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Abstract
In this article, I discuss the nature of political theory by reference to the nature and study of politics and the centrality of language and practical concepts therein. I then paint a realistic picture of the state of political theory in South Africa, which while bleak provides some hope. Although political theory has for some time been the poor cousin in the extended family of political studies in South Africa, this may be changing. My main contribution is to show how central political theory is to political studies in particular and political understanding in general. I end the article with a discussion of the various ways in which political theory is vital for the health of democratic South Africa, with particular focus on the following five pivotal concerns: coercive authority; non-alignment; realism; contextual critique; utopianism and imagination. If taken more seriously, it may help to improve the political judgement of both political representatives and ordinary citizens and thus enhance South Africa's democratic political order.
Notes
1 Who knows really whether political theory and political philosophy are equivalent; here I simply assume they are and prefer ‘political theory’. My sincere thanks to Chris Allsobrook, Camilla Boisen, Saul Dubow, Ze'ev Emmerich, Laurence Piper, François Janse van Rensburg and Peter Vale for their help and comments.
2 This is not intended as a comprehensive list, but rather a few exemplary interventions. An important corollary of these choices, my argument here and the very nature of politics and political theory, is that formal training in political theory is not a necessary condition for the ability to contribute to political theory: arguments and insights are often drawn from literature, historical writing and so on. A good example of this is the work of Breytenbach, especially well interpreted in Nash (Citation2009); but cf. Breytenbach (Citation1996, 40, 133). Turner's most important political theoretical contributions were unfinished at the time of his assassination by the apartheid regime and are still to be published.
3 Throughout this essay I shall use the term ‘political studies’ to denote forms of study and academic departments that are variously called ‘politics’, ‘political science’, ‘political studies’, ‘political and international studies’ and so on, for reasons that will become obvious.
4 By ‘language’ throughout I do not mean the natural languages analysed by linguists—isiZulu, Afrikaans, English and so on—but a general political language, that is, shared conceptions of the world, manners, values, resources, expectations and procedures of speech that define and constitute all communities, complicated by the fact that they are made up of a whole series of sub-languages or idioms best described as discourses (Ball Citation1997; White Citation1984).
5 I say ‘also’ as even here language is indispensable as the medium through which these actions are legitimised.
6 ‘Positivists’ here include logical positivists and ordinary language theorists, but space disallows full elaboration. Either way, today most political theorists disavow this tradition; but this is not true of still quite a large number of political ‘scientists’, especially in the periphery, with its tendency to mimic the developed global North, often with significant time lag—in this case, more than 30 years! For more on the pernicious peculiarities of positivism in South Africa, see Allsobrook (Citation2014).
7 It is no coincidence that attention has now turned to Iran: a somewhat trickier prospect.
8 Foucault originally made this point in the 1950s and 1960s, which may now make it feel a little out-dated. Nevertheless, the general point still holds. Nietzsche (Citation2007) is also a realist in this sense.
9 Vincent, Hamilton, and Steyn-Kotze (Citation2012) is the first locally produced introduction to political theory by a South African publisher for South African students.
10 Personal communication to me via email in early January 2013.
11 This case is both exemplary of his broader claim regarding intellectual history in the (post) colony and part of the deep problem I am outlining here, for his plea for a different, more nuanced kind of South African intellectual history that avoids these kinds of pitfalls has fallen, mostly, on deaf ears.
12 For evidence and further argument in support of this point, see Bundy (Citation2012), Dubow (Citation2012), Hamilton (Citation2003, Citation2006, Citation2014b) and Terreblanche (Citation2012.)