The lost keys and the lamplight

Abstract

Contemporary South Africa is a complex and fascinating country. It is characterised, among other things, by a sophisticated legislative and media framework, by one of the highest Internet penetrations on the African continent and by the persistent legacy of past institutionalised discrimination.  Thirty years after the end of apartheid, profound inequalities are still reflected in both the offline and online domains. Calls for decolonisation inside and outside academia question the suitability and applicability of Western theoretical and methodological approaches to understand, let alone address, context-specific forms of exclusion, marginalisation, and oppression.  

In this guest lecture, I reflect on my experience in researching online (self)representations of and by South Africans with disabilities, with a particular focus on methodological challenges. I seek to complement existing scholarly models, which foreground the construction of disability through (digital) media texts, by drawing on de Sousa Santos' notion of Sociology of Absence. As either research participants or subjects of enquiry, people with disabilities are difficult to search for, find and recognise online. Unlike other members of marginalised groups, they do not necessarily network with individuals with similar characteristics and are often not part of a specific online community. Moreover, the most interesting subjects in terms of digital and other social inequalities are precisely those who are absent from the online space.   

Author’s Bio

Lorenzo Dalvit is a Professor of Digital Media and Cultural Studies at Rhodes University in Makhanda, South Africa. His areas of academic interest include digital inequalities, online discourses and mobile communication from critical and decolonial perspectives. He (co) authored over 150 publications. He is a South African National Research Foundation (NRF) rated researcher and has been involved in numerous international collaborations.