Ubuntu Strategies

This book examines the ways in which ubuntu is continuously shaped and reshaped in different media in contemporary South African culture, such as literature, photography, cartoon art, journalistic fiction, and commercial television. It also studies ubuntu's recent global dissemination and commodification, and critically assesses various approaches to ubuntu from different disciplines. From these various uses, ubuntu emerges as a powerful tool for thinking through problems of social inclusion and exclusion, and provides a nuanced perspective on what it means to strive for social harmony and communal unity when relating to others. Ubuntu Strategies attends to the cultural production of ubuntu and argues that it is not just about being part of a common humanity, but also involves strategic decisions that balance self and other, particular and universal, local and global, difference and sameness, as well as violence and safety. The literary and cultural theoretical approach offered in Ubuntu Strategies thus provides a new perspective that addresses the role of representation in ubuntu, both supplementing and challenging legal and political inquiries of the concept.

Auteur
Hanneke Stuit is Assistant Professor of Literary and Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Researcher at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA).

Résumé
Hanneke Stuit delves into Ubuntu's relevance both in South Africa and in Western contexts, analyzing the political and ethical ramifications of the term's uses in different media including literature, cartoons, journalistic fiction, commercials, commodities, photography, and political manifestos in contemporary South African culture.

Contenu
Introduction Ubuntu Unchained: A Travelling Concept.- 1 Ubuntu and Common Humanity in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.- 2 Ubuntu in Transit: From Divisive Pasts to Open Futures.- 3 Facing Others: Towards an Ethics of Ubuntu.- 4 The Ubuntu Strategy:The Commodification and Affective Politics of Ubuntu.- Afterword: Ubuntu Security.