Radical love as decolonial philosophy

In conversation with Khanyisile Mbongwa

Authors

  • Nomusa Makhubu University Of Cape Town
  • Khanyisile Mbongwa Independent curator and activist

Keywords:

love, decolonisation, student movements, race, collaborative practice

Abstract

Social unrest in South Africa has been characterised as nihilism. The injustice of racism and separatism in its historical and contemporary guises has diminished the sense of being fully human in the world. Racial and consumerist economic categories have become ways of determining the right and access to life. Such a dehumanising history, founded on hatred, can only be confronted through understanding the significance of justice. In this interview with renowned curator Khanyisile Mbongwa, we discuss the ways in which systemic violence and dispossession affect one’s sense of being. Mbongwa argues that it is only through self-love and mass political action against racial injustice that black self-realisation and liberation can be achieved. In some ways, Mbongwa’s work on South African
townships as transitional spaces brings attention to the essence of South Africa’s politics: the animosity arising from severed social bonds and the corrosion of the love ethic. Love, as decolonial philosophy, is key to political solidarity.

Author Biographies

  • Nomusa Makhubu, University Of Cape Town

    Nomusa Makhubu is an art historian based at the University of Cape Town. She is the recipient of the ABSA L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award (2006), the Prix du Studio National des Arts Contemporain, Le Fresnoy (2014) and the First Runner Up in the Department of Science and Technology Women in Science Awards (2017). Makhubu was a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies and an African Studies Association Presidential Fellow in 2016. In 2017, she was a Mandela-Mellon Fellow at the Hutchins Centre for African and African American Studies, Harvard University. Her research interests include African popular culture and socially engaged art.

  • Khanyisile Mbongwa, Independent curator and activist

    Khanyisile Mbongwa is a renowned curator, artist and sociologist. She has been involved with different creative and development initiatives, such as the Gugulethu Youth Development Forum and the Dance4Life and Redzebra Percussion Workshops. She was among the founding members of the art collective Gugulective, taking part in local and international exhibitions. She established THE BINARY (a discussion group critically engaging with the black condition and marginalisation), and was part of the 2009 Cape Africa Platform Biennial, the Fringe collective Artpay, and served on the Visual Arts Network of South Africa, Western Cape. In 2011, together with concerned students at Stellenbosch University, she formed UrbanScapes, which deals with
    radicalising spaces through art and academics. She is the 2012 MTN New Contemporary Award winner,  together with Unathi Sigenu. Mbongwa is the former executive producer of the Handspring Trust for Puppetry Arts. She is currently Adjunct Curator of Performance at Norval Foundation and Chief Curator of the  Stellenbosch Triennial.

Downloads

Published

2020-12-12

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2019)

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Radical love as decolonial philosophy : In conversation with Khanyisile Mbongwa. (2020). Journal of Decolonising Disciplines, 1(1), 10-26. https://upjournals.up.ac.za/index.php/jdd/article/view/53