Embodying Ubuntu: Staying Alive Is a Co-Creative Performance

In Southern African cultures, the word ‘Ubuntu’ has come to mean, in the words of the Christian African philosopher J. S. Mbiti, ‘I am because we are; since we are therefore I am’. This chapter will refer to today’s largely cerebral education that principally feeds an anthropomorphic culture. I aim to offer a more self-reflexive and embodied framework for learning that embodies the existential autopoietic processes of Ubuntu. Future metadesigners could assist design thinking by rethinking their traditional emphasis on products, services and objects that disregards the semiotics of the Ecocene. They could instead consider a more relations-based idea of embodied-wisdom that is sensitized to eco semiotics. This process of oscillating reciprocity applies to my idea of the Return beat, which is derived from a pan-African metaphysical experience pertaining to a rhythmic aesthetic sensibility. I will use this circular perception of reciprocal rhythm to exemplify a more holistic approach to learning and design thinking.