Intellectual History in Contemporary South Africa

In examining the intellectual history in contemporary South Africa, Eze engages with the emergence of ubuntu as one discourse that has become a mirror and aftermath of South Africa s overall historical narrative. This book interrogates a triple socio-political representation of ubuntu as a displacement narrative for South Africa s colonial consciousness; as offering a new national imaginary through its inclusive consciousness, in which different, competing, and often antagonistic memories and histories are accommodated; and as offering a historicity in which the past is transformed as a symbol of hope for the present and the future. This book offers a model for African intellectual history indignant to polemics but constitutive of creative historicism and healthy humanism. Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Introduction....Pages 1-12 South Africa: The Past is Another Country....Pages 13-34 South African (Black) Nationalist Ideologies and Resistance Movements....Pages 35-52 The “Prophets” and the “Apocalypse”....Pages 53-71 When the Chickens Come Home to Roost....Pages 73-88 Ubuntu: Many Voices of a History....Pages 89-118 Ubuntu: A Critique of Colonial/Apartheid Reason?....Pages 119-143 Ubuntu and the Making of South African Imaginary....Pages 145-179 Ubuntu: Toward a New Public Discourse....Pages 181-192 Back Matter....Pages 193-220