In last month’s column, we began our discussion of the connections between ubuntu and restorative justice theories/practice. For reference, we used Dirk Louw’s cited article. We started by studying the first three of six points of concentricity: agreement, community, and religion/spirituality. This month, we’ll briefly cover the remainder: particularity, individuality, and historicity.
Particularity: The ideologies underlying ubuntu and restorative justice are operationalized – made real in the world – through dialogue. Both recognize that meaningful dialogue holds transformative possibilities. A dialogic process that can bring together those in tension while simultaneously valuing the worth and dignity of all while still encouraging authenticity and accountability is truly powerful. It is in this space, that particularity arises. To understand what particularity means, I’m going to describe a typical “victim-offender dialogue” (VOD) scenario.
After pre-conferencing to assess readiness, facilitators decide that a restorative conference is warranted. During the dialogue, the person harmed is invited to tell their story, uninterrupted – to detail their feelings, fears, and what life is now like due to the impacts of the harm. During the conversation, the person who caused harm – so long as they are willing and capable of taking meaningful accountability – listens, deeply, to those feelings, fears, and impacts. They are asked to contemplate the reality they had a hand in negatively shaping. Throughout the encounter, they are also given many opportunities to speak. To explain, not excuse, their actions. To flesh out details from their life – the causes, conditions, and lessons learned – which steered them toward their behaviors and decisions. If it feels right, facilitators can then guide the parties to consider together what repair could look like. Jointly, they may even devise a plan to help ameliorate the harm caused and those problematic causes and conditions underlying those hurtful choices.
Particularity is the process of ventilating oneself in a fairly complete, fuller, and more nuanced way. Dialogue is the slow, deliberate process – the container that gets us there – respecting the participants enough to allow them to do so while supporting all co-existent truths throughout this unpacking. Well-facilitated dialogues create space capable of simultaneously holding multiple realities and multi-layered stories.
We are neither all good nor all bad. We are not the worst thing we have ever done. Each of us is composed of a dynamic story. Louw summarizes the concept pretty succinctly, stating: “[Dialogue] vents harmful emotions, repairs relationships, and importantly, challenges any stereotypes that the partners in dialogue may harbor. Such dialogue epitomizes the conduct prescribed by ubuntu… (which) inspires us to expose ourselves to others, to encounter the difference of their humanness so as to inform and enrich our own.”
Individuality: Dearest Genter Readers, please prepare yourselves for this concept because the name of this concentricity implies one thing, but Louw essentially asserts another. He begins discussing “individuality” by critiquing the French philosopher Descartes’ best known quip “I think therefore I am.” He explains that “(U)buntu directly contradicts the Cartesian conception of individuality in terms of which the individual or self can be conceived without thereby necessarily conceiving the others.” To Africans, the phrase “I think therefore I am,” reflects an incomplete philosophy of being. Rather, “I participate therefore I am,” is a better indication of African conceptions of individuality. Ubuntu theory – much like the North American Aboriginal ethos from which restorative justice praxis partially derived also – recognizes that while individuals exist, we exist together, in an inescapable interdependent web. That the actions one takes inevitably affects another. That we cannot raise ourselves into being. That we ultimately become ourselves through interactions with others. “Ubuntu unites the self and the world in a peculiar web of reciprocal relations in which subject and object become indistinguishable.”
Historicity: Finally, we discuss the importance of “respecting the historicity of the other,”
the idea that we are never finished products but works-in-progress. And although we are certainly products of the past, we have malleable futures. Louw continues the comparison, bringing all three concepts together, concluding: “An ubuntu perception is never fixed or rigidly closed, but adjustable or open-ended. It allows the other to be, to become….A process of self-realization through others.” Restorative processes also recognize this, tending to create spaces to unearth the past but through the lens of a forward-focused directive.
Inevitably, as we navigate this thing we call life, we will both cause and be on the receiving end of harm. This type of pain is an inevitable part of being human. Though we may want to wish away hurtful moments from our histories, we simply cannot. In the end, whether consciously/healthy or not, we will all find ways to bear both the harms we’ve inflicted and received. Ubuntu and restorative justice ideologies provide constructive pathways. Potential resolutions via dialogic exchanges that slow everything down, allowing us to be more human. In a well facilitated process, we can deconstruct who we are. We trade our precious unique stories of self. And through this exchange, we might learn. We might come to know ourselves a little better. Who were you when/who might you become after you were hurt by somebody? Who were you when/who might you become after you caused harm to another? And who might we evolve into if we earnestly and honestly face those questions together?