Re-Examining Apartheid Brokenness: To Every Birth Its Blood1 as a Literary Testament

Gagiano, Annie

doi:10.1163/9789401208451_011

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“…In being torn from the land, and the land under colonialism and apartheid being ripped, stripped, and mined for large-scale agriculture and mining, both the earth and colonised subjects were injured (Barnwell, Makaulule, Stroud, Watson & Dima, 2021). At the same time, alongside the psychic wounds of apartheid, which continue to shape the present (Gagiano, 2012), the post-apartheid socio-political milieu has continued to wound and disenchant the populace, with extreme inequality, grinding poverty for most citizens, seemingly shameless corrupt elites, and at the global level, the inescapable demands of neoliberal capitalism. Also, insofar as a planetary awareness exists, many people are disenchanted with the destruction and degradation of the earth and its biosphere.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Becoming octopus: Indigenous ways of knowing and green leadership

Pointer,

Miller

2024

Sotls

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On 30 June 2014 we (a small group of academic women) opened our first Green Leadership School, an experiment in decolonising the classroom, exploring indigenous environmental knowledge, and creating a space of healing and love. This paper documents the process of healing and rejuvenating the lives of activists, government officials, trade unionists, and university students. Similar to the concept of Deleuze and Guattari’s (2004) “becoming animal” and “becoming wolf”, we represented the school as “becoming octopus” – a creature with green blood (becoming green), the highest brain-to-body ratio of any invertebrate, many slithering arms to twist and escape oppression and slide away from toxic spaces, and three hearts for the three-hearted practices of love, bodily integration, and mind-spirit awareness. Therefore, the pedagogical experiment focused on transmutation – connecting with the environment through merging human with animal, ritual and magic, gardening, yoga, storytelling, music, and art alongside more conventional lectures such as understanding climate change through South African vernaculars, ‘land grabs’ in Africa, pollution in South Durban, and environmental communication. Damaged by apartheid and post-apartheid wounds and worldwide ruptures in the socius – the participants experienced psychic healing. This paper discusses the role of joyful pedagogies in decolonising education.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even South African activists, in the face of gross inequality, deal with compassion fatigue. The destructive traumas of apartheid continue in the present, with South Africa being one of the most violent countries that is not at war (Gagiano, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Becoming octopus: Indigenous ways of knowing and green leadership

Pointer,

Miller

2024

Sotls

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Re-Examining Apartheid Brokenness: To Every Birth Its Blood1 as a Literary Testament

Cited by 1 publication

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Becoming octopus: Indigenous ways of knowing and green leadership

Becoming octopus: Indigenous ways of knowing and green leadership

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