A01=Jordache A Ellapen
Afro-Indian
Afro-normativity
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Jordache A Ellapen
automatic-update
black consciousness
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=AB
Category=AG
Category=JBSF11
Category=JBSJ
COP=United States
Delivery_Pre-order
Desire Marea
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Fela Gucci
Githan Coopoo
indentureship
Kutti Collective
Language_English
Mohau Modisakeng
PA=Not yet available
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Forthcoming
queer
queer worldmaking
race
relationality
Reshman Chhiba
Sabelo Mlangeni
softlaunch
South Africa
vulnerability
Product details
- ISBN 9781478031345
- Weight: 544g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 07 Jan 2025
- Publisher: Duke University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
In Indenture Aesthetics, Jordache A. Ellapen examines the visual and performance art practices of feminist, queer, femme, and gender-nonconforming Afro-Indian and South African black artists to understand the paradoxes of freedom in contemporary South Africa. Tracing the afterlife of apartheid-era racial categories and revisiting Bantu Stephen Biko’s Black Consciousness, Ellapen theorizes South African blackness through the Indian Ocean World, showing how the development of an Afro-Indian identity after generations of indentured labor and segregation troubles persistent racial hierarchies. Staging unexpected encounters between artists such as Sharlene Khan, Mohau Modisakeng, Lebohang Kganye, and Reshma Chhiba, he analyzes how their works challenge these racial categories to create new imaginaries of freedom. Situated in a context in which the authentic (hetero)normative black subject of the post-apartheid state is bracketed from other formulations of blackness, these artists' aesthetic practices, alongside those of other artists like Ellapen himself, disrupt desires for national belonging and catalyze alternative and transgressive politics and subjects. By rethinking the relationship between blackness, Afro-Indianness, and Africanness, Ellapen highlights the role of the aesthetic in crafting a blueprint for coalitional building across difference in contemporary South Africa.
Jordache A. Ellapen is Associate Professor in the Department of Black Studies at the University of Rochester and coeditor of we remember differently: Race, Memory, Imagination.
