The Politics of Self and Other in Literary and Cultural Studies: The South African Dilemma

Abstract

Summary It is argued that, in post‐apartheid South Africa, the entrenched politics of self and other regulate not only the institutional possibilities of adapting to the dramatic socio‐political transformation, but it also regulates the social and cultural construction of otherness. Some of these dilemmas are traced to the relationship between construction, reconstruction and deconstruction within cultural and literary studies. Some comparative investigations that indicated the need for transformation are discussed and related to the new government's Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) as a “master narrative”, and to research as “story‐telling”. It is suggested that the new dilemmas of being othered and the lack of institutional transformation in tertiary education may be countered by new methodologies for comparative and cultural studies.