Recently added articles from Critical Arts:
Thirty years of publishing.(Editorial)
Jul 01, 2009; ... The year 2009 is witness to Critical Arts' thirtieth year of publishing. It also witnesses the first time that three issues will be published annually. (Our inexperience in the early 1980s did see the intention to publish three to four issues a year. This schedule largely failed, given our ...
Pleasuring body parts: women and soap operas in Brazil.(Critical essay)
Jul 01, 2009; ... Abstract In this article I look at women's interpretations of one of the most popular forms of entertainment across Latin America, namely telenovelas (soap operas). In particular, I look at how they are incorporated into the everyday lives of the poorest women in Brazil. I find ...
Broken strings: interdisciplinarity and /Xam oral literature.(Critical essay)
Jul 01, 2009; ... Abstract Long of interest to archaeologists and anthropologists, the Lloyd-Bleek archive of /Xam narratives and accounts has recently engaged literary scholars and poets. Yet this engagement has produced few dedicated studies, and little critical analysis of conventional ...
Corruption, tribalism and democracy: coded messages in Wambali Mkandawire's popular songs in Malawi.(Critical essay)
Jul 01, 2009; ... Abstract Popular music in Malawi cites corruption and tribalism as amongst the major threats to democracy in the country. Corruption, which involves the plundering of national public resources by a few individuals, affects the distribution of and access to these resources by ...
Innocent violence: social exclusion, identity, and the press in an African democracy.
Jul 01, 2009; ... Abstract The violent attacks on African immigrants and refugees in marginal settlements surrounding South Africa's largest cities in May 2008 occasioned a rush of mostly well-intentioned attempts by journalists, public intellectuals, and government officials to discover the ...
'Against extremity': Eben Venter's Horrelpoot (2006) and the quest for tolerance.(Critical essay)
Jul 01, 2009; ... <Pre>And he said'Anyone can run to excesses,It is easy to shoot past the mark,It is hard to stand firm in the middle.'From Canto XIII, Ezra Pound </Pre> Abstract Eben Venter's (2006) novel Horrelpoot (Clubfoot) responds to the various forms of ...
On the psychology of oppression: blame me on history!(Personal account)
Jul 01, 2009; ... The history I present here is a story of suppression of the existence of a people of which I am part; their memory and history. These are my personal recollections about the Ndebele people in post-colonial Zimbabwe, from 1980 until the present time. My task is to engage with the agenda of ...
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? [But who will guard the guards themselves?].(Viewpoint essay)
Jul 01, 2009; ... Juvenal had adultery in mind when he wrote that, but I use it in a Zimbabwean context where the distinction between those who administer the law and those who break it, has become blurred. Do not underestimate the guilt that runs through the veins of half-decent white people ...
The man in flames.(Ernesto Alfabeto Nhamuave)
Jul 01, 2009; ... He died in Johannesburg while working there. Please accept his spirit. Let it rest in peace. These are sacred words, words that slice into your person, words that crash the boundaries between people and humanity in general. These are words which are said at a special place and ...
Xenophobia in South Africa: revisiting Tutu's handwriting on the wall?(Desmond Tutu)
Jul 01, 2009; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This picture and the posturing of the policemen is apt in pinpointing the exact malaise of 'xenophobic attitudes' and inherent resentment amongst some members of South African communities. For some, it is not a strange sight as it lingers deep in the ...
Encountering modernity: twentieth-century South African cinemas and South African national cinema.(Book review)
Jul 01, 2009; ... Keyan Tomaselli. 2006. Encountering modernity: twentieth-century South African cinemas. Pretoria: Unisa Press/Amsterdam: Rozenberg Publishers. (ISBN 978-90-5170-886-8, 183 pp.) Jacqueline Maingard. 2007. South African national cinema. London: Routledge. (ISBN 978-0-415-21680-7, ...
Cultural pragmatism and The Life of the Sign.
Nov 01, 2008; ... Abstract Wanting to catalyse new approaches to interdisciplinary inquiry and practice within the field of journalism, media, and cultural studies (JMC), Shepperson reconceived interdisciplinary relationships in the light of the highly original--and still not fully ...
Unfinished business: pragmatics and the paradox of Arnold Shepperson.(Obituary)
Nov 01, 2008; ... Abstract The unpublished work of Peirceian philosopher and cultural studies theorist Arnold Shepperson is the subject of this article. A background to the life and work of Shepperson is offered to provide a template against which the articles published in this theme issue of ...
Safety-culture and the logic of hazard.
Nov 01, 2008; ... Abstract South Africans tend to take a neglectful attitude toward hazard in general. This article identifies and qualifies the forms of practical reasoning that make such negligence possible. The research draws on the methods of logical and pragmatic analysis to clarify the ...
Changing society by changing the thinking culture about mining hazard: a review essay on 'safety-culture and the logic of hazard'.(Commentary)
Nov 01, 2008; ... Abstract This review essay discusses Shepperson's article in terms of Peirce's pragmaticism, a logical theory that interprets thought in terms of operation and control. Peirce's central proposition is that there is an inseparable connection between rational cognition and ...
Realism, logic and social communication: C.S. Peirce's classification of science in communication studies and journalism.
Nov 01, 2008; ... Abstract The nature of communication study discourse tends to focus on how to teach it, and often hides its pragmatic origins in the field of inquiry. The article uses C.S. Peirce's philosophical realism to address the needs of intellectual inquiry in communications under ...
Development communication and the paradox of choice: imposition and dictatorship in comparing Sami and San Bushmen experiences of cultural autonomy.
Nov 01, 2008; ... Abstract This research examines the relevance of Kenneth Arrow's (1951) Impossibility Theorem as a criterion for assessing postmodern critical approaches to development media theories. Comparing two distinct indigenous minorities' experiences with struggles for cultural ...
An economy of impossibility: a preliminary study for an ordinal approach to research methods in cultural studies.
Nov 01, 2008; ... Preface This 'Economy of impossibility' article is testament to Arnold Shepperson because it says something about what we have lost. The fact that it is a draft and unfinished precisely helps to pose questions to think about (see also Julia Clare's article). That's not a bad ...
The frustration of an unfinished conversation: a review of 'an economy of impossibility'.(Commentary)
Nov 01, 2008; ... The task of reviewing another's work is never easy, but it is made more difficult in this instance by three factors. First among these is that the author died before completing this piece and so it cannot be read as a final statement on the topic, but can only be evaluated in terms of its ...
After the ball is over: commentary on the SAHRC inquiry.
Nov 01, 2008; ... At some stage in this I must confront two things. Firstly, Arendt's distinction between 'race thinking' and 'racism'; and secondly, the shift from creationist to evolutionary thinking in the understanding of the marker 'race'. In the latter it becomes important to distinguish between that ...