ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Yael Farber's Molora, which adapts Aeschylus' Oresteia for post-Apartheid South Africa. In combining Aeschylus' Attic tragedy with Xhosa songs performed by the Ngqoko Cultural Group and with the ritualized procedures of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Farber creates an Afropolitan space in which these disparate cultural forms become mutually supportive material collaboratively resisting oppression. Afropolitanism shares many premises with but is distinct from Western cosmopolitan philosophies. Cultural hybridity and cosmopolitan ethics play a major role in contemporary African cultures, because African identity is increasingly hybrid and decreasingly tied to racial/ethnic essentialism. Ubuntu requires building a better world for others, with an ethical imperative that being human means creating a world where others can also become human. As a practical application, ubuntu promotes an idealistic, locally grounded, empathetic collectivism. Molora's utopian vision is based largely on the events of The Libation Bearers, with testimony and flashbacks drawn from Agamemnon.
