Where have all the fishes gone?: Living Ubuntu as an ethics of research and pedagogical engagement

Abstract

First paragraph: Deeply disappointed, I stood looking at the gate, chained and bolted closed. There was a fine stillness that threaded itself diaphanously through the soft zephyr of early afternoon, like the breath of dissipated anticipation. The red brick school building stood there empty and alone as if mocking my memory of the happenings within it some years prior. I could discern the dappled shadows of the past behind the veil of an existent manifestation of reality. I could feel the sunlit-afternoon ghosts of that present intruding on the past, trying to trick my consciousness, attempting to reconstitute history and replace it with current phantasms of a vacant school and post-apartheid South Africa, like simulacra, as if they were the new ‘real'. The background white noise of nearby traffic and the faint lull of waves against the barnacled pier in the nearby harbour seemed, for a moment, to pause, and the audience of my consciousness hushed as if some premier performance was about to begin....