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.