Ubuntu Strategies

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   PDF

2. Introduction: Ubuntu1 Unchained—A Travelling Concept

   • Hanneke Stuit

   Pages 1-38

3. Ubuntu and Common Humanity in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission

   • Hanneke Stuit

   Pages 39-82

4. Ubuntu in Transit: From Divisive Pasts to Open Futures

   • Hanneke Stuit

   Pages 83-123

5. Facing Others: Towards an Ethics of Ubuntu

   • Hanneke Stuit

   Pages 125-166

6. “The Ubuntu Strategy”: Commodification and the Affective Politics of Ubuntu

   • Hanneke Stuit

   Pages 167-211

7. Afterword: Ubuntu Security

   • Hanneke Stuit

   Pages 213-219

8. Back Matter

   Pages 221-240

   PDF

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.

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

“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”)

• University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

  Hanneke Stuit

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). 

Policies and ethics