I read Olivia Godlhill's article Philosophy is the new battleground in South Africa’s fight against colonialism in Quartz, 30 September 2018, brought to my attention by David Benatar's critique of it.
It's typical of the biased, tendentious op-eds where the "facts" are couched in a way to present or lead to a particular agenda, ideology or conclusion. This example, South Africa’s white right, the Alt-Rightand the alternative, is common of the liberal-left academics and media.
Without knowing anything about African philosophy and its status as an academic subject, I can see, and aware readers will soon realise, Goldhill doesn't strive for balance but to frame the narrative in a particular way: the alleged victimhood of black students studying philosophy at South African universities (e.g., her opening tale of PhD student Tony Shabangu, poor lad); the "Euro-centric" nature and whiteness of faculty, subjects and dead philosophers; the extant alleged colonial and racially oppressive nature of SA universities particularly their philosophy departments - "philosophy as an excuse for colonialism and slavery"; their unapologetic white race baiting faculty and so on.
The headings "White professors teaching African philosophy", "Where’s the African philosophy?" and "Philosophy as an excuse for colonialism and slavery", if one wasn't getting the blatant tone of the article, is intended to drive one to her conclusion.
She paternalistically minimises the responsibility, and culpability, of black students - like this gem, "certainly, aspects of the protest movement have been emotional and dogmatic", with no mention of the violence, intimidation and hundreds of millions or rand the "emotional and dogmatic" protesters caused - in being the master's of their own fates, in deciding for themselves what they want to study be it Nietzsche, Kant or "Achille Mbembe, Henry Odera Oruka and countless other African philosophers".
Typical of the politically correct liberal-left, achingly she displays the racism and condescension of her class by embarrassingly assuming all blacks are homogenous, that they all desire the same thing, in this case, to be told by a white person that they ought to read African philosophers when perhaps they really want to study Aristotle and Wittgenstein.
As Benatar points out, there are errors of fact in Goldhill's article and she misrepresents the status of philosophy teaching at the University of Cape Town, and broader, race relations there and at South African universities.
This kind of writing, typical of the media, presents the political affiliations of its writer in stark relief; that the political statement they're making is more important than the facts, and that the facts are too valuable for the reader to make up their own minds.
It's typical of the biased, tendentious op-eds where the "facts" are couched in a way to present or lead to a particular agenda, ideology or conclusion. This example, South Africa’s white right, the Alt-Rightand the alternative, is common of the liberal-left academics and media.
Without knowing anything about African philosophy and its status as an academic subject, I can see, and aware readers will soon realise, Goldhill doesn't strive for balance but to frame the narrative in a particular way: the alleged victimhood of black students studying philosophy at South African universities (e.g., her opening tale of PhD student Tony Shabangu, poor lad); the "Euro-centric" nature and whiteness of faculty, subjects and dead philosophers; the extant alleged colonial and racially oppressive nature of SA universities particularly their philosophy departments - "philosophy as an excuse for colonialism and slavery"; their unapologetic white race baiting faculty and so on.
The headings "White professors teaching African philosophy", "Where’s the African philosophy?" and "Philosophy as an excuse for colonialism and slavery", if one wasn't getting the blatant tone of the article, is intended to drive one to her conclusion.
She paternalistically minimises the responsibility, and culpability, of black students - like this gem, "certainly, aspects of the protest movement have been emotional and dogmatic", with no mention of the violence, intimidation and hundreds of millions or rand the "emotional and dogmatic" protesters caused - in being the master's of their own fates, in deciding for themselves what they want to study be it Nietzsche, Kant or "Achille Mbembe, Henry Odera Oruka and countless other African philosophers".
Typical of the politically correct liberal-left, achingly she displays the racism and condescension of her class by embarrassingly assuming all blacks are homogenous, that they all desire the same thing, in this case, to be told by a white person that they ought to read African philosophers when perhaps they really want to study Aristotle and Wittgenstein.
As Benatar points out, there are errors of fact in Goldhill's article and she misrepresents the status of philosophy teaching at the University of Cape Town, and broader, race relations there and at South African universities.
This kind of writing, typical of the media, presents the political affiliations of its writer in stark relief; that the political statement they're making is more important than the facts, and that the facts are too valuable for the reader to make up their own minds.
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