Being Black in the World

Being-Black-in-the-World, one of N. Chabani Manganyi’s firstpublications, was written in 1973 at a time of global socio-political change.The Black Consciousness movement had emerged in the mid-1960s and the Africancontinent was throwing off its colonial yoke. In South Africa, renewedresistance to the brutality of apartheid rule would detonate in the Sowetouprising led by black school children three years later. Publication of Being-Black-in-the-World was delayed untilthe young Manganyi had left the country to study at Yale University. Hispublishers feared that the apartheid censorship board and security forces wouldprohibit him from leaving the country, and perhaps even incarcerate him, forbeing a ‘radical revolutionary’. The book thus found a limited public circulationin South Africa and original copies were hard to come by. This new edition, incontrast to its previous suppression, is an invitation to the #FeesMustFallgeneration to engage freely with early decolonising thought by an eminent SouthAfrican intellectual.An astute social and political observer, Manganyi haswritten widely on subjects relating to ethno-psychiatry, autobiography, blackartists and race. In 2018 Manganyi’s memoir, Apartheid and the Making of aBlack Psychologist was awarded the prestigious ASSAf (The Academy of Science ofSouth Africa) Humanities Book Award.Each of these short essays can be read as self-containedreflections on what it meant to be black during the apartheid years. Manganyiis a master of understatement, and yet this does not stop him from makingincisive political criticisms of black subjugation under apartheid. While theessays are clearly situated in the material and social conditions of that time,they also have a timelessness that speaks to our contemporary concerns regardingblack subjectivity, affectivity and corporeality, the persistence of a racial(and racist) order and the need for a renewed decolonising project.The essays will reward close study for anyone trying to makesense of black subjectivity and the persistence of white insensitivity to blacksuffering. Ahead of their time, the ideas in this book are an exemplarydemonstration of what a thoroughgoing and rigorous decolonising critique shouldentail. The re-publication of this classic text isenriched by the inclusion of a foreword and annotation by respected scholarsGarth Stevens and Grahame Hayes respectively, and an afterword by publicintellectual Njabulo S. Ndebele.

"In 1973, Chabani Manganyi's essays raised provocative questions that spoke to the issues of the time, and to his own unique relationship to them. Such a questioning approach remains essential to exploring being human today."--Gerhard Maré, professor emeritus, University of KwaZulu-Natal, and author "Declassified: Moving beyond the dead end of race in South Africa", "This timely re-publication and thoughtful re-framing of Being-Black-in-the-World is a gift. It honours Chabani Manganyi's seminal and historic contribution to understanding blackness as embodied and socially embedded, and to thinking about Black Consciousness as a politics of solidarity. It invites intergenerational conversations toward a decolonised world and pays homage to South Africa's contribution to black radical thought. This text is a must-read."--Zimitri Erasmus, associate professor of Sociology and Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and author "Race Otherwise: Forging a new humanism for South Africa"

N. Chabani Manganyi is one of South Africa’s most eminent intellectuals and an astute social and political observer. He has had a distinguished career in psychology, education and in government, and has written widely on subjects relating to ethno-psychiatry, autobiography, black artists and race. Grahame Hayes is an honorary research associate at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, Durban and was one of the founding editors of the journal PINS (Psychology in Society). Garth Stevens is a professor and clinical psychologist in the department of Psychology, School of Human and Community Development at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Njabulo S. Ndebele is a prize-winning poet, novelist and essayist who is also a key figure in South African higher education. He is Chair of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation and the Nelson Mandela Foundation as well as Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg.