| Summary: | Includes abstract. === Includes bibliographical references. === This thesis investigates the historical and discursive contours of the "relevance" debate in South African psychology. It begins by contextualizing the debate, detailing how appeals for "relevance" in the broader discipline proliferated during the sixties and seventies in American, European and "Third World" psychology. The thesis observes further how widespread conditions of social turmoil precipitated the development of this crisis over "relevance", which was encouraged also by traits peculiar to psychology. These include the discipline's indecisiveness regarding its cognitive interest, its reliance on a basic but rarefied science for its scientific eminence, and its longstanding difficulty accommodating sociality. Proponents of "relevance", that is, insist that psychology attend to "real world" concerns. However, since the thesis advances the position that materiality can only be accessed via language, it is asserted that the credentialing of "relevance" occurs rhetorically.
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