Ubuntu Strategies

Beschreibung

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 in- and exclusion, and provides a nuanced perspective on what it means to strive for social harmony and communal unity. 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. 
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.  

Autor*in

Hanneke Stuit

Themen in »Ubuntu Strategies«

Ubuntu South Africa Literary Studies Cultural Studies Community Hospitality Africa African culture community culture ethics ethnicity political science politics social science

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“This is a brilliant testimony to the fact that Ubuntu discourse is finally emerging from the long, dark and, often, sentimental discourse of African nationalism. Drawing on a wide range of cultural strategies in contemporary South Africa including novels, photography, poetry, and advertising, this original, unconventional and erudite, not to mention beautifully written, analysis will no doubt be welcomed by scholars who work in African and continental philosophy, LGBTI studies, literature and culture studies.” (Dr. Leonhard Praeg, author of “A Report on Ubuntu”)

“Hanneke Stuit conducts an innovative and conceptually bracing analysis of Ubuntu by way of detailed attention to diverse materializations of the South African politico-cultural scene. In her close readings of literary texts, cartoons, commercials, photographs, fashion accessories—and testimonies from the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission—Stuit offers an inventive and thought-provoking contribution to theories and philosophies emerging from a South Africa in political transition.” (Prof. dr. Carrol Clarkson, author of “Countervoices and Drawing the Line”)

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