The Pandemic as a Portal for Change: Pushing against the Limits of “Normal Schooling” in South Africa

Abstract

Starting from the position that inequalities in schooling in South Africa are well known, this article suggests pausing the impulse to “return to normal” in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and instead questioning the operations, assumptions and effects of what is considered “normal”. It uses Michel Foucault’s concepts of governmentality and dispositif to argue that the pandemic not only exposes the structural inequalities in schooling; it also exposes the confusing enmeshment of governmental processes and logics that produce and normalise these. Given the complex social and economic inequalities in South Africa, the article questions the limits of governmental capacity to meet its own stated aims of equal provisioning of schooling for all, using the provision of water to schools as an illustrative case. The article concludes by arguing for the importance of pressing against the assumptions of “normal schooling” with its embedded inequalities, and it sets out the ethical challenge for working for change.