Circuits of Apartheid

This keynote address is about the supply, maintenance and allocation of fungible, vulnerable human bodies—what American President Donald Trump would categorize as the shitholes of the world. Underlying our modern times is a large, unsolved problem about what is really going on in the world. I use the novel theoretical lens of Apartheid Studies to appreciate how we have neglected to read, recognize and call out the persistent circuits of apartheid that are at the heart of global capitalist modernity. Our contemporary age, built on interoperable digital networks, tends to reinforce global forms of apartheid. Apartheid Studies is a new field of studies that makes it possible to expose these circuits. Whereas human beings are human because we all possess a kind of strongly encrypted password which we reserve to give or not to give—so that we feel relatively protected and free to be what we want—this password protection has been eroded by institutions and powerful elites. Modernity itself, by its very nature, emerges when we start to share our passwords with strangers. Passing on the control of the passwords of our being to strangers causes global apartheid. Global capitalist modernity, expressed in invasive technology, generally undermines human beings’ sense of self, immunity, inviolability, indivisibility, and replaces it with social media and an internet of things which are predicated on sharing our privacy with strangers. I propose new emphases on restorative forensics and literacies that are appropriate to the task of generating a scholarship of the future that is ethical and opposed to systemic injustice, that exposes global exploitation, racism, deception, and corruption, and that promotes just worlds.