[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Whites' ways in the new SA

[Patrick Bond]

Mandi, if you have time, you (and other Dbnites) can swing around the 
university for a Jonathan Jansen seminar on white students today... and 
around 19 May CCS will host Robert Jensen, a Univ of Texas prof who has 
written a book on whiteness.
Cheers,
P.


REMINDER: CCRRI: TALK BY JONATHAN JANSEN ON HIS BOOK KNOWLEDGE IN THE BLOOD

Knowledge in the Blood: Confronting Race and the Apartheid Past tells
the story of white South African students - how they remember and enact
an Apartheid past they were never part of. How is it that young
Afrikaners, born at the time of Mandela's release from prison, hold firm
views about a past they never lived, rigid ideas about black people, and
fatalistic thoughts about the future? Jonathan Jansen, the first black
dean of education at the historically white University of Pretoria, was
dogged by this question during his tenure, and Knowledge in the Blood
seeks to answer it.

Jansen offers an intimate look at the effects of social and political
change after Apartheid as white students first experience learning and
living alongside black students. He reveals the novel role pedagogical
interventions played in confronting the past, as well as critical
theory's limits in dealing with conflict in a world where formerly
clear-cut notions of victims and perpetrators are blurred.

While Jansen originally set out simply to convey a story of how white
students changed under the leadership of a diverse group of senior
academics, Knowledge in the Blood ultimately became an unexpected
account of how these students in turn changed him. The impact of this
book's unique, wide-ranging insights in dealing with racial and ethnic
divisions will be felt far beyond the borders of South Africa.

Jonathan Jansen is Honorary Professor of Education at the University of
the Witwatersrand and Vice Chancellor Designate, University of the Free
State.

When: Tuesday 28 April, 16:00-17:30
Where: S4, Science Lecture Theatre Complex, Howard College Campus
Contact: 031 260 1599/3904/3902

To join the ccrri mailing list, please send an email to ccrri at ukzn.ac.za
or sign up on the website (http://ccrri.ukzn.ac.za/)