Guest editorial: space, language, identity and the student movement

Abstract

In Anderson's view, style has the potential of producing further assumptions about space and time. The notion of style in our case, it may be argued, refers to the JSAA which is the medium through which the student affairs discourse is presented; grounded in and in reference to the intellectual and technical resources that represent an "imagined community" of student affairs in higher education across Africa. It is instructive that the representation under reference occurs primarily through the medium of a code: language. Notwithstanding the shared language and platform, in the imagined community created by JSAA, the multitude of actors participating in the professional and scholarly student affairs discourse are nonetheless bounded by space and time. We are connected by the same encircled, fixed landscape within which we simultaneously exist. In following this logic through, the simultaneities of space and time exemplified by JSAA are at the heart of the ways in which actors in the student affairs community across the continent consider themselves part of a community and build an identity informed in an imagined community. By design, the special issue will address itself to the post-colonial time and the space of higher education in geographical regions with a colonial legacy. The contributions in the guest-edited issue singularly and collectively grapple with the nuances attendant to the intersections between space, language and identity politics in higher education in geographical regions with a colonial history.