The Burden of Identity: Doing Research, Moral Panics and Rules of Intellectual Engagement

The Burden of Identity: Doing Research, Moral Panics and Rules of Intellectual Engagement. Keyan G. Tomaselli offers a critical reflection on scholarly communities that operate based on identity politics. His analysis of the discourse prompted by a specific case study on the interest of black people in studying biological sciences is located in the vexed context which is contemporary South Africa. Here, Tomaselli suggests, indeterminacies of translation in the pursuit of knowledge and the delimitated appropriation of discourse have taken divergent and ominous turns. Drawing from his reading of Charles Sanders Peirce, Tomaselli makes the argument via WVO Quine that this indeterminacy of translation results from the inscribing effect of an individual researcher’s identity into the different scientific practices to be discussed, ultimately leading to a shift in the relationship between researchers and their respective objects of study. As a result, the search for legitimation replaces the search for truth, putting the value of science itself under threat. Identity Semiotics Africa