Paula Ensor & Daryl Glaser 
Rick Turner’s Politics as the Art of the Impossible [EPUB ebook] 

Rick Turner was a South African academic and activist who rebelled against apartheid at the height of its power and was assassinated in 1978 when he was 32 years old, but his life and work are testimony to the power of philosophical thinking for humans everywhere. Turner chose to live freely in an unfree time and argued for a non-racial, socialist future in a context where this seemed unimaginable. This book considers Rick Turner’s challenge that political theorising requires thinking in a utopian way. Turner’s seminal book The Eye of the Needle: Towards a Participatory Democracy in South Africa laid out some of his most potent ideas on a radically different political and economic system. His demand was that we work to escape the limiting ideas of the present, carefully design a just future based on shared human values, and act to make it a reality, both politically and in our daily lives. The contributors to this volume engage critically with Turner’s work on race relations, his relationship with Steve Biko, his views on religion, education and gender oppression, his model of participatory democracy, and his critique of enduring forms of poverty and economic inequality. They show how, in his life and work, Turner modelled how we can dare to be free and how hope can return, as the future always remains open to human construction. This book makes an important contribution to contemporary thinking and activism where the need for South Africans to define their understanding of the greater common good is of crucial importance.

Tabla de materias

Introduction Michael Onyebuchi Eze, Lawrence Hamilton, Laurence Piper and Gideon van Riet Part I Rick Turner and Contemporary Black Thinkers Chapter 1 Decolonising Resistance: Political Freedom in Rick Turner and Steve Biko – Michael Onyebuchi Eze Chapter 2 Political Change, Liberalism and Racial Utopias: Richard Turner and Sam Nolutshungu – Ayesha Omar Chapter 3 On Biko’s Turn on Turner – Tendayi Sithole Part II Turner’s Theoretical Lacunae Chapter 4 Women in the Frame: Reading Rick Turner’s Eye of the Needle through Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex- Paula Ensor Chapter 5 Poverty and Misplaced Prioritisation: Evaluating ‘Human Models’ and ‘Value Systems’ – John Sanni Chapter 6 Should We Take Turner’s Democratic Model Seriously? – Daryl Glaser Part III Turner and Teaching Philosophy Chapter 7 Rick Turner and Teaching Critical Theory – Laurence Piper Chapter 8 The Relevance of Rick Turner’s Utopian Thinking for a Critical Pedagogy – Crain Soudien Part IV Rick Turner and the ‘Left’ Chapter 9 Rick Turner, An Aboveground Radical – Billy Keniston Chapter 10 Radical Contingency and Turner’s Enduring Message to Relative Privilege – Gideon Van Riet Part V On the Nature of Political Theory Chapter 11 Rick Turner and the Vision of Engaged Political Philosophy – Christine Hobden Chapter 12 What is the Point of Political Theory? – Lawrence Hamilton Contributors Index

Sobre el autor

Crain Soudien is Emeritus Professor in Education and African Studies at the University of Cape Town, an Honorary Professor at Nelson Mandela University and the President of Cornerstone Institute.