Intellectual History in Contemporary South Africa

M. Eze

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780230622999
• eBook ISBN:
  9780230109698
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Langues

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 South Africa: The Past is Another Country
• 3 South African (Black) Nationalist Ideologies and Resistance Movements
• 4 The “Prophets” and the “Apocalypse”
• 5 When the Chickens Come Home to Roost
• 6 Ubuntu: Many Voices of a History
• 7 Ubuntu: A Critique of Colonial/Apartheid Reason?
• 8 Ubuntu and the Making of South African Imaginary
• 9 Ubuntu: Toward a New Public Discourse
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index