Early morning winds: South Africa and racism in the early days (1488-1870)

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Objectifying

If we move to the I-It, first we already mentioned that it moves to an objectifying way of relating to a person. Addressing and treating some person as we would address and treat any object in life, for instance the I-It relationship is the way we typically treat each other for practical necessity, manipulation and means-ends instrumentality. This is called ‘using’ and ‘experiencing’ by Buber (1958:5-13). That is in terms of either an externalised ‘out there’ way of addressing each other or an internalised ‘in here’ one. According to Buber (1958:3-34) we speak the I-It with only part of our being (think of talking to someone and thinking of something else like lunch while this dialogue is taking place). It is only a partially engaged way of addressing another person. Furthermore, the primary temporal modality of the I-It is the past. If we put it in other words it is a way of treating each other governed mostly by things we know about the other person around past experience and our own experience of interaction.
In this research it can also be what w believe (traditions of interpretation) we know about the other person or group. One way to recognise the I-It in our lives would be to think about how frequently we try to objectify each other in our everyday interactions. It basically boils down to getting the other person to do what we want them to do and manipulating their behaviour accordingly to what we know or believe from that persons past experience in much the same way we manipulate objects like hammering a nail into a piece of wood. Most of the time it is quite difficult to acknowledge other people’s deep humanity if you are entrenched within the I-It thinking and as an example we can only refer to Robinson Crusoe and Friday in this regard. The unpleasant truth is that most of the time within this thinking we only use one another to get what we really want.
Within the conversations with the co-researchers they explicitly accused black people of oppressing them rather than the other way around. They did this because the object (black people) stood in their way of achieving their own goals and not one of togetherness. With this I am not saying at all that black people cannot oppress other races but we are focusing on Afrikaner adolescents in this study.

Subjectifying

In contrast to this the I-Thou has to do with what Buber (1958:3-35) calls relation or encounter. This has to do with being completely present for another person rather than only partially engaged. It also has to do with addressing each other with a sense of mutuality and reciprocity by recognising and affirming the other person’s full humanity with our full humanity. In this the primary temporal modality is the spontaneously unfolding present rather than the past. The I-Thou happens in the “here and now” rather than in the “there and then”. According to Buber (1958:62-63) the I-Thou are important in our lives for many reasons. Experiencing the I-Thou is one of the most precious parts of our human birth right; furthermore the I-Thou is the locus of all genuine creative activity, all genuine spirituality and all becoming in transcendence. It basically comes down for Buber to the notion that there is no such thing as growing as a human being all on our own, at least not in any deep way. All moments of genuine growing and becoming require a Thou, in other words they unfold between people rather than within or outside of people. Moments of transcendence basically occur in the unpredictable flection of a genuine fully engaged relationship with each other. In South
Africa it is often referred to as Ubuntu.
For Buber (1958:3-4) one of the main markers of whether we are in an I-It or IThou mode is how we use the word “I”. This is a touchstone for the way we address the world according to Buber (1958:3-4). On the one hand the I-It way of using the word “I” more or less maps on to the egoistic sense of self that we often operate from as we have seen from my own story and that of the co-researchers.
The question I ask myself often throughout this research is what can “I” do to have more I-Thou moments in life and especially with regard to racism in South Africa? However, Buber (1958) constantly points out that I-Thou moments do not rise out of wilful activity alone. The opportunity to experience I-Thou arises from grace, but then we also have to choose to enter into the IThou experience wilfully by choice. To put it in other words, the I-Thou requires both will and grace. It comes to us but we must also choose to enter into it. As Buber (1958) so often put it that the relation is election and electing passive and active at once.

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CHAPTER ONE – Naval architecture (the design)
PART ONE: The shipyard (positioning)
1.1 Epistemology
1.1.1 Understanding epistemology
1.1.2 Epistemology and the importance of it for this study
1.2 Postfoundationalism
1.3 Postfoundational practical theology
1.4 Social Constructionism
1.4.1 Truth has many versions
1.4.2 Reality is constructed
1.4.3 The construction of reality is bound by context
1.4.4 The construction of reality is bound by language .
1.4.5 Language is a tool for action
1.4.6 Discourse
1.5 Auto-ethnographic approach
1.6 Narrative approach
1.6.1 Listening
1.6.2 De-centring
1.6.3 Externalising
1.6.4 Deconstruction
1.6.5 Remembering
1.6.6 Absent, but implicit.
1.7 Chapter outline
PART TWO: Beginning of the Voyage (the research question)
1.8 Introduction
1.9 Aim of the research
1.10 Context
CHAPTER TWO – Boarding the ship with my own luggage (my own story, working
auto-ethnographically
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Setting of on the journey: the back story
2.3 The Reverend: ‘Shipwrecked’ or ‘sailing’
2.4 Boarding with hand-luggage: all have a background story .
CHAPTER THREE – The stern of the ship (background stories)
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Heading towards: Racism
3.2.1 The term “race”
3.2.2 The term “racism”
3.3 Sailing through history
3.3.1 Early morning winds: South Africa and racism in the early days (1488-1870)
3.3.2 Afternoon storms: South Africa and racism pre-apartheid (1870-1948)
3.3.3 Midnight thunderstorms: Apartheid (1948-1990) .
3.3.4 Taking stock on-board: South Africa post-apartheid (1994-2016)
3.3.5 The ocean explorers: Reflection on the ancestors
3.3.6 Stormy clouds and underlying white lightning: “whiteness” .
CHAPTER FOUR – Winds of colonialism and power in the sails (power discourses)
4.1 Introduction
4.2 The strong winds of colonialism
4.3 Pulling up the sails by my own power
4.4 Directing the sails: Power that controls
4.5 Controlling the wind: The constructed ‘truths’ and traditions of interpretation
4.5.1 The ‘truth’ wind of otherness
4.5.2 The ‘truth’ wind of knowledge
4.5.3 The ‘truth’ wind of culture
4.5.4 The ‘truth’ wind of status and entitlement
4.6 Channelling the winds of colonialism and power in this research
CHAPTER FIVE – Holes in the ship, is IT sinking? (Martin Buber’s I-It and I-Thou) .
5.1 Introduction
5.2 The undercarriage: understanding and moving from IT to THOU
5.2.1 Objectifying
5.2.2 Subjectifying
5.3 Sinking ship or life raft: Attitude and moment
CHAPTER SIX – The life raft (vulnerability, shame, fear and trust)
CHAPTER SEVEN – On shore, all land is connected (spirituality)
CHAPTER EIGHT – Visitors from other islands (transdisciplinary conversation)
CHAPTER NINE – Final voyage home (reflection, limitations, contributions,
questions for future research and a cycle of grace)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ADDENDUMS