‘Whispered in corridors’: Intra-national politics and practices of knowledge production in South African Human Geography

Abstract

Reflections on the state of Geography around the globe have noted multiple challenges and opportunities—including a call for the reconfiguring of the discipline as a critical space of care and praxis (Daya, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 47, 9, 2022). Such a call is indelibly connected to broader conversations on the politics of knowledge production and critical engagements with cultures of knowledge production. In order to realise the reconfiguring of the discipline, it is imperative to engage with the multi-scalar politics and practices of knowledge production, to look beyond global inequalities and critically examine the intra-national inequities and structural biases of knowledge production. Through a focus on South African Human Geography and detailed analysis of publication data and interviews with staff at universities across the country, we critically examine how the ‘haunting’ of apartheid legacies contributes to a double-peripheralisation of staff at historically disadvantaged institutions while critical conversations remain ‘whispered in corridors’. This more granular engagement with the politics and practices of knowledge production highlights the entwining of intra- and inter-national privilege which produces a mosaic of ‘cores’ and ‘peripheries’ in the uneven landscape of knowledge production that requires critical scholars to engage with on multiple scales in order to realise a more just and equitable knowledge economy.