Introducing Apartheid Studies (AS): A new forensicinductive philosophy for abolishing harm

Abstract

This article introduces the new field of study known as Apartheid Studies (AS), locating it as a forensic inductive philosophy of liberation from the global south. I map how AS began and where it is going, and introduce some of its key theoretical and methodological constructs. This way we establish that apartheid was neither limited to South Africa nor abolished in 1994. Instead, apartheid is a superposed, fungible, metamorphosing global problem that exists to this day wherever human beings are oppressed and unjustly treated by being invoiced differential Rates of Oppression (ROp). Due to this, apartheid is reproduced not as something harmful but, rather, as a mere interface and as just any other service (apartheid as a service – AaaS). The article proposes that a systematic, forensic-inductive understanding of the ROp is an effective antidote against apartheid harm wherever it is found.