Resolución de conflictos

It is not difficult to see that South Africa and its higher education are in transition en route to a new period. Christian National Education and its

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vestiges are all being submerged in the past. One concern by Ntili (2004) is worth mentioning in this study wherein he argues that universities (formerly white-controlled) are silent as far as public discourses are concerned. They are not offering a compelling vision of what they are trying to accomplish for students. These universities, he continues, perpetuate rote learning to students. Thinking is neither required nor expected.

This theoretical framework is important for this study because it allows for the deconstruction and reconstruction of the dominated group's identity. The perception that formerly black institutions were poorly managed and were not productive in research is deconstructed to look for the real underlying causes over and above the blackness of the management. A new cultural identity is suggested which allows Africans to see themselves as capable if well positioned and empowered to emancipate themselves and establish an alternative centre which will compete with other centres in knowledge production. In this way, the theoretical framework restores the black's humanity and dignity. Lastly, this theory also sees the Africanisation of higher education as a possible achievement for the dominated group

Ntili furthers his argument that the brilliant students are those who can readily quote their bibliographical sources. Black lecturers are criticised for mouthing the doctrines and views of their white teachers. The Eurocentric approach of the paradigms in anthropology is another area of concern in this critique. This study, believing that the picture painted above by Ntili (2004) about universities is true, sees critical theory in conjunction with Foucault's theories of genealogy and discourse analysis as perfect for use in the interrogation of all issues of concern. Central to this view is Marx's remark that social theory should not only be about describing or understanding the social world, but should change it by

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representative means of addressing the issue of why it is that society went wrong or how it has managed to go right.

Critical theory is not without fault; Bottomore (1984) rightly indicates that it is largely historical, and only examines a variety of events (for example, Nazism in the 1930s; anti-Semitism in the 1940s; student revolts in the 1960s) without paying much attention to their historical and comparative contexts. The critical school is also criticised for forgetting the economy and its tendency to argue that the working class has disappeared as a revolutionary force. Similar sentiments have been expressed by Greisman (1986), who labels critical theory "the paradigm that failed".

2.2.10.1 Contextualising the framework

Nevertheless, no other theory suits this study better than critical theory. In theatrical or drama language, critical theory is the perfect stage on which genealogy and discourse analysis act. Critical theory allows Foucault's two theories to expose that learning guides are not innocent in the exclusion of the former HDIs’ discourses from the academic landscape of Free State higher education. Positivistic implications on people as objects of investigation are, on the other hand: man as an input-output device, and man as a machine or robot, which reduces man into an object; in contrast, critical theory perceives man as a human being who interprets and socially constructs his/her world (Gergen & Davies, 1985). The researcher cannot impose his/her own ideas on the researched, but should be humble, respect and treat them as other knowledgeable human beings. By doing this, the researcher ensures the researched are elevated into full human status. Critical theory with its emancipatory thrust implies a normative worldview, what ought to be instead of what is. It shifts the value of human inquiry away from

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straightforward knowledge acquisition into the domain of generating useful or practical knowledge, interrupting patterns of power, participating in socially transformative process toward such ideals as justice, equity, and freedom (Reason, 1986).

2.2.10.2 Research as an imperial tool

Tuhiwai Smith (1999) postulates that indigenous beliefs were considered shocking, abhorrent and barbaric by Western epistemology and were prime targets for the efforts of missionaries. Many of these beliefs still persist in post-apartheid South Africa, especially in higher education. This kind of thinking needs to be challenged vigorously and critical theory does exactly that. The present situation on research in South Africa is summed up well by Tuhiwai Smith (ibid) in her paper "Research through imperial eyes" that describes an approach which assumes that Western ideas about the most fundamental things are the only ideas possible to hold, certainly the only rational ideas and the only ideas which can make sense of the world of reality, of social life and of human beings.

This is an approach to indigenous people which still conveys a sense of innate superiority and an overabundance of desire to bring progress to indigenous peoples, spiritually, intellectually, socially and economically. It is a research which, from indigenous perspectives, "steals" knowledge from others and then uses it to benefit the people who "stole" it. Some indigenous and minority groups would call this approach simply racist. It is research which is imbued with an "attitude" and a "spirit" which assumes a certain ownership of the entire world, and which has established systems and forms of governance which embedded that attitude in institutional practices. These practices determine what counts as legitimate research and who count as legitimate researchers. It is the

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intention of this study to cut the umbilical cord between research and the dominant discourse. Critical theory reveals learning guides as a

sustainer, a link and a lifeline for colonial discourse as

knowledge/reality.

2.2.10.3 Critical theory legitimising indigenous knowledge systems as canons

Critical theory opens space at the centre for the "voice" or discourse which has been indicated as marginalised and pushed to the periphery of knowledge production in Free State higher education. This is the discourse that has been manifest in different forms: Black Education, Education for Power and other varieties. Since universities are a strategic site for social transformation, critical theory believes social improvement and empowerment can be achieved through them. The domination of neo-liberal discourse in higher education has been instrumental in discouraging and destroying active and conscious use of imagination. Heron in Reason (1994) argues that the human psyche, through imaginative capacity, creates a world of form out of our original experience of being embedded and deep participation. This imaginary world evolves through sensation, image, dream, and story and is one of immense possibilities. One of the tragedies of the fundamentalism of unconscious participation and the positivist mindset is that this multiplicity is cut down to one empirical reality, one truth, and one way of seeing things. The language defined by conceptual language, categorising, pruning and pinning down, reduces this vast range of imaginative possibility to a world of fixed things. South African higher education needs to move away from the type of mindset as explained by Reason above if it aspires for localised, relevant and useful knowledge.

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The incorporation of genealogy and discourse analysis is necessary for this research, because it possesses the possibility of rediscovering the African cultural identity, the heritage of the African culture and the possibility of rewriting the Social Sciences which will lead to repositioning of Africans as meaning is deconstructed and reconstructed to establish alternative "regimes of truth". With its accessibility due to financial affordability, the learning guide can play a cardinal role in benefiting the new democracy in South Africa. To suggest doing away with learning guides for the reasons mentioned earlier can be fatal and counterproductive for higher education. Learning guides need to be put into perspective and, for that to be achieved, there is a need to uncover and deconstruct the prevailing "regime of truth" and establish an alternative "regime of truth" that will take the African cultural identity back to its place with the aim of repositioning Africans (Foucault, 1980).

Discourse analysis, the study believes, is the means which can be used to achieve that objective. The application of discourse analyses in the study displaces genealogy. However, genealogy does not disappear from the analyses. It only retains a secondary presence and continues to serve as the methodology for isolating and analysing "relevant discursiveness" in a manner which is complementary to discourse analyses. In fact, there are a number of links and continuities to be found in the researcher's respective articulations of genealogy and discourse analyses which undermine any conception of a categorical break or change of direction. Therefore, the two theories are used as two inter-related alternative conceptions.