DECOLONIZING THE CLASSICS CURRICULUM IN SOUTH AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES WITH EURIPIDES’ HIPPOLYTUS

Abstract

In this article, the author argues that reading Euripides’ Hippolytus with a class of non-Classics students, during nation-wide student protests at one of South Africa’s universities in 2016, contributed more to the decolonization of the Humanities curriculum than the course’s focus on how the discipline of Classics was (and is) used to entrench eurocentric cultural hegemony. In tackling the ‘rape culture’, which infests many of our campuses, and its roots in familial psycho-sexual dynamics, which could result in the kinds of sexual repression, sexual anxiety and rampant misogyny, which seem to characterize campus ‘rape culture’, the author argues that a return to psychoanalytic interpretations of Euripides’ fine play could help classicists refine what ‘decolonization’ of the Classics curriculum means in practice.