Khwezi Mkhize: Is it new? Genealogy, self and the question of novelty

HUMA Doctoral Seminar Series

Speaker: Khwezi Mkhize (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa)

“What is new about your work?” There are few questions that define the value of one’s work than this. The stakes of a PhD dissertation arguably revolve around this question since it ultimately frames the work’s relation to its varied readerships. It is a question that publishers will ask. It is also a question that arises when one enters the job market. However, for those writing the PhD dissertation, there are a number of practicalities that co-exist with this question: “Is my thesis coherent?” “Will I finish on time?” et cetera. However, aside from these, there are also questions about the relationship between novelty and genealogy. How does our work, even if laying claim to interdisciplinary, map out our intellectual debts and genealogies? Is it really new? Using a series of moments in my PhD studies, this presentation will think through the idea of novelty as a problem and will also discuss the value of genealogy, especially for those of us thinking and working from Africa. 

About the speaker: Dr Khwezi Mkhize is Senior Lecturer in the Department of African Literature, at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He is co-editor of the journal African Studies. He is currently working on his first book A Home-Made Empire: South Africa’s Imperium.