The Subject as Object: 40 Years of Scholarship

This contribution to the special anniversary edition serves as a framing document, taking a macro view and reflecting on all contributions to Politikon over the past 40 years. Rather than presenting an objective and comprehensive literature review of the entire and disparate corpus of scholarship, this article provides subjective reflections on how the journal and Political Science scholarship have evolved in their operationalisation and presentation of research in South Africa. This is done by contextualising the research as products of their specific time(s), by considering instances of meta-reflection by South African political scientists, and by highlighting remarkable historical and intellectual pointers in the evolution of the kind of scholarship that has been published in this journal. An appeal is made for a closer and more systematic study of South African Political Science (therefore, the subject qua object), and for future scholarship to be undertaken with greater constitutive (self-)awareness.