Prospects for the interdisciplinary role of English studies in South African universities

D ebate on the nature o f English studies in South A frica has not produ ced an indication o f a w ay forward. Since English becam e a school and university subject, its contents and aims have never been f ix e d f o r long. This p a p e r proposes that the indeterminate nature o f the subject should be exploited by seeking new ways f o r English to interact with other disciplines. English has a reciprocal relationship with other disciplines, m ost notably philosoph y; but to call it a science is to take it into a d ea d end. In South Africa, con tested areas o f subject m atter are the nature o f English as spoken by and taught to non-mother tongue speakers, and the m etropoli­ tan/colonial literature distinction. English should jo in other d isciplines in exploring new aesthetic and philosophical paradigm s that reflect the country's multicultural composition. A new approach to curriculum theory f o r universities is needed to explore interdisciplinary cooperation. The com plexity o f South A frican society also requires new teaching m ethods across the disciplines. 1. The failure o f the inw ard-looking debate In 1989 the English Academy o f Southern Africa held a conference on "English at Tertiary Level", to examine the nature of English studies in South African tertiary education institutions. Malvern Van Wyk Smith's paper on English in South African universities, published as "Pressures and Models: Rethinking English Studies" (1990), concentrated, as his title indicates, on the curriculum o f English departments on such matters as literary canon, the integration o f literary and linguistic studies, the benefits to the student o f taking up English studies, and how departments were to cope with an influx of non-English speakers. He also mentioned the pressure for English departments to offer academic support programmes as a service to the rest o f the university. Three years later, after listening to speakers at the English Academy conference on "Access to English", Van Wyk Smith remarked that the debate had not advanced one jo t since 1989. Koers 58(2) 1993:219-230 219 Prospects fo r the interdisciplinary role o f English studies in South African universities It is inevitable that as long as English academics confine discussion on the future o f English studies in South Africa to a navel-contemplating, circular argument about the nature and aims o f English studies, nothing helpfully new is going to emerge. Certainly, as the "Access to English" conference showed, issues related to languages and literature in South Africa are in turmoil at present, and rethink­ ing is necessary. In this paper I argue that we should, in the post-modernist spirit o f the times, take advantage o f the slippery, shifting nature o f English studies to consider, rather, the boundaries o f the discipline, and look at the possibilities that lie in the overlapping and merging o f English studies and other disciplines as a way forward for the disciplines o f language and literature in South African universities. 2. English studies and related disciplines In a rough and ready way, most people know what they mean when they speak of English as a university discipline. However, if we want to consider the inter­ disciplinary role o f English, it is necessary to inquire whether English has any boundaries and this is not a simple task. What ‘English’ are we to talk about? Apart from whatever it is they do in English departments, we cannot overlook other university departments that make English, or aspects o f English, the object o f study: linguistics, applied linguistics, metho­ dology o f teaching English as mother tongue, methodology o f teaching English to speakers o f other languages, professional communication, English for special purposes, adult literacy, drama, media studies, journalism, lexicography, trans­ lation, creative writing (in American university English departments), homiletics in schools o f divinity, aspects o f psychology such as language acquisition and speech disorders, aspects o f philosophy such as logic, and academic support pro­ grammes. To this list, which is bound to be incomplete, must be added English as the medium of communication in English-medium universities, the concern of everyone from the young student struggling with unfamiliar academic discourse to the vice-chancellor in his office privately rehearsing his graduation address. In trying to bring some tidiness to this scene, it cannot be supposed that there was a kind of ur-English department from which all these other disciplines have broken off. English never was a unitary subject, and its history as an academic discipline is one o f merging and fragmenting o f components. The earliest appear­ ance o f English in university curricula was in the form o f the philological study of Old English (Palmer, 1965). After the study of literature written in modem English has been introduced, nobody could agree on how it was to be taught in an academically respectable way, nor could language and literature comfortably cohabit in the same department. M odem English language as an object o f study was kept out o f most South African English departments, although English lec220 Koers 58(2) 1993:219-230


T he failu re o f the inw ard-looking debate
In 1989 the English Academy o f Southern Africa held a conference on "English at Tertiary Level", to examine the nature o f English studies in South African tertiary education institutions.Malvern Van Wyk Smith's paper on English in South African universities, published as "Pressures and Models: Rethinking English Studies" (1990), concentrated, as his title indicates, on the curriculum o f English departments -on such matters as literary canon, the integration o f literary and linguistic studies, the benefits to the student o f taking up English studies, and how departm ents w ere to cope with an influx o f non-English speakers.He also mentioned the pressure for English departments to offer academic support programmes as a service to the rest o f the university.Three years later, after listening to speakers at the English Academy conference on "Access to English", Van Wyk Smith remarked that the debate had not advanced one jo t since 1989.Koers 58 (2) 1993:219-230 It is inevitable that as long as English academics confine discussion on the future o f English studies in South Africa to a navel-contemplating, circular argument about the nature and aims o f English studies, nothing helpfully new is going to emerge.Certainly, as the "Access to English" conference showed, issues related to languages and literature in South Africa are in turmoil at present, and rethink ing is necessary.In this paper I argue that we should, in the post-m odernist spirit o f the times, take advantage o f the slippery, shifting nature o f English studies to consider, rather, the boundaries o f the discipline, and look at the possibilities that lie in the overlapping and merging o f English studies and other disciplines as a w ay forward for the disciplines o f language and literature in South African universities.

E nglish studies and related d isciplines
In a rough and ready way, most people know what they mean when they speak o f English as a university discipline.However, if we want to consider the inter disciplinary role o f English, it is necessary to inquire w hether English has any boundaries -and this is not a simple task.
W hat 'English' are we to talk about?Apart from w hatever it is they do in English departments, we cannot overlook other university departments that make English, or aspects o f English, the object o f study: linguistics, applied linguistics, m etho dology o f teaching English as mother tongue, methodology o f teaching English to speakers o f other languages, professional communication, English for special purposes, adult literacy, drama, media studies, journalism , lexicography, trans lation, creative writing (in American university English departm ents), homiletics in schools o f divinity, aspects o f psychology such as language acquisition and speech disorders, aspects o f philosophy such as logic, and academic support pro grammes.To this list, which is bound to be incomplete, must be added English as the medium o f communication in English-medium universities, the concern o f everyone from the young student struggling with unfamiliar academic discourse to the vice-chancellor in his office privately rehearsing his graduation address.
In trying to bring some tidiness to this scene, it cannot be supposed that there was a kind o f ur-English department from which all these other disciplines have broken off.English never w as a unitary subject, and its history as an academic discipline is one o f merging and fragmenting o f components.The earliest appear ance o f English in university curricula w as in the form o f the philological study o f Old English (Palmer, 1965).After the study o f literature written in modem English has been introduced, nobody could agree on how it w as to be taught in an academically respectable way, nor could language and literature com fortably cohabit in the same department.M odem English language as an object o f study was kept out o f most South African English departm ents, although English lec-turers still had to teach their students how to use English.However, with the rapid increase o f speakers o f other languages taking English at university, w e are witnessing far more attention to the teaching o f language skills in undergraduate English classes, although at some universities this responsibility has been trans ferred to other academic departments with other names.This does not include the need for English to be taught as an enabling, or service subject in universities where English is the medium o f instruction.In the past, this duty has often been delegated to English departments in the guise o f having to teach a compulsory English course called something like 'Practical English', but now adays special departments such as Academic Skills sections deal with this, and this work can be expected to expand yet further in the future.
The definition o f the school subject o f English, on which university teaching presumably has to build, has not been any simpler: the history o f the school subject shows it to have been a constellation o f subjects with shifting objectives and subject matter.(See Jenkins, 1973, on the secondary school, and Harley, 1991, 011 the primary school.)A dialectic exists between English in school and in the university: usually, changes in the university subject such as fashions in prescribed authors have affected the school subject, but universities are in creasingly having to accommodate the background and skills o f students pro duced by poor secondary schooling.

T he links o f E nglish studies w ith oth er d isciplines
The university subjects listed above are the siblings, clones and offspring o f English, w hose affinities are demonstrable.English also has its peers, in the form o f the other university subjects, with some o f which it has a relationship that is much more com plex than its relationship with the other language-based subjects.Some o f these links are historical, but often they are sporadic, or subject to fashion, and they can best be classed as unpredictable, which m akes it difficult to predict how the disciplines will draw on or influence each other in the future.Some exam ples will, perhaps, give an indication o f possible trends.
A discipline which gave new insights into literature early in the tw entieth century w as psychology.In the field o f children's literature, for example, it is difficult to Another twentieth century discipline that is closely linked with literary criticism is anthropology, which, in the 1960s, took up Saussure's linguistic structuralism and endeavoured to make it the basis o f a new theoretical w ay o f analysing human activities and constructs." [Structuralism] is a symptom o f the fact that language, with its problems, mysteries and implications, has becom e both paradigm and obsession for twentieth-century intellectual life", remarks Terry Eagleton (1983: 97).However, because structuralism is ultimately merely descriptive, it does not have the dynamic potential that the link betw een psychology and English studies has, and it has become a dead-end in both anthropology and literary criticism.' (1990: 66), and H aarhoffs history o f the literature o f Namibia, The W ild South-W est (1991), which borders on history through its focus on the theme o f 'frontier' and its use o f non-fictional source materials.A key period in the history o f Natal has been rewritten by two lecturers o f English who have analysed the original documents o f white men who knew Shaka: Stephen Gray on 'John R oss ' (1992) and Dan W ylie on Nathaniel Isaacs (1991).

H istorio grap h y
Studies in the history o f colonialism, especially its human rather than political character, have been, and still are, largely the w ork o f literary scholars such as Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak.South Africa, in its m aterials and its literary scholars, has an important contribution to make.Significantly, the Thomas Pringle Prize for the best literary article published in this country in [1988][1989] was aw arded by the English Academy to Dorothy Driver for her article "'W o m an' as Sign in the South African Colonial Enterprise" (1988), the judges having commended it for its contribution to the topic.B iograph y, which has been the subject o f intense theoretical study by a school o f literary theorists, is an important genre o f m odem South African literature, since a great deal o f autobiographical and semi-autobiographical material has been and is being produced by and about black people.Literary criticism o f these w orks in evitably incorporates historical and political analysis.Looking to the future, one may forecast that revisionist historiography still has much to say about the South African past, and that literary studies will both learn from and contribute to this process.
In the history o f ideas, movements w hose time has arrived affect a w ide variety o f disciplines.Fem inism is an example: as a way o f looking at things, it impinges upon English, and English studies are making a significant contribution to refining theory in the field.In addition, critics such as Driver have already made incisive contributions to the study o f South African literature and society through the ap plication o f feminist theory.This shows how new theories may in the future bring about revelations in a country so long dominated by a restricted range o f ideo logies.
The most productive interdisciplinary exchange in English studies has been, and will continue to be, between literary theory and philosophy.O f course, English is only one o f many languages whose scholars contribute to this exchange.Since to talk o f 'philosophy' is too general, it might be more precise to talk o f topics within philosophy.
Marxist literary theory is a good example o f how a special sub-set o f a broader theory can be devised for literature.Though in its pure form it is no longer much applied, it has had a lasting effect in producing critics who place literature in its social context.In South Africa, most contemporary criticism o f English literature incorporates this approach; however, the potential o f Marxist theory for unco vering the social processes which govern the means o f production of, and access to, literature in South Africa has not yet been fully exploited, and w e can expect more fruitful research in this field.
Hermeneutics in a broad sense, rather than as specifically a G erm an school o f philosophy, underlies the epistemological concerns o f m odem literary theory.
English has shared with philosophy, and the philosophy o f science, the debate o f the last twenty or thirty years on the nature o f reality and meaning.Ethnomethodology, quantum physics, phenomenology and the reception-aesthetics o f W olf gang Iser o f the 1970s (e.g.Iser, 1978) have been succeeded, almost inevitably, by various post-modernisms which propound a world o f "an unlimited number o f models o f order" em bedded in different "com m unities] o f meanings": "from the post-m odern point o f view relativity o f knowledge ... is a lasting feature o f the world" (Bauman, 1987:4).
The movement o f ideas is not only in one direction, from philosophy to literary studies; w itness Derrida's deconstructionist assault on philosophy through literary criticism.W hat Jonathan Culler (1987:28)  In his latest book, Stanley Fish (1989), a leading American literary scholar, has usefully extended his theories on cog n itive relativism in literature to le g a l stu dies.Fish is part o f a movement that questions a neat distinction betw een arts and reality, but unlike Derrida he believes that "there is no subjectivist reading because the observer is never individual in the sense o f unique or private"meaning is the product o f "the local, the historical, the contingent, the variable, the rhetorical" (Fish, 1989:83, 345).In this w ay he sees literary criticism as sha ring common concerns with other disciplines which are questioning the Kantian approach to rationality.Literary historians, for example, no longer go for the broad sweep o f trends, and one sees the same approach in h isto ria n s o f a rt a n d science.

English studies and 'scien ce'
While the rest o f the world is being enriched by discovering the 'literariness' o f non-literary disciplines (Culler, 1987:30), a naive conviction persists in some quarters that not only is empirical science value-free, but that the humanities can also be reduced to a 'science'.An extraordinary example o f this with an impor tant Southern African connection w as the huge, long-aw aited first volume o f Harald Pager's The R ock P aintings o f the U pp er R ran dh erg, published in 1989.In this book the paintings are analysed by Tilman Lenssen-Erz according to a model based on a putative linguistic structure which turns out to be a rather inac curate and highly simplified version o f the grammar o f the basic English sentence.Presumably he derived the notion from an over-enthusiastic appreciation o f the contribution that semiotics, which had its origin in linguistics, has made to other disciplines, including the study o f the creative arts -a symptom o f the intellec tual's obsession with language referred to earlier.He claims that his model gives his analysis empirical accuracy, but, as Lewis-W illiams (1990) has shown, this is one case where the interdisciplinary contribution o f English is a mismatch.
In South Africa, the term scien ce still enjoys exaggerated respect, in spite o f increased aw areness o f the "impossibility o f a value-neutral science" (Jansen, 1991:20).As recently as 1991, the division o f the Human Sciences Research Council responsible for promoting research in the humanities changed its name to the Centre for Science Development.This is simply another manifestation o f the "so-called legitimation crisis in the human sciences" which M cGann (1989:2) describes as "irrelevant", as it promotes a view o f science that Eagleton calls "a straw ta rg e t,... this caricature o f scientific self-reflection" (1983:144).
It is difficult to see how English can benefit from this artificial attem pt to call it a 'science'.The efforts o f the HSRC to define the humanities in positivist terms have serious implications.One o f these is to deny the very approach which, as Dickstein (1992:17) has pointed out, is the unique contribution that literary critics are at present making to scholarship: "raising the right questions, self-consciously refining their techniques, undermining the dubious scientism and pseudo objectivity that still holds sway in other fields."It will be the responsibility of English scholars to continue this questioning role in South African scholarship.
The other implication o f the HSRC's defining activities may be deduced from considering how the nature o f knowledge is related to the relationship between knowledge and power: how "those in pow er have the ability to define appro priate knowledge through the various channels available to them (the control of research institutions and funding agencies, for example)" (Jansen, 1991:20).It is not going to put the activities o f the HSRC beyond political dispute simply to call them 'scientific'.

D efinin g ap propriate know ledge
In the field o f English, argument over defining appropriate know ledge focuses on two areas.The first is the labelling o f certain language courses as 'English Second Language' or 'Practical English' Although in the rest o f the world the teaching o f English to speakers o f other languages is a huge, recognized industry, the term s second and practical are offensive in South Africa because o f the his torical connotations o f second-class citizenship and Bantu Education, seen to be restricted to training for manual labour.Those responsible for the teaching o f English in South Africa face the acute challenge o f offering this highly desirable commodity in such a w ay as to avoid connotations o f neo-colonialism.
The second debate on defining appropriate know ledge deals with the literary canon, or at any rate, the selection o f prescribed texts.This is equally politically sensitive, fixing as it does upon the metropolitan/colonial distinction, with its con notations o f colonial subjugation.Although South African literature has been pre scribed in local syllabuses for many years -a South African book w as prescribed by the Transvaal Education Department as far back as 1946 -English departm ents are still regularly accused o f maintaining a Eurocentric hegemony over their syllabuses.M okubung Nkomo (1991:311) m akes the valid point that the marginalizing o f black South Africans -and w omen too, incidentally -is pa ralleled "in the establishment, at a few o f the universities, o f African Studies and W omen [sic] Studies Departments (usually groups that are not part o f the norm Koers 58 (2) 1993:219-230 are the objects o f anthropological, sociological studies or in such courses as Bantu Law and Administration)".The fresh approach that black scholars such as Nkomo are calling for is that we move away from the numbers game o f cal culating what percentage o f academic syllabuses or curricula is devoted to 'African' material, to an approach that employs the aesthetics and m ethods o f interpretation o f various cultures.Lewis Nkosi (1992:33) explains, I do feel a lot of the critical equipment that is available in Europe or in America can still be adapted for local use.I don't believe that there is anything wrong with, for example, using deconstruction in order to read our own texts ....We should be so eclectic that we should borrow methods of reading, methods of interpretation from whatever culture, if it is going to make us gain access to a text and to re-read it in a way that it has never been read before.
A similar argument is made by Cecil Bodibe (1992) for a new approach to psy chological counselling in South Africa.Such calls have both justice and need on their side, though the argument will have to be refined much further.W hat is needed is an investigation in which the disciplines involved -English and Afrikaans, history, philosophy, psychology and the creative and performing artsw ould share their resources to promote a movement o f renewal in our uni versities.
Such an endeavour to redefine the centre should not be confused with shallow attem pts to make syllabuses 'p .c.' -'politically correct'.Robert Hughes argued in a recent essay in Time (1992:54) that trivial, knee-jerk fads and fashions end up missing the real point: In the late 80s, while American academics were emptily theorizing that language and the thinking subject were dead, the longing for freedom and humanistic culture was demolishing European tyranny ... .The world changes more deeply, widely, thrillingly than at any moment since 1917, perhaps since 1848, and the American academic left keeps fretting about how phallocentricity is inscribed in Dickens' portrayal of Little Nell.
Obviously, a shift to w hat Nkomo (1991:314) calls "an inclusive scholarship as opposed to the exclusionary, Eurocentric and patriarchal mode o f the traditional dominant South African epistemology" will involve interdisciplinary scholarship.An example o f this is that several research projects into the history o f literature in South Africa a c ro ss a ll lan g u a ges have been launched in recent years.(Recent studies that include literature o f more than one language include C oetzee [1988] and Jenkins, [1993]).However, Nkomo rightly points out that little com parative linguistics is studied at South African universities, and this will have to be rectified.Already there have been calls for language associations to become more multilingual in their perspective.

E nglish and C ultural Studies
In Britain, the locating o f English in interdisciplinary studies is taking a different direction, thanks to the rise o f Cultural Studies as a recognized discipline.W hereas the South African debate on the literary canon focuses on eliminating the old metropolitan/colonial distinction, the British debate arises from a socialist concern to eliminate the distinction between high and low culture.The greatest impact that the British Cultural Studies movement has had on South Africa has been in the inclusion o f m edia studies in our school English syllabuses.British academics in Cultural Studies now feel in such a strong position that they are making serious calls for the subject o f English to be subsum ed in their wider subject, but this is not a development that w e are likely to see in South Africa, at any rate for a long time.However, a broadening o f the range o f material studied by critics in South Africa would provide rapid dividends in our understanding o f our society, as can be seen from Paul Fussell's The Great War and M odem Memory (1975) and the studies o f imperialism by John M. M acK enzie and his colleagues at M anchester University, who include materials such as magazines and children's literature.

Innovation in curriculum theory
If universities are to exploit the interdisciplinary potential o f their components, sophisticated curriculum theory must be brought to bear, which will take us beyond the mould o f 'forms o f know ledge' propounded by earlier curriculum theorists such as Hirst and Peters (1970).The challenge to find and service a new intellectual culture for South Africa is a com plex one: I.M. N tshoe (1991: 598), writing about the school curriculum, speaks o f a need for a "significant shift from a traditionally subject-based curriculum to a curriculum that is sensitive to the political, social, and economic changes that are occurring".In order for this change not to be an a d hoc process, it should be directed by a sophisticated theo retical approach to curriculum in the university, such as the current work o f Alan  (W ilson, 1992:17).By "combining different academic cultures" and "evolving new coalitions", he argues, universities will be in a position to tackle w hat he calls the most fruitful and important research challenge o f the present, namely how to handle com plexity.
He is talking mainly o f mathematics and the sciences, but throw s out the chal lenge to the arts to do the same (W ilson, 1992).South Africa certainly has com plexity to offer, not least in social organization involving languages and cultures.English will have to play its part in the new com binations and coalitions needed to meet these challenges.

Teaching methodology
T h e w a y in w h ic h E n g lish s tu d ie s a re tau g h t sh o u ld b e p a rt o f its c o n trib u tio n .In a paper delivered at the congress o f the S. A. Association for Research and D eve lopment in Higher Education in 1992, Mentis and Frielich, after outlining the challenge o f 'cultural diversity', 'novelty and com plexity', concluded: Mediation of challenge in the university setting includes: creating oppor tunities to face tasks that are unfamiliar or complicated, encouraging and re warding risk-taking, intellectual curiosity, creativity and originality; break ing complex activities into smaller and more manageable sections; and providing a non-judgemental and supportive climate in order to facilitate experimentation.
For an approach like this to be successful, it will have to be adopted across all disciplines.
imagine w riting criticism o f children's books before the w ork o f Freud and Jung becam e known.Although as undergraduates at the University o f Natal in the 1950s w e w ere forbidden by our English professor, a product o f the Leavis school, to use psychological terms, one can now go back to Jung and see how many terms he coined, such as psychic energy and collective unconscious, that are now common currency in any educated discourse.Psychology has continued to feed its insights into literary criticism: the work o f Lacan actually merges the two disciplines.Developments such as post-Lacanian psychoanalysis indicate that the interplay o f English studies and psychology will probably be one o f the most fruitful forms o f interdisciplinary cross-fertilization in the next few years.
has become closely linked with literary criticism in recent years.Revisionist historiography o f the colonial period in Southern Africa has led to the rewriting o f the history o f South African literature based on the new paradigms provided, such as Van Wyk Smith's G rounds o f C o n test, with its theme o f 'ap propriation and resistance says about the contribution o f literary studies in the USA is probably true in general: M any o f the m ost interesting and innovative d evelopm ents in m odem thought have been taken up here not by p h ilosophers but by literary critics and have entered A m erican intellectual life through the field o f literary studies.Culler's observation has recently been reiterated by Morris Dickstein (1992:17): Koers 58(2) 1993:219-230 Not since Mencken and Van Wyck Brooks have American critics been such superstars, in demand on talk shows and the lecture circuit.Philosophers like Richard Rorty and Stanley Cavell, historians like Hayden White, and anthropologists like Clifford Geertz pay tribute to critics for doing what philosophers and social thinkers should be doing.
Koers 58(2) 1993:219-230 Prospects fo r the interdisciplinary rote o f English studies in South African universities Wilson, Vice Chancellor o f Leeds University.He has devised a model for clas sifying academic disciplines which brings to light "quite rapid changes at the boundaries" o f the disciplines and shows that "much o f what is interesting in volves the combination o f (at first sight) disparate disciplines" The outcome has been the formalization o f what Stuart Hall has called "an area w here different disciplines interact in the study o f cultural aspects o f society" (1980:2).Cultural Studies takes literally the theoretical view that 'literature' does not exist (Eagleton, 1983), and it has replaced literature with the mass media o f popular culture.From modest beginnings when Richard Hoggart founded the Centre for Contem porary Cultural Studies at the University o f Birmingham in 1964, it has now become a fully-fledged department at that university, headed by Stuart Hall, in which students may major for a degree.Much o f the Centre's research has a bearing on English studies, for example in studies to distinguish fiction from non fiction.