37, 51n2, 51n5, 75, 77, 88–91, 206, 215, 217, 218, 250, 471

Haug, Frigga, 35, 36, 222, 259, 281, 288, 318, 459n5, 462, 506, 507 Heartened lungs, 16, 33, 327, 457–459, 479 Hermeneutical circle or loops, 18, 339 Hidden curriculum, 183, 186–194, 257, 260–316, 325, 328–337 Hierarchical-heteropatriarchal lines, 26, 34, 40, 82, 106, 114, 259, 264–266, 423, 434–439, 503 Higher education, 5, 8, 19, 39, 49–65, 112, 113, 117, 128, 135n7, 190, 237, 331, 332, 334, 363, 377, 386, 387, 458, 498 Historically white universities (HWUs), 1n1, 19, 52–54, 52n7, 57, 117, 118, 146, 147, 150, 152, 155, 157, 160, 162, 164, 167, 169, 171, 174, 176, 179, 202, 211, 212, 234, 329–331, 377, 433, 514 Hologrammatic principle, 34–36, 423, 466–467, 479, 503–504 Hook, Derek, 215, 262, 290, 380, 436, 491 hooks, bell, 33, 61, 243, 261, 349, 351, 388, 403, 404, 412, 445, 454, 462, 468, 508 Hope, 5n5, 17, 27, 122, 290–292, 404, 410, 437, 455 Humanization, 22n26 Husserl, Edmund, 100, 270 I

Identifications, 12, 37, 62, 65, 74, 87, 90–94, 97, 98, 206, 215, 217, 222, 250, 268, 288, 341, 351, 358, 440, 470

 Index 

Identity categories, 24, 25, 29, 81, 85, 93, 101, 184, 195, 198, 249, 261, 279, 295, 299, 341, 342, 410, 428, 440, 497, 509 Ideology, 52, 53, 78, 101, 190–192, 195, 213, 216, 304, 354, 362, 442, 499 Imagined communities (Anderson), 101, 181, 246 Inclusion-exclusion logic (no-belonging), 16, 29, 30, 214, 326, 352, 431, 440–442, 478, 509 Inequality, 3n3, 4, 7n9, 30, 31, 51, 52, 58, 191, 230, 231, 234, 261, 262, 265, 326, 331, 334, 335, 376, 383, 393, 442, 444, 510, 514 Inertial momentum, 21, 22, 22n27, 31, 32, 34, 38, 39, 422, 489, 492, 495, 515 Infinitely open second skin, 17, 37–38, 471–472, 499 Infinity networks, 10, 16, 18, 21, 31–41, 73, 79, 81–84, 102, 106, 116, 133, 182, 325, 326, 328, 332–410, 422, 423, 426, 453–473, 489, 490, 492, 495, 496, 507, 515 Institutional culture, 23, 24, 36, 37, 40, 53–55, 54n8, 60, 113, 181, 183–250, 260, 261, 329, 337, 377, 428–434, 443, 467, 469–472, 496–502, 511, 514 Institutional timespaces, 29, 326, 411, 441 Interacting elements, growth and change, 461

559

Intersectionality (Crenshaw), 8, 50, 60, 61 Ioanide, Paula, 63, 190, 513, 514 Irigaray, Luce, 421 J

Jansen, Jonathan, 202 Justice, 64n14, 376, 502, 515 K

Keet, Andre, 186 Kessi, Shose, 111, 227, 234, 248, 249 Kiguwa, Peace, 19, 56, 111–113, 134n3, 389n5, 491, 501, 505 Knowledge as our lungs (C3), 374–376 Knowledge communities, 9–10, 21–23, 28, 31–34, 39–41, 65, 73, 82, 83, 102, 113, 115, 116, 325, 422–424, 424n1, 439–446, 453–462, 478, 479, 490, 491, 507–517 Knowledge-how (Ryle), 87, 224, 234, 385, 392, 433, 510 Knowledge-that (Ryle), 14, 30, 58, 63, 87, 104, 194, 224, 231, 234, 367, 370, 371, 385, 387, 391, 392, 457, 465, 510 Knowledge-why, 87 L

Labov, William, 126, 128, 129, 294, 295 Labyrinth story, 132, 146–153, 310, 313, 314

560 Index

Languages, 11, 85, 87, 92–94, 98, 109–111, 129, 133, 150, 164, 167, 176, 189n1, 191–194, 191n2, 212, 213, 215, 216, 220, 228, 231, 235, 265, 268, 335, 337, 338, 340, 344, 346, 351, 471, 499 Learning, self-knowledge and growth, 34, 462–464 Lefebvre, Henri, 131, 195, 196 Levine, Caroline E., 10, 22n27, 40, 63, 73, 77–79, 81, 87, 88, 97, 113, 190–193, 265–267, 269, 270, 311, 336–338 Libido dominandi (Sallust), 5n5 Linde, Charlotte, 27, 258, 260, 295, 328, 437 Linear causality, 26–28, 423, 435–436, 495, 504 Linear self-organisation, 25, 37, 469–470, 478, 495 Linear time, 15, 15n21, 26, 258, 434–435, 467, 478 Lipsitz, George, 4, 25, 26, 184, 222, 274, 431, 435, 500, 504 Lived life, 19, 107–113, 121, 123, 126, 146–152, 154–162, 164–179 Living knowledges, 16, 32, 33, 35, 292, 318, 327, 390, 404, 444, 457–459, 464, 479 Lockhat, Rafiq, 362 Looped storymaze, 162–169, 315 Lugones, María, 27, 28, 83, 84, 134n3, 266, 289, 290, 317, 338, 436, 456, 491

M

Madlingozi, Tshepo, 7n9 Maldonado-Torres, Nelson, 10n13, 13, 13n18, 14, 17, 22n26, 24, 25, 37, 38, 40, 56, 74, 103, 133, 184, 185, 189, 207, 227, 249, 380, 430, 455n4, 470, 499, 500 Malleable spinal cord, 16, 35, 259, 464–465, 479 Mama, Amina, 58, 59, 61, 299, 438 Mamdani, Mahmood, 262 Manichean hierarchical entities, 13, 14, 21–31, 38, 40, 73, 78–80, 82–84, 102, 106, 133, 182, 422, 426, 428–446, 456, 457, 489, 490, 492, 495 Margins, 19, 62, 112, 191–194, 267–316, 386, 454 Marx, Karl, 27, 35, 283–286, 293, 317, 389, 405, 435, 465 Masculine, 27, 80, 238, 257, 265, 266, 282, 292, 300, 304, 317, 390, 428, 433, 435, 438, 498, 506 Mason, Mark, 21, 489, 491, 492, 495, 496 Mass media, 216, 218, 225, 344, 345, 440, 471, 508 Massey, Doreen, 266 Matlwa, Kopano, 29, 342, 343, 346, 411, 440 Mbembe, Achille, 5, 49, 57, 207, 217, 332, 401, 454, 458n5, 459n5, 514 McAdams, Dan. P., 94, 101, 295 McKinney, Carolyn, 235, 342, 344, 411, 433, 440

 Index 

Meaning-making, 81, 220, 261, 272, 353, 374, 464, 510 Memory, 7, 11, 14–16, 18, 19, 26, 27, 34, 35, 87, 104, 105, 110, 113, 134, 257, 258, 262, 263, 270, 271, 279–294, 296, 354, 374, 376, 400, 436–437, 456, 459n5, 462, 464–466, 478, 496, 504–507 Meritocratic recognition, 30, 31, 326, 331, 393, 394, 411, 443, 444, 512, 514 Metamorphosis, 274, 277, 35, 353, 354, 459, 459n5, 466, 467 Metaphor, 10, 11, 21, 22, 31, 73, 78–82, 123, 130, 157, 178, 194n4, 206, 217, 219, 224, 267–316, 344, 385, 422, 426, 464, 492 Mignolo, Walter, 10n13, 33, 377, 403, 412 Milazzo, Marzia, 220, 222, 3, 335, 4, 380n4, 4n4, 51, 52, 6n6 Miller, Kei, 463 Miller, Ronald, 12, 85, 109, 111, 125, 225, 385 Mills, Charles. W, 3, 375, 377, 381, 510, 511 Minotaur’s labyrinth, 5, 5n5, 6, 20–39, 182–184, 257, 258, 325, 326, 422–424, 427–446, 453–473, 478, 490 Mishler, Elliot. G., 85, 123 Misrecognition, 9, 24, 62, 65, 129, 130, 186, 187, 209, 210, 336, 430, 498, 515 Modiri, Joel Malesela, 7n9, 268, 375, 376, 381, 383

561

Morrison, Toni, 192 Morrow, Wally, 24, 213, 214, 234, 249, 431, 433, 499, 500 Motherhood, 129, 153 The Movement for Black Lives, 207 Multi-dimensional discourses, 17, 37, 467–469, 479, 501–502 Multigoal-seeking, reflexivity and change, 36, 37, 423, 470–471, 479, 499–500 N

Naidoo, Rajani, 3, 199, 203, 330, 363 Narrative identity, 13, 74, 95–97, 99–103, 112, 124, 133, 269, 279, 353 Narrative-respiratory system, 13–16, 28, 32, 41, 102, 106–108, 115, 134, 325–412, 423, 439–446, 453–462, 478, 479, 507–517 Narrative symbol, 39, 182, 490, 516 Narrow-minded brain, 15, 27–28, 258, 437–439, 464, 478 Ndebele, Njabulo S., 261 Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo, 498, 512 Negative feedback loops, 27, 28, 436–437, 478, 495, 505 Negentropy, 32, 423, 462 Network storymaze, 132, 169–182, 309–313, 315, 316, 463 Nichols, Pamela, 6n7, 55, 268n1, 317n3, 463n6, 511 No learning, self-development or growth, 26, 423, 437–439, 478

562 Index

Nonbeing, 106, 114, 116, 134n1, 15n20, 181, 183–250, 21–24, 22n26, 333, 39–41, 422, 424, 424n1, 428–434, 456, 471, 478, 490, 491, 499, 500, 89, 9–19 Nonbeing, a zone of nonbeing (Fanon), vii, 15, 22n26, 24, 25, 106, 184, 189, 207, 249, 430, 499 Nonlinear self-organisation, 37, 38, 479, 496, 500–501 Nonrecognition, 9, 62, 65, 129, 187, 336, 515 Normalisation, 187, 209, 261, 336, 430 Not-becoming, 9–19, 15n20, 21–23, 26–27, 39–41, 82, 106, 107, 114–116, 134n1, 181, 230, 257–259, 263–317, 422–424, 424n1, 434–439, 456, 478, 490, 491 O

Ontoepistemology (Barad), 12, 74, 88–91, 102, 193 Open and permeable system boundaries, 471–472 Ortner, Sherry B, 28, 304–307, 318, 439 Othering, 261 Oya scholarship programme, 19, 54, 117, 118, 134, 180, 236, 242, 342, 358 Oyĕwùmí, Oyèrónké, 421

P

Patterson, Wendy, 128 Pedagogy, 26, 271, 273, 290, 317, 434–439, 503–507, 512 Phenomenological hermeneutics, 18, 75, 134 Phoenix, Ann, 61, 128 Plurality of stories, 16, 34, 35, 258, 259, 479 Polkinghorne, Donald E, 13, 74, 92, 96, 97, 295 Positive feedback loops, 35, 464–465, 472, 479, 496 Post-apartheid, 7n9, 53, 55, 65, 268, 376, 491 Power, 1n1, 3, 4, 7n9, 9–19, 21, 22n27, 30, 37, 39, 40, 50, 55–57, 61–65, 183, 185, 186, 191, 194, 196, 199, 205–207, 210, 216, 219, 220, 222, 225, 229, 230, 238, 257, 258, 265–268, 281, 288, 292, 293, 296, 297, 299, 303, 307, 316, 325, 331, 332, 334–337, 340, 349, 376, 379, 383, 387, 388, 391, 393–395, 411, 438, 444, 471, 472, 489, 492, 495, 496, 499, 505, 506, 508, 512, 514 Predictable emergent behaviour, 25, 431–432, 478, 495, 500 Predictable order, stability and equilibrium, 30–31, 443–446, 478 Predictable symbolic narratives, 16, 29–31, 326, 443–446 Privilege, 2–4, 23n28, 53, 55, 80, 179, 199, 260, 268, 281, 283, 293, 306, 325, 330, 334, 335, 345, 381, 382, 391, 502, 505, 506

 Index 

Probyn, Elspeth, 206, 207 Programme models, 491–496 Psychosocial, 7, 14, 17, 20–21, 29–33, 38–39, 41, 85, 96, 105, 106, 113, 115, 116, 180, 223, 262, 325, 421–423, 442, 443, 453, 457, 459n5, 491, 492, 501 Punctured lungs, 16, 29–30, 326, 442–443, 458, 478, 510 Punday, Daniel, 35, 36, 259, 281, 352–354, 465, 505 Puwar, Nirmal, 199, 428 Q

Quijano, Aníbal, 80, 377, 380 R

Race, 9, 23n28, 24, 37, 39, 50–53, 50n1, 51n5, 59–62, 64, 79, 80, 90, 135n8, 183, 187–189, 198, 208–210, 212, 213, 216, 218–222, 250, 266, 330, 331, 341, 345, 346, 349, 362, 363, 376, 381, 383, 387, 430, 440, 442, 471, 508, 514 Racial hierarchies, 3–5, 30, 49, 52, 53, 57, 192, 207, 238, 265, 331, 393, 394, 433, 444, 514 Racial inequality, 3n3, 376 Racialised beliefs, 247, 469 Racialised gender gap in STEM fields, 8, 39, 50, 58, 117 Racialization, 189 Racial power, 6, 6n6, 27, 75–84, 187, 288, 427, 436

563

Racism, 15n20, 183, 186, 187, 189, 189n1, 190, 192, 202, 209, 210, 222, 260, 262, 331, 341, 375, 376, 379–381, 383, 394, 3n3, 429, 498, 50–52, 51n5, 57, 61, 79, 80, 9 Ramose, Mogobe, 375, 375n3 Ratele, Kopano, 346 Reflexive, 391, 509 Regenerative breath, 15n21, 33, 459–461, 509–510 Relationality, 29, 130, 316, 341, 342, 389, 410, 424, 440 Relational selves, 10, 14, 17, 24n29, 73, 75–77, 84–88, 109, 180 Resistant inertial momentum, 22n27, 31, 32, 34, 39, 422, 489, 495, 515 Retroactive loops, 35, 36, 465–466, 479, 504–505 (R)evolving cultural memory, 35, 259, 479 Rhodes Must Fall student movement, viii, 5, 49, 55–58, 181, 237, 383 Rhythmical infinity threads, xii, 36, 38, 40, 106, 114, 185, 188, 192–194, 423, 467–469, 497–502 Rhythmic storymaze, 132, 155–160, 310, 311, 314 Rhythmical whole infinity networks, xi, 10, 15n21, 16, 21, 31–41, 73, 79, 81–84, 102, 106, 133, 134n2, 182, 422, 423, 426, 453–473, 489, 490, 492, 495, 496, 507, 515

564 Index

Ricoeur, Paul, 11, 18, 94–101, 108–111, 122, 124, 125, 134, 270, 280, 295, 311, 312, 337–339, 353, 371, 464 Rosenthal, Gabriele, 126, 294 Rutherford, Jonathan, 193, 194, 222, 265, 268, 269, 335, 340, 387, 458, 63, 64, 64n13, 79 S

Sandoval, Chela, 83 Sclater, Shelley Day, 86, 87 Sedimented cultural memory, 15, 27, 258, 436–437, 465, 478, 505–506 Segalo, Puleng, 111, 122, 194n3 Sexism, 9, 50, 57, 61, 209, 210, 244 Shalem, Yael, 33, 214, 369, 371, 373, 385, 386, 392, 411, 458, 460, 513 Shattered heart, 16, 30–31, 92, 326, 443–446, 455, 478, 512 Shay, Suellen, 30, 391–393, 401, 411, 444, 454, 513, 514 Single story scripts, 26–28, 36, 258, 437–439, 462, 478, 506–507 Slonimsky, Lynne, 33, 214, 369, 371, 373, 385, 386, 392, 411, 458, 460, 513 Small stories, 113, 124, 129 Smith, Linda Tuhiwai, 111 Smith, Zadie, 34, 317, 337, 388 Social locations, 12, 40, 50, 62, 64, 74, 87, 90, 93–97, 101, 102, 112, 124, 133,

206, 219, 279, 295, 296, 351, 383, 387 Social structure-agency, vii, 104, 105, 12, 134, 14, 15, 15n21, 17, 184, 206–223, 228, 23, 25, 281, 288, 306, 354, 37, 374, 431, 432, 439, 456, 469, 470, 478, 431–432, 500, 501, 53, 62, 78, 79, 86, 87, 91 Solidarity, 193 Space as our second skin (A1), 192, 195–205 Spencer, Lynda, 343–345, 347 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 30, 377, 380, 411, 443, 511 Squire, Corinne, 19, 86, 110 Stale air, 15n21, 16, 29, 340, 439–440, 462, 478, 508 Stevens, Garth, 35, 111, 259, 262, 362, 462, 491, 506 Steyn, Melissa, 3, 25, 26, 38, 184, 210, 237, 238, 250, 404, 432, 433, 501, 502 Storied-nervous system, 13, 15, 16, 26, 34, 40, 102, 106–108, 114, 133, 134, 423, 434–439, 456, 478, 479, 503–507 Stories, 11, 15, 20–21, 35, 146–153, 155–157, 160, 162–165, 167–172, 176–182, 222, 329, 425, 437–439, 462–464, 496 Stories as our brain (B4), 145, 294–316 Story stock, 27, 258, 260, 295, 329, 437 Strong attractors, 37, 38, 467–469, 479, 496, 501–502 Structural form, 12, 91, 133

 Index 

565

Structure-agency as our blood vessels (A3), 221–228 Subjectivities, 27, 37, 38, 56, 87, 88, 90, 95, 96, 110, 112, 121, 181, 185, 186, 194, 223, 238, 250, 260, 268, 282, 295, 375, 433, 435, 468, 469, 501 Subject positionings, 37, 38, 185, 250, 469, 501 Sutured skin, 37, 185, 470–471, 479 Symbolic narratives as our heart (C4), 387–389 Symbolic violence, 24, 213, 214, 249, 431, 500 Systems theory, 21, 22, 38, 41, 422, 424n1, 445, 478, 489, 492

Tolstoy, Leo, 387, 388, 445 Toroidal-maze of tragic love in motion, 38–39, 41, 182, 489–517 Tradition, 56, 186, 262, 329, 335, 337, 338, 349, 354, 377, 380, 382, 391, 443, 509–511 Tragic love in motion, 31–38, 327, 412, 453–473, 492, 515 Transdisciplinarity, 402 Transformation in higher education, 53–55 Trauma, 459n5 Tunnel-visioned third eye, 15, 15n21, 26, 258, 434–435, 467, 478, 503–504

T

U

Tainted second skin, 15n21, 184, 428–429, 472, 478, 497–499 Tamboukou, Maria, 19, 58, 110, 195, 196, 207, 268, 428, 472 Temporality, 26, 27, 35, 77, 81, 84, 86, 96, 110, 258, 268, 270, 279–287, 316–318, 435 Thaver, Lionel, 30, 376, 377, 390, 443, 511 Theodicy, 375, 442 Time as our third eye, 269–279 Told stories, 19, 20, 107–113, 118, 121–132, 145, 147, 149–153, 155–158, 160, 162–165, 167–172, 174–182, 310, 311, 313, 463, 464

Unbounded space, 17, 37–38, 184, 185, 471–472, 479 Unclogged blood vessels, 17, 37, 38, 185, 469–470, 479, 501 Unconscious, 87, 389 Uncontrollability, unpredictability and constant change, 32, 33, 423, 457–459, 479, 496, 510–512 Unmalleable spinal cord, 15, 27, 258, 436–437, 465, 478, 505–506 Unpredictable emergent behaviour, 37, 38, 469–470, 500–501 Unpredictable symbolic narratives, 16, 32–33, 327, 479

566 Index V

W

Values, 3, 12, 18, 25n30, 27–30, 35–38, 49, 54, 55, 58, 62, 74, 88, 91, 93, 94, 101, 108, 115, 131, 146, 185–187, 199, 206, 209, 221, 225–227, 230, 238, 239, 242, 245–247, 250, 259, 261, 265, 279, 285, 288–290, 292, 295, 304–306, 312, 317, 330, 331, 333, 336, 343–345, 347, 353, 355, 359, 366, 374, 391–394, 397, 401, 402, 411, 436, 440, 441, 444, 445, 464, 465, 468–470, 479, 495, 498, 499, 501, 502, 504–506, 509, 513, 515 Van der Watt, Marcel, 440, 462 Van der Westhuizen, Amanda, xv, 422, 425–427, 425n2, 434, 435, 437, 439, 471 Van der Westhuizen, Christie, 54, 55, 186, 187, 190, 202, 210, 260, 261, 283, 336, 429, 498, 505, 509 Vincent, Louise, 3, 28, 37, 54, 56, 96, 185–188, 199, 222, 250, 260–263, 296, 328–331, 335, 344, 440, 498, 506, 507, 514 Visionary third eye, 16, 35–36, 259, 466–467, 479 Visual methodologies, 107, 121, 134 Visual-narrative method, 9–19, 40 Voortrekker monument, 1, 1n1, 2, 5n5, 6

Waletzky, Joshua, 126, 129, 294, 295 Weak attractors, 25–26, 432–434, 478, 495, 501 Webwork heart, 16, 32–34, 92, 327, 479, 515 Weedon, Chris, 96, 213, 430 Wengraf, Tom, 18, 19, 75, 109, 110, 121, 123, 124, 126–128, 400, 445 Wetherell, Margaret, 85 What am I? What am I doing?, 10, 74, 85, 86, 280 Where do I belong?, 10, 74, 86, 280 White ideological methodology (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva), 30, 30n32, 377, 380, 380n4, 381, 411, 443, 510, 511 White logic model, 39, 117, 181, 489, 490, 492, 493 Whiteness, 3–5, 24–26, 29, 30, 49, 55–57, 80, 184, 187, 190, 197, 199, 202, 203, 210, 212, 213, 220, 222, 235, 238, 249, 250, 257, 260, 274, 281–283, 326, 340, 341, 343–345, 375, 410, 428–431, 433, 435, 439, 440, 461, 498, 500, 504, 505, 508, 509 Who am I? Why am I doing this? Where am I going?, 10, 17, 74, 85–86, 280 Wilfully short-sighted eyes, 15, 26–27, 258, 435–436, 466, 504–505

 Index 

567

Wolpe, Harold, 51, 59 Wounded skin, 15, 24, 430–431, 471, 478, 499–500 Wynter, Sylvia, 10n13, 11, 11n15, 17, 24, 25, 86, 184, 189, 207, 249, 430, 499

Youth, 7, 56, 59, 60, 103, 147, 286, 287, 466 Yuval-Davis, Nira, 9, 12, 40, 61, 62, 65, 74, 76, 87, 88, 90, 93, 94, 101, 102, 133, 206, 222, 279, 351, 508

Y

Z

Yosso, Tara J., 185, 230, 231, 231n5, 248, 250, 37, 38, 468, 469, 502

Zuberi, Tukufu, 30, 30n32, 377, 380, 380n4, 381, 411, 443, 511