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Spearheading Debate
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Spearheading Debate:
Culture Wars & Uneasy Truces
Steven C. Dubin
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Steven C. Dubin is Professor and Coordinator of the Arts
Administration Program at Columbia University, New York, and
an Associate, Research Centre, Visual Identities in Art and Design,
University of Johannesburg.
This edition published by Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd in 2012
Jacana Media
10 Orange Street
Sunnyside
Auckland Park 2092
South Africa
(+27 11) 628-3200
www.jacana.co.za
© Steven C. Dubin, 2012
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-4314-0737-8
Also available as an e-book
d-PDF ISBN 978-1-4314-0738-5
ePUB ISBN 978-1-4314-0739-2
mobi ISBN 978-1-4314-0740-8
Cover design by publicide
Set in Goudy Old Style 10/12pt
Job no. 001892
See a complete list of Jacana titles at www.jacana.co.za
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They can come in different shapes and guises, but always wars come
in increments.
Dave Eggers
In such uncertain times, our only certainty is that everybody gets to
be an enemy of somebody, sometime.
Maureen Isaacson
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Contents
Acknowledgements .......................................................ix
Introduction: How Do You Sing “Happy Birthday” to a King? .............xi
Chapter 1: The Battle Within, Without, and Beyond: Culture
Wars in a Globalised Perspective .......................................1
Chapter 2: Lost in Translation: What’s in a Song? .......................26
Chapter 3: Strange Brew: Stirring Colonialism, Apartheid and
Tradition together in the Same Pot ...................................51
Chapter 4: Culture Club: Moffies, Baboons and Natives .................73
Chapter 5: The Sounds of Silence: Media Rights and Wrongs ...........93
Chapter 6: Shame and Disgrace: The Arts, their Publics and
Would-be Censors ...................................................140
Chapter 7: Searching for a Hero: Reviving the Vanquished .............188
Conclusion: Rainbow’s End? Yellow is the New Black ...................218
Endnotes ................................................................238
Glossary ................................................................290
Bibliography ............................................................292
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Spearheading Debate
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Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgements
Umberto Eco’s medieval whodunit The Name of the Rose (1980) revolves
around the question, “Who is ruthlessly killing monks in a 14th-century
Benedictine abbey, and why?” The only obvious fact is that the bodies of holy
men are piling up and all of them bear a telltale black stain on their tongues.
A maverick ecclesiastic detective is called in and uncovers duplicity, deep
suspicions and rivalries in this holiest of places, and gradually unravels the
mystery. The victims shared a curiosity for a category of knowledge that the
Church has forbidden: Aristotle’s fabled treatise on comedy. Indulging in such
literary pleasures would, of necessity, deflect their attention from more
spiritual matters. But simply locking this volume away has not curbed the
interest of some of them.
To punish transgressions as grave as these, Church officials have smeared
the pages of the illicit manuscript with poison. Readers who cannot temper
their inquisitiveness pay the ultimate price, becoming unwitting accessories
to their own deaths: as they wet their forefinger to turn each sheet, they
steadily deliver a fatal dosage of the toxin to themselves. So much, then, for
deviation from accepted doctrine.
A South African acquaintance who spent the bulk of her academic career
in a legally mandated black university – it was the only type of place she could
secure a position due to her own racial classification – muses on the fact that
under apartheid certain books in the school’s library were banished to a
separate, locked room. Marx was an occupant of long standing of this
intellectual ghetto, joined by other thinkers at the whim of heavy-handed
officials as they got wind of what they believed were seditious ideas. But this
set-up became an unexpected boon to her particular programme: many of the
most radical students became attracted to the joint Philosophy/Political
Science department partly because this course of study entitled them to
relatively trouble-free entry to the restricted zone.
Today she speaks about the apartheid era with some wistfulness. It was a
time of great hardships, to be sure – students were swallowed up by the
repressive machinery of the state or disappeared into exile; careers such as
hers were needlessly thwarted – but ideas were taken seriously, and intellectual
thought was believed to have tangible consequences. It is a bitter irony that
throughout history the critics of free expression typically attribute more
weight to ideas and images than even their creators or staunchest defenders
do.
Spearheading Debate is about the power of expression in its many forms in
contemporary South Africa, as well as about those who seek either to expand
ix
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