Grasping the Regimes of Language, Space and Identity in the Visual of Post‑apartheid Higher Education in South Africa

Abstract

In 2014, through the University of the Free State's (UFS) Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice (IRSJ), three South African universities partnered to collaborate on the pilot phase of a research project focused on understanding whether the Arts could enable social cohesion, as the 2012 National Development Plan (2030) had promoted. All three authors worked in leading positions in the project in 2015 and through their attempt at explaining the processes and findings of the pilot year of the project at the 2016 South African Art Historians Conference, it was confirmed for themselves that the project, while implemented through the Visual Arts sector in 2015, had findings which needed to be developed and shared with the broader higher education environment as well. The reflective discussion presented in this article therefore goes back to the beginning and focuses on each university reflecting on one question, which is framed and guided by key thematic areas drawn from the overall project findings from 2015, and which can be read at the end of the article. This framework, at that particular juncture in time, summarised the social conditions and contingencies which each university had identified as being in need of consideration and work if social cohesion was to be developed within their institutions.