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Perspectives on Past and Present Realities: Nadine Gordimer’s Voice on Social and Political Problems in South Africa

100%

Pawlicki M.

Kultura i Polityka

2014

issue 15

173-186

In his work The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon famously states that the most important task of African politicians and intellectuals is to understand the nature of the social and political transformations taking place in their countries. This task was undertaken by Nadine Gordimer in her sixty-five-year writing career, from the publication of her first collection of short stories in 1949 until her death in 2014. Gordimer helped her readers understand the situation in South Africa and anticipated many of the country’s social and political problems. In her novel A Guest of Honour, published in 1970, while her country was still struggling against apartheid, she painted the scenario of an unnamed African country which has succeeded in throwing off colonial rule. The socio-political issues she examines in this novel, such as the corruption of its leaders, poor schooling of the blacks and the problem of violence, proved to be the main challenges of contemporary South Africa. It is interesting to juxtapose the problems anticipated by Gordimer in the previous century and those facing South Africa today; such a comparative study, proposed in this article, is primarily a social analysis of a country which reached independence only twenty years ago and remains “deformed by its history,” as Gordimer pointed out in one of her interviews. This article is based on a detailed analysis of A Guest of Honour, primarily with a view to highlight the social and political issues described by Gordimer. The comparative aspect of this study is ensured by references to Gordimer’s most recent essays, interviews, and to her last novel, No Time Like the Present, published in 2012. Due to the fact that in writing A Guest of Honour Gordimer was influenced by Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, this article is also an investigation of Fanon’s seminal study about the anticolonial movement.

W swoim najważniejszym dziele, „Wyklęty lud ziemi”, Frantz Fanon stwierdza, że najważniejszym zadaniem afrykańskich polityków i intelektualistów jest rozumienie istoty przemian zachodzących w ich krajach. To przekonanie może posłużyć jako myśl przewodnia twórczości Nadine Gordimer. W swojej liczącej sześćdziesiąt pięć lat karierze pisarskiej autorka „Zachować swój świat” (The Conservationist) pomagała swoim czytelnikom zrozumieć istotę społecznych i politycznych przemian w jej rodzimej Południowej Afryce. W kilku powieściach trafnie przewidziała problemy, z którymi przyjdzie zmierzyć się jej krajowi po wprowadzeniu demokracji. W powieści „Gość honorowy” (A Guest of Honour), wydanej w 1970 roku, przedstawiła wydarzenia rozgrywające się w fikcyjnym afrykańskim kraju, który odzyskał niepodległość po okresie niewoli kolonialnej. Analiza problemów społecznych i politycznych przeprowadzona przez Gordimer w tej powieści ma odniesienie do aktualnych problemów w Południowej Afryce, takich jak skorumpowanie władz, niski poziom edukacji uboższych warstw społecznych oraz ważny w tym kraju problem przemocy. Celem artykułu jest analiza powieści „Gość honorowy” oraz porównanie przedstawionego w niej obrazu państwa i społeczeństwa z rzeczywistością współczesnej Południowej Afryki. W analizie powieści ważnym odniesieniem będzie wspomniane dzieło Frantza Fanona, natomiast w opisie problemów współczesnej Południowej Afryki istotne będą odwołania do esejów Gordimer, wywiadów oraz jej ostatniej powieści No Time Like the Present wydanej w 2012 roku.

Hall of Mirrors: Toward an Open Society of Mental Health Stakeholders in Safeguarding against Psychiatric Abuse

71%

Fulford K. W. M. B., King C., Bergqvist A.

Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture

2020

vol. 4

issue 2

23-38

This article explores the role of an international open society of mental health stakeholders in raising awareness of values and thereby reducing the vulnerability of psychiatry to abuse. There is evidence that hidden values play a key role in rendering psychiatry vulnerable to being used abusively for purposes of social or political control. Recent work in values-based practice aimed at raising awareness of values between people of different ethnic origins has shown the importance of what we call “values auto-blindness” – a lack of awareness of one’s own values as a key part of our background “life-world” – in driving differential rates of involuntary psychiatric treatment between ethnic groups. It is argued that the vulnerability of psychiatry to abuse stems from values auto-blindness operating on the judgments of rationality implicit in psychiatric diagnostic concepts. Acting like a “hall of mirrors,” an international open society of mental health stakeholders would counter the effects of values auto-blindness through enhanced mutual understanding of the values embedded in our respective life-worlds across and between the diverse perspectives of its constituents. The article concludes by noting that a model for the required open society is available in the contemporary interdisciplinary field of philosophy and psychiatry.

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1 Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture

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1 Fulford K. W. M. B.

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Perspectives on Past and Present Realities: Nadine Gordimer’s Voice on Social and Political Problems in South Africa

Hall of Mirrors: Toward an Open Society of Mental Health Stakeholders in Safeguarding against Psychiatric Abuse