Ubuntu and Women’s Experiences as Epistemology

Join us for Ph.D. student Unifier Dyer’s talk, “Ubuntu and Women’s Experiences as Epistemology.”

Abstract
Unifier’s paper repositions the conversation around women’s everyday experiences and explores how a focus on self-care can
challenge positivist, universalist or dominant epistemologies. Drawing on women’s embodied knowledge and African and Diasporic feminist thinking, it highlights the meeting point between Ubuntu as a moral philosophy that is appropriated for nationalist reconciliation and contested gender marking.
The paper presents contemporary feminists and writers and their concern for self-care practices as a counterpoint to persisting nationalist and patriarchal narratives about women, who are often the ones tasked with performing principles of Ubuntu such as hospitality, generosity, forgiveness and caregiving, and yet often remain marginalized in the larger structures of the nation state.

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Ubuntu Dialogues is a partnership project between Michigan State University and Stellenbosch University and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.