UFR IUGA Institut d'urbanisme et de géographie alpine

Starting from my own research experience in and on post-apartheid South African cities, I will use the South African case as an optical instrument to critically interrogate issues of theory,
epistemology and positionnality. Building on Southern Urbanism and Southern Theory, we will investigate the all-too-frequent binaries our scholarship uses uncritically. Exceptional cities vs. ordinary cities, and private/public space will be examined more in-depth.
The situatedness of knowledge requires that conceptual work - e.g. on public space as a notion - navigates dis-locations (or de/reterritorialization) carefully. It also requires reflexivity on one’s own positionnality - our positionnality as individual researchers, e.g. my own, as a white French woman doing fieldwork in South African cities, or the positionnality of our disciplines, as framed by national histories and positions.

Myriam Houssay-Holzschuch is Professor at the Institute of Urban Planning and Alpine Geography in Grenoble, and Director of the "Social Justice" team of the Pacte research
centre. Her research focuses on post-apartheid South Africa, and South African cities (especially Cape Town), from a social and political geography perspective, as well as on
critical epistemologies and pedagogies.