D02P02

Post date: Sep 27, 2016 5:32:5 AM

The Afro-eastern multidimensional person as a whole (ubuntu-based self) - implications for teaching and learning

Presenter

Dr Shahieda Jansen is the Deputy Director: Academic Support & ICT in the Western Cape Directorate of the University of South Africa. 

It was at her previous employ as the Manager of Student Counselling Services at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), where she developed a renewed clinical interest in culturally-embedded personal transformation, Africanised group psychotherapy and gender-conscious psychotherapy for men. 

Aside from coordinating the psychological and broader developmental needs of the students, she provides mental health care services that are responsive and adaptable to the cultural worldview and contexts of the diverse student population in Africa, a model which she framed through collectivist personhood, and the Ubuntunisation of the self. Her special forte is the indigenisation of psychological principles for the enhancement of peak performances both personally and professionally.

Shahieda is a founder member of the Forum for Africa (FAP) reading group in Cape Town. 

Abstract

In spite of the escalating demands for de-colonization of the Higher Education curriculum by the student movement and other sectors of the society, South African knowledge production remains rooted in Eurocentrism and coloniality (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013). Maldonado-Torres (2007) defines coloniality as the persistent arrangements of power that reflects the discourses and relationships of the previous colonial master. These patterns of relations are embodied in the psyche, culture, market forces and knowledge production of those who were formally administered by imperialists, long after the formal ending of imperial rule.

In the domain of the psyche, the individual, separate, boundaried, decontextualized and masterful self is a product of modern, Western industrialized society (Cushman, 1990). This self is ‘empty’, meaning that it stands apart from community and tradition and incessantly needs filling up with ‘goods’ to lessen its aching void (Cushman, 1990). The configuration of the self (over) represented in Modern psychology is precisely this empty self, a type of indigenous European construction of the self (Cushman, 1990). Within the hierarchy of humanity exported by the modern West, non-Western people are “not quite human” (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013). They are perceived to be disabled, deficient, invisible, lacking agency and in need of governance and control by their former imperial masters (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013).

In this paper, I attempt to respond to the call to widen the decolonization struggle in the domain of the psyche by re-inserting the layers of holistic harmonious foundations of the “stripped-self” indigenous to the modern West (Cushman, 1990). This re-dressed self is culture specific, in other words it is collectivist, connected, relational, moral, ordered and indigenous to Africa, hence it compellingly belongs - because it is an Ubuntu self (Mnyando, 1997). The Ubuntu self is embodied, spiritualized (it has a soul) and encultured (Mnyando, 1997). It can feel, as well as possessing a mind and the courage to reclaim authority over its independence and destiny.

In this presentation, the interconnected parts of a whole (Ubuntu) self is symbolized by the Afro-Eastern multi-dimensional person. The Afro-Eastern multi-dimensional person is a therapeutic technique of the whole self that is adapted to the culture, worldview and contexts of a person. The therapeutic technique is a collection of integrated human capacities: intelligence, personal power, emotion, spirituality, animalistic nature and a body (Mnyando, 1997). At the center of a person, who is referred to as umuntu in many African languages is Ubuntu – elaborated shortly – interpreted for a therapeutic context as a socio-emotional- spiritual element (Mnyandu, 1997). Ubuntu is therefore regarded as the socio-emotional-spiritual “core” of a person. A person is a person because they belong. Identity is belonging; a person is defined through belonging. This elaboration of the Ubuntu self is followed by a revisit of the implications of a (whole) self that is reconnected to its own ancestral and cultural heritage. I speak to the potential of the (whole) self to reclaim its lost ontological density and to defy the deficit status imposed on it by its former colonial masters.

Presentation & Resources