Critical Anti-racism and Problems in Self-articulated Forms of Identities [1]

This article reflects on particular pedagogical encounters that the author had between 1996 and 1998. It draws on experiences with undergraduate education students, who were taught the same course on racism and sexism in South African education in 1996 and 1997, and a workshop, on similar issues, that the author ran for some members of the South African Correctional Services in February 1998. An analysis of the self-articulated forms of identity by the people in all of these settings reveals that these people tended to articulate their identities in four primary ways. These are: (a) in terms of personality traits; (b) institutional identities; (c) familial and/or social identities; and (d) regional identities. What is significant about these self-articulated forms of identities is that an insignificant amount of the people involved in these encounters actually defined themselves in racial terms. On the one hand, this points to the deracialisation of discourses in South Africa currently. On the other hand, it also indicates a serious theoretical problem in postmodernist discourses. Postmodernist discourses tend to suggest that people's own articulations of themselves, in their 'own voices', are more reliable and revealing than those articulations by 'others'. Yet, as this article shows, there are moments when self-articulations of identities may actually be quite unhelpful. This article sets out to explore these issues and points to the unavoidable need to be immersed in particular discourses first before articulations may be both understood and considered to be useful. The authenticity of 'the voice', therefore, is argued to be conceivable only if it is mediated by particular discourses or rearticulated or re-presented within them. The consequences of this for a critical anti-racism are also addressed at the end of this article.