[Peace] Marxism & Black Experience

[C. G. Estabrook]

Ubuntu
The Black Radical Work Group in the Department of African American Studies

The Resurging Relevance of Marxism and the Black
Experience in the Era of Global Capitalism
February 22, 2010
Department of African American Studies
1201 West Nevada Street, Urbana, Illinois
12:00-1:30 P.M.

Adinkra Symbol of Democracy and Unity

Chair:
Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, Departments of African American Studies & History
Panelists:
Abdul Alkalimat, Department of African American Studies &
the Graduate School in Library Science
Bruce Levine, Department of History
Bob McChesney, Department of Communication
Lou Turner, Department of African American Studies
Ubuntu is a classical African ethical philosophy.  The term originates in
the Kwa Zulu language and culture of South Africa and as a concept
has parallels throughout southern and eastern Africa.  Ubuntu means
“belonging and interconnectedness,” conveying a communal rather
than an individual life philosophy.  As a political philosophy, Ubuntu is
synonymous with participatory democracy, and like Kafu in West Africa
expresses the democratic spirit of the people.  Ubuntu conveys the
deep substrata of the cultural values of the African American
experience. It incorporates the communal ethos of sharing, mutuality,
and collective decision-making that have been at the heart of African
American civil society and social movements.

The Ubuntu Work Group is organized to forge an intellectual
community rooted in the scholar activist identity of the Radical Black
Intellectual Tradition.  It seeks to expand the legacy of Africana/Black
Studies at Illinois by, in the words of Amilcar Cabral, “returning to the
source.”  Following the dual mission of  “Academic Excellence and
Social Responsibility,” we will engage in projects designed to increase
collectivity in research and instruction, participatory democracy in
governance, and generation of activities that will raise consciousness
and promote social transformation on campus and in the community.


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