The colonial history of South Africa and its legacy of cultural
and linguistic domination have resulted in a situation where the.
literatures of the majority of South Africans were relegated to
the margins of institutional, social and cultural life.
Exclusion (of local writings) was the principal mode by which
power was exercised within university English departments. It
is within this context that this study posits lacunae and
challenges for the reconstruction of the South African literature
curriculum.
Although various approaches have been used by English
departments during this decade to include South African
literature in the curriculum (pluralism, inter-disciplinary
studies, alternate canon formation, canon rejection, eclecticism,
elective programmes, etc.), the curriculum continues to repeat
the established norms and values of colonial/apartheid society,
it avoids confronting the ideological construction of traditional
English literature and is a revamping or upgrading of the
programmes offered during the colonial/apartheid era.
The genealogical study uncovers the production, regulation,
distribution, circulation and operation of statements, decentres
discourse, and reveals how discourse is secondary to systems of
power. Chapter Four explores both theoretical and methodological
underpinnings for the reconstruction of the South African
literature curriculum deriving from the critical educational
approaches of Freire, Giroux and Apple, the discursive approach
of Foucault and the post colonial reading strategies of
Zavarzadeh and Morton.
The teaching of South African literature would best be served by
working within a critical paradigm, having as its objective the
goals of critical educational studies. Chapter Four also
includes a review of the curriculum in local practice through a
curriculum impact study using empirical research based on the
1996 English literature syllabi of South African universities as
well as the findings of the surveys conducted by Malan and Bosman
in 1986 and Lindfors in 1992.
Chapter Five posits recommendations for curriculum reconstruction
with the main focus on the intervention of radical strategies
that would lead to a new conflictual reading list. The objective
is to put the canon under erasure by problematising the concept
of literariness. Such an approach also reveals the power/
knowledge relations of culture, ideologies that dominate the
discipline and the institutional arrangements of knowledge.Curriculum and Instructional StudiesD.Ed. (Didactics
