Ubuntu Relational Love
Decolonizing Black Masculinities
Ubuntu is a Bantu term meaning humanity. It is also a philosophical and ethical system of thought, from which definitions of humanness, togetherness, and social politics of difference arise. Devi Dee Mucina is a Black Indigenous Ubuntu man. In Ubuntu Relational Love, he uses Ubuntu oratures as tools to address the impacts of Euro-colonialism while regenerating relational Ubuntu governance structures.
Called “millet granaries” to reflect the nourishing and sustaining nature of Indigenous knowledges, and written as letters addressed to his mother, father, and children, Mucina’s oratures take up questions of geopolitics, social justice, and resistance. Working through personal and historical legacies of dispossession and oppression, he challenges the fragmentation of Indigenous families and cultures and decolonizes impositions of white supremacy and masculinity.
Drawing on anti-racist, African feminist, and Ubuntu theories and critically influenced by Indigenous masculinities scholarship in Canada, Ubuntu Relational Love is a powerful and engaging book.
Audiobook narrated by Dion Johnstone.
Reviews
“With honest, raw, and at times emotional testimony, Mucina shows just how inscribed colonization is on Indigenous bodies and its impacts specifically on Black Indigenous masculinities.”
– Robert Henry, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Calgary
About the Author
Devi Dee Mucina is an Assistant Professor in the Indigenous Governance program at the University of Victoria. Devi’s scholarship and research is centred on decolonizing masculinities, Indigenous governance, Ubuntu African philosophy, the politics of social memory and rituals of Ubuntu engagement.
Book Details
- Ubuntu Relational Love: Decolonizing Black Masculinities
- Devi Dee Mucina (Author)
- Published October 2019, 240 pages
- Paper, ISBN: 978-0-88755-842-9, 6 × 9, $27.95
- Topic(s): Decolonization, Gender Studies, Identity Studies