ON THE INTERACTION OF AFFECT AND DISCOURSE IN SHIFTING SIGNIFICATIONS OF UBUNTU

What is ubuntu and why talk about it now? Reasons are manifold. The Southern African concept of ubuntu is a powerful philosophy of com-munity and belonging that has been crucial to the history of South Africa. With its focus on social harmony and unity, ubuntu can provide a useful tool for thinking through problems of social in/exclusion, antagonism and conflict, not just in South Africa, but in other heterogeneous societies as well. Ubuntu provides a number of productive overlaps and differences with Western ethically-oriented concepts like responsibility and hospitali-ty and can thus enrich both traditions, opening an avenue to reduce the gap between Western and African philosophy. Like this crude division be-tween the West and Africa, however, ubuntu itself is not an unproblemat-ic term, especially with regard to community formations. As will also be-come clear from what is to follow, ubuntu can easily be used as a boundary marker for belonging. Despite its deeply humanistic content, it can come to function socially as a yardstick for determining who belong