| | A revitalised sensitivity to the experiences in struggle of workers and nationalists in southern Africa can enhance socialist scholars' understanding of developments in that part of the world. This is especially true if scholars are abroad, detached from the extreme dangers and subtleties of the conflicts, and if the experiences are those of the new generations of young leaders whose political development itself provides a clue to the future. Radical scholars have, in recent years, begun to transcend the overly rigid categories and more sterile aspects of the structuralism of the 1970s, retaining some of the insights of the previous approach, but moving towards a more dialectical conception of the unfolding struggles. This is probably mostly due to the analyses offered by the new layer of intellectuals involved in leadership and service roles in the South African independent trade unions and community organisations, although another factor is probably that the intellectual appeal of Althussarianism has also lost much of its smug shine in Western academic Marxist circles. |
