The Sunday News
From its ancient origins, the Euro-American model of the university that is enjoying global hegemony presently has been a specifically violent institution. While Empire was committing genocides of conquest, murdering natives in numbers, the university was conducting epistemicides and linguicides, the mass murder of knowledges and languages of the conquered peoples.
Between the Euro-American Empire and the present model of the university there is a long relationship of co-creation. While Empire designed and instituted the university, and globalised it, the university created and built Empire by producing ideas and ideologies of conquest, domination and hegemony. The physical violence of conquest was always accompanied by the psychological and social violence of cultural imperialism and coloniality of knowledge.
Presently, the university and its current prefects pretend that it is an institution of ideas and a place of polished civility where physical violence is looked down upon and is associated with spaces and institutions of the uncultured, the uneducated and the unkempt of the world. The university and its present clients pretend that it is an ivory tower, an island of knowledge surrounded by a sea of ignorance. I write, from a decolonial sensibility, to observe how the psychological, and mainly social violence of the university that it learnt and perfected from its origins in the epochs of conquest and colonial encounters still remains.
Most of the psychological and social violence of the university is embodied in its architecture and also in the attitudes of conceit, cynicism and scepticism that university professors, black and white, continue to exude and naturalise. As an institution, the present model of the university that fits the definition of a colonial university embodies systemic violence whose operations have been turned into common sense, are not questioned and are considered part of the university culture or a natural deportment of the educated society.
Ancient Provenances of Social Violence in the academy
Those that have studied, and in social media language followed Socrates, the ancient wise philosopher from Athens know that he was a humble and jolly good fellow. Socrates is one of the people in the history of the world who was killed for their wisdom. Unlike the usual philosophers and professors who walk around the university in high horses, Socrates was a Christ like figure who mingled with the unwashed masses and presented himself always as one of their own.
In his humble way he boasted that he was able to make weaker arguments defeat the stronger arguments, severally he enjoyed proving the foolishness of some the deeply held wisdoms of his day. The violent side of Socrates can be observed from the way he regarded and described those thinkers of the day that he did not agree with, or those who did not agree with him.
He called them charlatans, sophists and “gate crashers” into the academy who did not deserve to be given audience. He accused them of being pretenders who led unexamined lives and therefore who were not worthy of life. In other words, Socrates was violently conceited, sceptical and cynical, one had to agree with him or one did not know a thing, and knowledge outside his grasp was not knowledge but charlatanry and sophistry.
While Socrates himself was a street philosopher, his student Plato was to build what is largely considered the first university in the world, not counting the ignored universities of Egypt where Socrates and others were schooled, he named his institution the Academy. Famously, on the entrance of his university Plato boldly inscribed the words: “Let no one enter here who is ignorant of Mathematics.” Plato was a wizard of geometry, and expected everyone to be the same. Those who understood other subject areas different from his were banned from his Academy; they were pretenders and time wasters.
The epistemic apartheid of the present university and its intellectual segregations are traceable to the classical times, so called ignorant people or people with different knowledges and sensibilities are criminalised, segregated and banished from the university. While the present university does not inscribe the bans as Plato did, several other criteria of exclusion have been formulated and are being enforced.
In his engrossment in geometry, Plato got to despise poets, artistes and other users of fictive imaginations and symbolic languages. He believed that poets and their like should be banned from, not only the university, but the entire Republic.
It is that contempt for poetry and poets that drove a wedge between Plato and his student of twenty years, Aristotle who relished in poetry and drama. What split Aristotle from Plato was pure intellectual contempt and philosophical factionalism, pathologies of the academy that are found in the academic tribalism of the present university in Africa.
Aristotle went on to start his own academy, the Lyceum from where he worked hard to discredit Plato and what he stood for. Important in this is to note how the western tradition of the university was born and grew up with violence as its necessary accompaniment.
There was even a philosophical tradition in Greece that was called the tradition of the Cynics. The cynic philosophers were purist philosophical tribalists who were conceited against and contemptuous of any other thinkers who did not agree with them. Those who did not subscribe to the cynic school of philosophical thought were called all sorts of uncharitable names and their work was dismissed before it was even engaged with.
Cynicism in the University in Africa
The university in Africa has inherited bad attitudinal and systemic habits of the classical western academy. Chinua Achebe used to laugh at how African writers learnt cynical habits from European eccentrics and started behaving like them in Africa, living like hermits in the fringes of society, dressing and behaving strangely. The African writer, that is the copycat of the Eurocentric writer did not feel like a writer if he or she did not perform eccentricism and dramatise hostility between themselves and society. Institutionally the university is still a prohibitive centre of learning where, not in so many words, some knowledges and some people are banned. Like Socrates and Plato, the professors of today form academic tribes and clans that are violently opposed to those that hold different ideas from them.
Conceit, scepticism and contempt are still the intellectual attitudes that define scholarly relations. Each professor forms a scholarly tribe around him, a troop of disciples whose job is to agree with him, fruitful critical exchanges amongst scholars are not permitted as scholars turn theories into religions where disagreement is equal to blasphemy.
Students have to tip toe the corridors to see professors for consultations and scholarly networking, woe unto that student who is seen talking with a professor from another academic tribe; he is treated as a sell out who lacks basic patriotism. As a result of these hostilities and intellectual factionalism, thinking and knowing in the university has become narrow, cold and boring business. So much intellectual energy and academic resources are spent on contempt, conceit, cynicism, scepticism and condescending attitudes.
Socially and psychologically the university has become a violent place where amateurs and novices perpetually walk on eggs on campus afraid of stepping on the sensitive toes of the high priests of this and that idea.
In that climate of social and psychological violence, very little critical and creative learning takes place, scholarship and intellection become hymn singing and chorusing to the voice of the priests. Seeing that contempt, cynicism, conceit and scepticism are part of the historical baggage of the Euro-American university that have achieved hegemony in the university in Africa, a large part of decolonising the university must be invested in decolonising scholarly and intellectual attitudes.
Even the language of intellectual engagement, of commenting on students’ work and supervising them should be liberated from cynic vocabularies and grammars.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from South Africa: [email protected]
