Rick Turner's Politics as the Art of the Impossible, livre ebook

This collection revisits the work of Rick Turner, a South African political theorist, and addresses contemporary debates.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 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 poverty and economic inequality. It’s an important contribution to contemporary thinking and activism.Acknowledgments Acronyms 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 Race Political Change and Liberal Critiques: 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 S 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