South African Amnesty 2.0: Incomprehensible?

by | Nov 20, 2022 | ACTA, ACTA 2022

South African Amnesty 2.0: Incomprehensible?

Author Klaus Kotzé

ISSN: 1996-2088
Affiliations: International relations officer at the Inclusive Society Institute; Honorary Research Affiliate: Centre for Rhetoric Studies
Source: Acta Juridica, 2022, p. 101 – 118
https://doi.org/10.47348/ACTA/2022/a5

Abstract

The South African democracy faces a crisis of legitimacy and identity that locks it into a state of inertia. The state is proving unable to critically advance the constitutional ends of transformative democracy. It lacks the strategic concepts and arguments to do so and has subsequently become embroiled in an existential battle for the soul of the country. As a critical contribution, this essay evokes the need for politically expedient approaches and arguments. It reflects on the past, on the methodologies employed to bring about the unitary, democratic state, and on the need to look at purposeful, albeit incomprehensible, strategies that will allow transcendence beyond the current impasse. By and large, South Africa sets an example. It is a laboratory for democracy, and for that very reason, much like Athens, it will long remain an oddity, not only in Africa (as the Afro pessimists’ simplistic litany would like to have us believe) but also in global politics. South Africa is a test case for global democracy; it is a test case for rhetoric; and it is a test case for the relevance of rhetoric studies in a postmodern democracy.

A rhetoric of terror and of the terrified

by | Nov 20, 2022 | ACTA, ACTA 2022

A rhetoric of terror and of the terrified

Author Sisanda Nkoala

ISSN: 1996-2088
Affiliations: Sisanda Nkoala (PhD) is an academic in the Media Department at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology
Source: Acta Juridica, 2022, p. 119 – 139
https://doi.org/10.47348/ACTA/2022/a6

Abstract

This paper draws on Philippe-Joseph Salazar’s work in Words are Weapons: Inside ISIS’s Rhetoric of Terror (2017) on ISIS’s persuasive self-presentation on social and traditional media, to consider the rhetoric of the terrified Farmers evident in the framing discourse of selected South African television news reports on Farm attacks. Scholars who study ISIS’s use of media have noted the efficacy with which this group has been able to harness the capabilities of media platforms to speak directly to audiences and construct its image. Likewise, the communicative strategies employed in the framing discourse of South African media around the victimhood of Farmers have been effective and have spread to audiences worldwide. Using Salazar’s examination of ISIS’s rhetoric, expressed through its use of words and images in the media, this paper discusses similarities between ISIS’s self-presentation in audio-visual media and the news media discourse that articulates a sense of self-othering by Farmers through these platforms.

Hic sunt leones reloaded: Elements for a critique of disciplinary self-(af)filiation within professional white philosophy in South Africa

by | Nov 20, 2022 | ACTA, ACTA 2022

Hic sunt leones reloaded: Elements for a critique of disciplinary self-(af)filiation within professional white philosophy in South Africa

Author Sergio Alloggio

ISSN: 1996-2088
Affiliations: Independent scholar
Source: Acta Juridica, 2022, p. 140 – 167
https://doi.org/10.47348/ACTA/2022/a7

Abstract

The recent institutional consolidation of feminist philosophy, African and Africana philosophies, sociology of knowledge and decolonial theory have brought professional philosophers face-to-face with the repressed side of Western philosophy. This essay, drawing on the theoretical framework developed in my previous article ‘Hic sunt leones’, investigates the role played by professional narcissism and resistance to history in the philosopher’s self-image and imaginary, with a particular focus on professional white philosophy in South Africa. The pedagogical aspects of philosophical apprenticeship will be examined psychoanalytically, and explored in their transferential components. Such a psychoanalytic reading will also engage with current conflicts within the South African philosophical field, promoting a shared space for negotiations. However, without adequate introjection of, and progressive identification with, African philosophers and their work, professional white philosophers in South Africa run the twofold risk of replicating regressive forms of disciplinary parenthood while institutionalising neocolonial forms of academic (af)filiations.

The ongoing necessity of suffrage rhetorics (or ‘suffragism’): On the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution

by | Nov 20, 2022 | ACTA, ACTA 2022

The ongoing necessity of suffrage rhetorics (or ‘suffragism’): On the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution

Authors Cheryl Glenn & Jessica Enoch

ISSN: 1996-2088
Affiliations: Cheryl Glenn is University Distinguished Professor of English at Penn State University; Jessica Enoch is Professor of English at the University of Maryland
Source: Acta Juridica, 2022, p. 168 – 197
https://doi.org/10.47348/ACTA/2022/a8

Abstract

This contribution analyses feminist scholarship on women’s suffrage – women’s fight for the right to vote in the United States. The 100-year anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment – the suffrage amendment – serves as exigence for considering how feminist scholarship dedicated to suffrage addresses our contemporary contexts and concerns. To that end, we bring together scholarship that troubles dominant white suffrage narratives in order to amplify the rhetorics of suffragists of colour, that engages the racism that inflected the suffrage movement, that explores possibilities for coalitions and alliances, and that continues to consider how suffrage rhetorics, at the turn of the twentieth century, might connect to and inform restrictions on voting rights for people living various intersectional realities in the twenty-first century.

The Covington smile: Norms and forms of violence in the age of the White Awakening

by | Nov 20, 2022 | ACTA, ACTA 2022

The Covington smile: Norms and forms of violence in the age of the White Awakening

Author Philippe-Joseph Salazar

ISSN: 1996-2088
Affiliations: Centre for Rhetoric Studies, Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town
Source: Acta Juridica, 2022, p. 198 – 219
https://doi.org/10.47348/ACTA/2022/a9

Abstract

This essay is a detailed study of an event that took place in January 2019 in Washington DC on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It was a confrontation between Catholic schoolboys returning from a March for Life and mainly Native Americans led by an Omaha elder. The ‘faceoff’ between the two central protagonists, Nicholas Sandmann and Nathan Phillips, went viral as the embodiment and enactment of white racism. It occasioned massive lawsuits for defamation against major media corporations. By applying critical rhetoric, this essay intends to show that repressed forms and norms of rites, sacrifice and religious artefacts were re-activated and performed anew during this encounter.