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Item Open Access South Africa's social contract: the Economic Freedom Fighters and the rise of a new constituent power?(University of the Free State, 2018) Adams, RachelTaking the South African constitution as an eminent symbol of the South African social contract, and noting the opinion of many that the contract has failed to deliver, this article explores the concept of the social contract in South Africa by examining two contentions. The first, that the South African social contract, or constitution, was not entirely inclusive to begin with. And the second, that the radical opposition party – the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) – represents the rise of a new constituent power from the unemployed and disenfranchised populous: those seen to have been left out of the social contract. Within this article, I follow Negri’s work on constituent power, broadly taking the term to denote “the power of the people”. Through exploring these contentions, this article comes to an impasse: that South Africa’s social contract was, and continues to be, conditioned in advanced by the preceding administration or constituted power, which limits, too, the possibilities of a new constituent power represented by the EFF.Item Open Access Power, rights, freedom, technocracy and postcolonialism in sub-Saharan Africa(University of the Free State, 2018) Dos Santos, MonikaEconomic ‘unfreedom’, in the form of extreme poverty, renders individuals prey to the violation of other kinds of freedoms. Historically, colonial activities by the West openly disrupted the rights of the impoverished in the rest of the world. In this paper I argue that subjectification and State overcoding has operated in a manner that has directly affected the discursive and non-discursive spaces within which rights operate, regulated by specific hierarchical arrangements of power via a State apparatus. What is ultimately experienced is a ‘thin equality’ and an ‘emaciated democracy’. As rights have been propagated as the codified consequence of social struggles in sub-Saharan countries, so too have bio-political and technocratic regulations intensified, resulting in brutal exploitation through unregulated markets particularly in the so-called developing world, resembling indentured labour and voluntary servitude. Ultimately, the asymmetry of power breeds a silent brutality – disparities of power generally prevent the sharing of various prospects. Free development and State overcoding, through extra-political means, may constitute an efficacious problem-solving practice that offers a way out of the bind.Item Open Access The poverty of (critical) theory(University of the Free State, 2018) Olivier, BertItem Open Access 'Affective' witnessing and testimony in contemporary environmental cinema(University of the Free State, 2018) Konik, IngeThis article advances that through incorporating registers of affect, environmental cinema might better approximate its socially and ecologically transformative goals. A film in which this has been attempted is Fisher Stevens’s Before the Flood (2016), and it is contended here that for this reason the film holds promise despite the weakness of some of its proposed solutions to climate deterioration. An analysis of the film is offered, during which certain of Julie Doyle’s, Nathan Farrell’s and Michael Goodman’s reservations about Before the Flood are countered, drawing particularly on Anton Van der Hoven and Jill Arnott’s arguments in favour of affective cinema. Indeed, a pro-affective film-making approach finds theoretical support in the perspectives of materialist ecological feminists and African philosophers on the role of affect and emotion in being fully human. The article concludes that affect should be recuperated and strategically included within cultural products and interactions, particularly if these aim to engender significant socio-cultural change.Item Open Access A philosophical situation: democratic capitalism, the ecological crisis, and the issue of choice(University of the Free State, 2018) Pittaway, David A.Democracy is an open system, while capitalism is a gated one. Yet the dominant global political economy is democratic capitalism. The presence of a gated capitalist core within democracy results in the political prioritisation of capitalist business as usual, thereby resisting substantive changes to the political economy because economic growth is a prerequisite of capitalism. Responses to some of the challenges facing humankind – challenges such as the ecological crisis, which has arisen in part from unrestrained economic growth – cannot occur if economic growth dictates the democratic political agenda. Acknowledging this open-closed problem means acknowledging democratic capitalism’s incapacity to deal with some of humanity’s current challenges, such as the ecological crisis. A pressing question arises: what does one do? Arguably, if ecological decline is to be slowed or averted, choices must be made that result in ways of thinking and ways of living notably different from those systematised under democratic capitalism. The need for choices incommensurable with democratic capitalism is a sign that a philosophical situation has arisen, because, as explained by Alain Badiou, part of the role of philosophy is to confront incommensurability. In positioning democratic capitalism (and its implications for ecology) against incommensurable alternatives, a full philosophical situation arises. Permaculture is an example of an arena offering such alternatives, and an outline of an implementation of permaculture principles is provided in order to illustrate what a potential remedial candidate entails.Item Open Access From the editor(University of the Free State, 2018) Melber, Henning