And nowhere was that point more forcefully brought home than in the aftermath of the recent Great "Debate" on Affirmative Action / Equity here at UCT. The newspapers rankled with grumpy UCT-aligned voices seeking to have their pubic say on the matter, using arguments as diverse as attacks on the validity of non-empirical disciplines and harkening back to the rhetoric of group rights, but nowhere were there voices identifiable as Left not merely by the posturings of the author, but by the content of their discourse.
There were the inevitable assassinations of straw men, some fumbling caressing of neoliberalism, and large outpourings of sentiment, but I searched in vain for a credible, coherent or compelling case from the Intellectual Left. The roar of silence deafened me.
Emotional responses to such a topic are certainly valid and demand acknowledgement, but bleeding is not debate and an argument based on sentiment cannot compete in an arena of reason. It left me disquieted, disappointed, demotivated...
And confused.
I have always supported Affirmative Action, and have always called for class rather than just the rough proxy of "race" (for both moral and instrumental reasons) as indicator of disadvantage. Growing up in Cape Town with its complex interplay of "race", class, gender, ethnicity, religion and language, I've always resisted the simplistic reduction of disadvantage to a single factor. My position hasn't changed, but through the "debate" I find that my positioning has.
I'm no longer clear which "side" I'm on or which "side" I'm seen to be on. I'm embarrassed by the intellectual poverty of arguments offered by those I'd formerly have considered to be "progressive", and I'm questioning the placement on the political landscape of my imagination of terms like "conservative" and "progressive". When "progress" is headlong towards the uncritical embracing of global market capitalism, is "progressive" not an epithet belonging to the Right, and - to the extent that the values they seek to conserve against this headlong rush are fairness, dignity, respect, are the "conservatives" not to their Left?
And the Liberals, what of them?
Are there any intellectuals left on the Left? It seems there are few enough left at all.