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Johannesburg was still a brash mining town, better known for the
production of wealth than knowledge, and the University of the
Witwatersrand a mere ten years old when, in 1932, these ten
lectures were delivered under the auspices of the University
Philosophical Society. They portrayed the ideas of the university's
leading academics of the day, and the programme of lectures reveals
a studied effort to introduce an element of bipartisan political
representation between English and Afrikaner in South Africa by
including Wits' first principal, Jan Hofmeyr, and politician, D.F.
Malan, as discussion chairs. Yet, no black intellectuals were
represented and, indeed, the politics of racial segregation bursts
through the text only in a few of the contributions. For the most
part, race is alluded to only in passing. As Saul Dubow explains in
his new introduction to this re-issue of the lectures, Our Changing
World-View was an occasion for Wits' leading faculty members to
position the young university as a mature institution with a
leadership role in public affairs. Above all, it was a means to
project the university as a research as well as a teaching
institution, led by a vigorous and ambitious cohort of
liberal-minded intellectuals. That all were male and white will be
immediately apparent to readers of this reissued volume. Ranging
from economics, psychology, a spurious rebuttal of evolution to a
substantial revisionist history and the perils of the 'machine
age', this book is a sombre reflection of intellectual history and
the academy's role in promulgating political and social divisions
in South Africa.
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