This paper presents some preliminary thoughts on how the discursive strategy ‘vesseling’ could be interpreted in an alternative, more open-ended way. ‘Vesseling’ is a discursive strategy which was found in the data after a rigorous discourse analysis of white former students’ interviews I gathered for my PhD. The thesis is concerned with what discursive strategies do former students use to describe their raced experiences in a post-apartheid South African university (University Currently Known As Rhodes), and what work this does in either reinforcing or challenging a culture of whiteness.
While a literature review of white talk was done before data analysis, distancing strategies--in particular ‘vesseling’ arose from the data itself. This process was in alignment with the research’s method of analysis that approached the analysis from both below (the data itself) and above (from the literature). Thus the findings were not the product of simply looking for ‘vesseling’ or any other distancing strategies, which Goga (2008) suggests much South African whiteness studies research does. Notwithstanding it would be easy and indeed tempting to accept vesseling as the final step/finding in the analysis process as it 'tallies with the traits of ‘whiteness’ that have been ‘confirmed’ by constructivist/ postmodern/ poststructuralist identity studies' (Goga, 2008:18). However, given that few South African whiteness studies research problematizes whiteness, and given that several African authors warn that South African research needs to be more mindful of how it aligns itself with Western knowledge models, and marginalizes African scholarship I was concerned with how else ‘vesseling’ could be interpreted. Informed by Nyamnjoh's (2013) concept of conviviality the paper presents some preliminary thoughts on what else could be found and interpreted in ‘vesseling’ when a more open ended approach to studying whiteness and white power is used, rather than resorting to contrived dichotomies (see Nyamnjoh, 2013). Such an approach I argue would be a more true reflection of the slippages and negotiations of social identity which we find in our highly racialised post-apartheid South African society. A more ended approach could open up more possibilities for transcending essentialized, stable, fixed approaches to race in our society. Furthermore the paper tests Nyamnjoh's (2013) suggestion of reconciling the dominant and the dormant in research when applied practically in the process of data analysis (i.e methodology). That is moving beyond the dominant themes and strategies in data by asking complicating questions that call on us to consider the marginal as well.