Curriculating from the Black Archive – Marginality as novelty

Siseko Kumalo,University Of Pretoria

doi:10.14426/cristal.v8i1.252

Abstract

The Black Archive is constitutive of works of literato such as JT Jabavu, Nontsizi Mgqwetho, the artist Gerard Bhengu, and musicians like Busi Mhlongo. This collective resource, which should play a crucial role in curriculating, compels us to consider two questions when rethinking Philosophy curricula: First, pedagogically, how does the epistemic access that the Black Archive affords our context facilitate justice? Second, and importantly, how does it help up in achieving justice? I, here, answer these questions in three moves. First, I consider certain key propositions; namely that decolonisation facilitates epistemic access, and that epistemic access in turn facilitates justice (historical, epistemic, and social). Second, I demonstrate how these propositions require the Black Archive (in South Africa) in order to be held as valid. I demonstrate this claim in Philosophy using Dumile Feni’s African Guernica, and in Curriculum Studies, through analysing W. W. Gqoba’s Ingxoxo Enkulu Ngemfundo. I conclude by prescriptively outlining uses for/of the Black Archive, guarding against misappropriations that derail justice as I treat it, safeguarding this corpus from epistemic arrogance that maintains that knowledge is valid only insofar as it is developed by white scholars.

Highlights

I come to the writing of this text having worked in curriculum transformation and decolonisation in the education landscape of South Africa
Concerning is the mis-framing of African thought, when it is developed and taught, a concern that is substantiated by the analysis presented in the introduction, wherein I treat the angst I have regarding the ‘leading thinkers’ of ubuntu being white scholars who cannot read, speak or write any of the progenitor languages of ubuntu
A great deal more can and remains to be said on the uses and the usefulness of the Black Archive if higher education is to function with the intended aims of delivering on the promise of justice; as was intended by the White Paper 3 of 1997

Summary

Introduction

I come to the writing of this text having worked in curriculum transformation and decolonisation in the education landscape of South Africa. MacIntyre’s work can be used to analyse contemporary debates around ‘standards’, with the inclusion of African thought in our teaching praxes framed as the lowering of standards by those resistant to change; a claim that seeks to secure the place of white settler colonial descendant futures, while continuing to displace and obscure the knowledge of Blackness/Indigeneity in the academe.

Results

Conclusion