Page 21 - University of Pretoria RESEARCH REVIEW 2018

African idea of personhood without rendering it a panacea for all our
ills? And, in what ways is the idea of Ubuntu mediated by our colonial legacy and the post-colonial moment?
The result is a total of four edited books, an Ubuntu-themed play, two special journal issues, numerous articles and a series of workshops, seminars, colloquia and public lectures.
The publications show different ways of approaching the concept, while also dealing with the concept critically. In the play, Mama Mudu’s Children by Masitha Hoeana, the project grappled with complex issues, asking how the concept of Ubuntu could be turned into a mirror for the challenges
facing contemporary society and the everyday experiences in Africa.
The first book, Ubuntu and Personhood (Africa World Press, 2018), was
edited by project leader, Professor James Ogude. Different chapters interrogate the idea that the full development of personhood comes with shared identities, and that our humanity depends on a network of human interaction. The book includes contributions from DA Masolo, a leading scholar of African Philosophy, on questions of agency and self- constituency; Mpho Tshivashe on personhood without Ubuntu; and Aloo Majola, on Julius Nyerere and the concept of Ubuntu.
DA Masolo, University of Louisville (US) at the book launch.
The second book, Unfolding Narratives of Ubuntu in Southern Africa (Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2018), edited by Julian Müller, John Eliastam and Sheila Trahar, offers novel perspectives on how Ubuntu can be understood through narrative and story-telling with all researchers using some form of narrative inquiry and fictionalised representation as methodological tools.
Both books were launched at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship on 4 September 2018.
At the time of going to press in 2019, two further titles, Ubuntu and the Everyday edited by James Ogude and Unifier Dyer, and Ubuntu and the Reconstitution of Community edited by James Ogude, have been released.
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