Ubuntu strategies in contemporary South African culture

This project analyses how the concept of ubuntu - which is generally said to entail notions of generosity, hospitality, friendliness, compassion and a willingness to share - has come to the fore in different contexts, both in a practical and in a theoretical sense. This study deals with some of these prior uses, but also investigates new ones. The aim is to find out what these different uses tell us about the concept and its potential for formulating an inclusivity that is neither partial nor asphyxiating. I am particularly interested in how ubuntu is continuously (re)shaped in contemporary South African cultures and argue that an analysis of different types of cultural objects sheds new and critical light on what has become known as a much appropriated and misused African worldview that is often conflated with monolithic and all-encompassing claims to a common humanity in the discourses related to it. By analyzing these objects and their theoretical repercussions, I hope to provide a space in which to think about and give shape to the inevitable embedding of people in their surroundings - whether social, cultural, environmental, historical, political, or all of the above - and to offer a contribution to cultural-theoretical debates about issues of relationality, intersubjectivity and community.