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I wish to explore a method of cultural analysis that might be appropriate to the mid-1990s. In looking at South Africa in the global neighbourhood what, as we rejoin the world, can we offer that is distinctly our own? What, at the same time, can we take from the world that is particularly valuable? My argument is that, as a starting point, a comparative method should modify the modes of analysis that were generally employed in the 1970s and 1980s according to which Africa and the West were regarded, conveniently, as self-contained entities in colonial/anti-colonial antagonisms. But is South Africa, Africa? Is the United States or Western Europe, the West? These are the initial questions that a comparative, as opposed to a binary, analysis should pose. To complicate the concept the West, Europe tends to seek its identity in the past, the United States in the present, while Japan from the East is a major Western power …