Discourse and power in the Gospel according to Mark: Strategies of exclusion

In this article it is argued that the materiality of religious discourse necessitates a description of its strategies of power and control. Since Christian religious discourse reactivates the discourses of canonical writings, the description of the materiality of the discursive practices of the canonical writings themselves is imperative. Focusing on the strategics of exclusion, Foucault’s archaeological model of the description of discourse is used as a framework for delineating some strategies of the Markan discourse. The analysis of the archive ... involves a privileged region: at once close to us, and different from our p resent existence, it is the border of time that surrounds our presence, which overhangs it, and which indicates it in its otherness; it is that which, outside ourselves, delimits us (Foucault, 1972:130)

Social Responsibility and Power I: J.T. van der Kemp’s Interventions For and on Behalf of the Khoikhoi on the Eastern Cape Frontier (1801 – 1806)

In a previous article, I have traced Van der Kemp’s link to the British anti-slavery network, argued that his position on the exploitation of the Khoi paralleled his views on slavery, and that his civil rights activism for and on behalf of the Khoi mirrored his anti-slavery advocacy (cf. Smit 2016b). In this article, I continue my analysis of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century archive which Van der Kemp formed part of, and here focus on Van der Kemp’s interventions for and on behalf of the Khoi (1801 – 1806) and power. My hypothesis is that starting with Van der Kemp, the interventions of Christian missions vis-à-vis the governments and the frontier settler farmers, and later beyond the frontier, on behalf of indigenous people, were the manifestations of late eighteenth and nineteenth century ‘social responsibility’. As indicated in my topic, such taking up of ‘social responsibility’ includes the ‘power’ or more particularly, in Foucault’s terminology, the colonising ‘power effects’ of the missions on indigenous people. In this article I consecutively provide some background related to twentieth century, as well as late eighteenth and nineteenth century notions of ‘social responsibility’, Van der Kemp’s change of plans to not continue with mission work among the Xhosa but to switch to the Khoi, and his and his fellow missionary James Read’s interventions for and on behalf of the Khoi asserting their ‘freedom’ and their ‘civilisation’. For these focuses, I mainly draw on Van der Kemp’s correspondence from his extant South African texts. For ‘power’ or ‘power relations’ and ‘power effects’ in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, I draw on the theoretical and discursive historical studies by Michel Foucault1

Social Responsibility and Power II: J.T. van der Kemp’s Interventions for and on behalf of the Khoikhoi on the Eastern Cape Frontier (1801 – 1806)

In ‘Social Responsibility and Power I’, I have endeavoured to provide an argument for the social responsibility and power of J.T. van der Kemp (joined by James Read in 1801) as manifest in his interventions for and on behalf of the Khoi vis-à-vis the British and later Batavian colonial governments, as well as the frontier settler farmers on the Eastern Cape Frontier (1801 – 1806) (cf. Smit 2016a). His own ‘power’ became manifest in his interventions for and on behalf of the Khoi and his critique of both the colonial governments and the frontier settler farmers. To this we may add his assertion of the freedom of the landless Khoi, and his contention that they should receive a piece of land, to be allocated by government, for a mission station, where they would be subjected to education and be ‘civilized’. I have expounded what these devel-opments meant in terms of the ‘archive’ of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They included, amongst others, the further de-culturali-sation of the Khoi. In this article, I take the argument further by focusing on the ‘useful education’, ‘analytic education’, ‘institutionalisation’, the interaction with the colonial ‘government’ in these matters, and the ‘pacifica-tion’ of the Khoi by the mission as institution

Designing Heterotopic Transversal Equitable Foundations for Open Knowledge: Access, Freedom & e/Quality

Following on the publications based on Smit’s 2017 International Open Access lecture (cf. Smit & Chetty 2018a; and 2018b), we capture some aspects from his 2018 presentation, in this article. It further develops his exploration of the significance of Michel Foucault’s triad, subject – communication – knowledge-power production in the digital paradigm, or e-episteme, in terms of knowledge-power networks (KPNs). For this, the article has two main parts. Firstly, it provides a theoretical framework for the empirical interpretation of the 2018 international topic for the Open Access week, seminally, incorporating the no-tions of the ‘heterotopic’ and ‘transversal’. Secondly, in South Africa’s ascendant history into openness, as a free country, it provides a sample of three significant events in our affirmative genealogy, or genealogies, of freedom. These are, access to the full participation in, or ‘contribution’ to, world civilization, or world information-, data-, or knowledge-power, or science-power productions, á la Anton Lembede; freedom as founded in the Universal Declaration of Hu-man Rights (UDHR); and equity/ equality/ e/Quality, as founded in ‘The Free-dom Charter’. As such, the advocacy for access, freedom, and equality in South Africa’s affirmative genealogy of freedom, are three of the seminal elements, and historical empirical events, for South Africa’s entry into its free democratic dispensation, in 1994. The presentation was dedicated to the international celebration of the seventieth year of the founding of the UDHR, in 1948

23/ 25 Years of Alternation, and the African Digital Humanities: Capacity, Communication, and Knowledge-Power1

This article condenses the presentation by Prof J.A. Smit, as the International Open Access keynote lecture, of 23 October 2017. It forms the first of a double-barrel article that seeks to open up some research possibilities with regard to the subject and knowledge-power2. Drawing on Foucault, it firstly provides a theoretical framework that may assist in assessing the significance of Alternation, followed by a positioning of the questions Foucault raised through his nearly twenty years of research on this matter, in the digital, or electronic age, specifically with regard to the African Digital Humanities. It then briefly reflects on some of the founding ideas and provides a sample of the historical events in the history of Alternation (1994 – 1996), followed, by positioning it in the international dynamics of the digital age, and the move from Humanities Computing in Alternation, to the Digital Humanities. The fifth focus, and as part of the Conclusion, briefly reflects on Berners-Lee’s pioneering vision, as well as the most basic definition of the Digital Humanities, which provides a broad framework of both the past and future research of Alternation

The African Digital Humanities (ADH) and Alternation on OJS (2018 - ): Innovation, Pan-African Collaboration, and Trans-Continental Integration1

This article is a continuation of a condensing of the presentation by Prof J.A. Smit, as the Open Access keynote lecture, of 23 October 2017. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s relational explication of the subjective embodied capacity – subjective embodied communication – subjective embodied knowledge-power production triad (cf. Smit & Chetty 2018: 8 – 30), it first explicates its theoretical framework, in terms of the triad’s ‘external instruments’. This is followed by a systematic exposition of this framework in terms of the opportunities that the African Digital Humanities (ADH) face as at 23 October 2017. From within the institutional framework of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the article briefly expounds the possibilities that are opened up for the ADH on the Online Journal Management Systems (OJS). This is further done in terms of the conceptualisations of the e-Humanities, or the future of the e-Human in Africa, as we can, at this stage, comparatively, and analogically envision this complex process, as it is happening at the moment, and as it will doubtlessly further expand into a rapidly changing, and high-speed future

Editorial: Religion and Social Responsibility

In our decolonising, digitalising, and neo- and post-colonial world, the scholarly focus on ‘Religion and Social Responsibility’ is here to stay. As Smit (this issue) cogently points out, it has become common purchase not only within traditional socially-minded religious discursive traditions such as the historical Social Gospel Movement, the Catholic Church’s socially conscious and social justice statements and programmes since at least the eighteenth century, and the large variety of missionary movements of the nineteenth century, but that it has also been embraced by more conservative sectors of global religious society. Following the wide variety of social responsibility programmes developed and implemented – with a variety of measures of success – by the capitalist business sectors of the world since the mid-twentieth century, social responsibility programmes as forms of social intervention, or, for the purposes of social transformation and social and economic develop-ment, have become common cause for many institutions. With this issue of Alternation, we wish to place this item firmly on the scholarly agenda of not only institutions of higher learning, but also religious organisations across the religions. We also affirm the socially conscious engagement of society by the business and corporate world. After all, it is these sectors that not only drive the world economy and world development, but also, as individuals and companies, benefit the most from a continuously developing world political and socio-cultural economy

Alterations in Apical Dendrite Bundling in the Somatosensory Cortex of 5-HT3A Receptor Knockout Mice

In various species and areas of the cerebral cortex, apical dendrites of pyramidal neurons form clusters which extend through several layers of the cortex also known as dendritic bundles. Previously, it has been shown that 5-HT3A receptor knockout mice show hypercomplex apical dendrites of cortical layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons, together with a reduction in reelin levels, a glycoprotein involved in cortical development. Other studies showed that in the mouse presubicular cortex, reelin is involved in the formation of modular structures. Here, we compare apical dendrite bundling in the somatosensory cortex of wildtype and 5-HT3A receptor knockout mice. Using a microtubule associated protein-2 immunostaining to visualize apical dendrites of pyramidal neurons, we compared dendritic bundle properties of wildtype and 5-HT3A receptor knockout mice in tangential sections of the somatosensory cortex. A Voronoi tessellation was performed on immunostained tangential sections to determine the spatial organization of dendrites and to define dendritic bundles. In 5-HT3A receptor knockout mice, dendritic bundle surface was larger compared to wildtype mice, while the number and distribution of reelin-secreting Cajal–Retzius cells was similar for both groups. Together with previously observed differences in dendritic complexity of cortical layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons and cortical reelin levels, these results suggest an important role for the 5-HT3 receptor in determining the spatial organization of cortical connectivity in the mouse somatosensory cortex

Lifelong Impact of Variations in Maternal Care on Dendritic Structure and Function of Cortical Layer 2/3 Pyramidal Neurons in Rat Offspring

Maternal licking and grooming (LG) exerts profound influence on hippocampal development and function in the offspring. However, little information is available on the effects of variations in maternal care on other brain regions. Here we examined the effects of variation in the frequency of maternal LG on morphological and electrophysiological properties of layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons in the somatosensory cortex in adult offspring. Compared to low LG offspring, high LG offspring displayed decreased dendritic complexity, reduced spine density and decreased amplitude of spontaneous postsynaptic currents. These changes were accompanied by higher levels of reelin expression in offspring of high LG mothers. Taken together, these findings suggest that differential amount of naturally-occurring variations in maternal LG is associated with enduring changes in dendritic morphology and synaptic function in layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons of the somatosensory cortex

Impaired Social Behavior in 5-HT3A Receptor Knockout Mice

The 5-HT3 receptor is a ligand-gated ion channel expressed on interneurons throughout the brain. So far, analysis of the 5-HT3A knockout mouse revealed changes in nociceptive processing and a reduction in anxiety related behavior. Recently, it was shown that the 5-HT3 receptor is also expressed on Cajal-Retzius cells which play a key role in cortical development and that knockout mice lacking this receptor showed aberrant growth of the dendritic tree of cortical layer II/III pyramidal neurons. Other mouse models in which serotonergic signaling was disrupted during development showed similar morphological changes in the cortex, and in addition, also deficits in social behavior. Here, we subjected male and female 5-HT3A knockout mice and their non-transgenic littermates to several tests of social behavior. We found that 5-HT3A knockout mice display impaired social communication in the social transmission of food preference task. Interestingly, we showed that in the social interaction test only female 5-HT3A knockout mice spent less time in reciprocal social interaction starting after 5 min of testing. Moreover, we observed differences in preference for social novelty for male and female 5-HT3A knockout mice during the social approach test. However, no changes in olfaction, exploratory activity and anxiety were detected. These results indicate that the 5-HT3A knockout mouse displays impaired social behavior with specific changes in males and females, reminiscent to other mouse models in which serotonergic signaling is disturbed in the developing brain