Post-Apartheid Reason: Critical Theory in South Africa

Abstract

This chapter argues that the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School is peculiarly appropriate as a lens through which to examine South African literature and culture. It seeks to sharpen the theoretical provocation of earlier work on this conjunction in proposing that there is a Frankfurt School “moment” in South African history: the 1970s coming-to-consciousness of “post-apartheid reason” in a new discourse of politics. The sociologist Rick Turner saw the issue of acting politically in South Africa as presupposing a detour through the whole canon of philosophy and social theory, and each time Coetzee writes he takes on the whole Western literary canon. Turner’s theoretical stance can also throw light on the work of Njabulo Ndebele, who proposed an escape from the rival heteronomies of both the state and the liberal establishment by instituting in their place a new literacy – and literature – of the “ordinary”. Finally, it is argued that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission ensured that a space of public reason was kept open in post-apartheid South Africa.