Description
In Black X: Liberatory Thought in Azania, Tendayi Sithole elaborates on the problematic signifier X, a marker of the dehumanization of the black subject, and makes an argument for the struggle for Azania as a liberatory project.
Azania refers to the land that became South Africa after its conquest by settler-colonialists. Sithole argues that post-1994 South Africa retains the markers of its colonial past and remains a territory of unfreedom for blacks. He shows that the colonial contract still stands, with the land question unresolved by the new constitutional dispensation. For Sithole, being and land are indissoluble, and the denial of the centrality of land restitution is a denial of the black being. Drawing on the Black Consciousness philosophy of Steve Biko, he critiques the manner in which Marx and Marxism evade the reality of antiblack racism and landlessness as drivers of colonial conquest and ongoing forms of oppression, and emphasises the existential struggle of the black subject as explicated in Mabogo P More's African philosophy. Sithole gathers these iterations under the mark X, and shows how the black subject, as a dehumanized figure, continues to radically insist on alternative forms of being in an antiblack world, and on Azania as the true form of liberation.
This timely and relevant book offers a way to rethink the meaning of liberation in a country that has yet to rename and redefine itself.
About the Author
Tendayi Sithole is Professor in the Department of Political Sciences, University of South Africa and Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation, University of Johannesburg. His recent books include The Letter in Black Radical Thought (2023).
Book Information
ISBN 9781776148684
Author Tendayi Sithole
Format Paperback
Page Count 184
Imprint Wits University Press
Publisher Wits University Press
Azania refers to the land that became South Africa after its conquest by settler-colonialists. Sithole argues that post-1994 South Africa retains the markers of its colonial past and remains a territory of unfreedom for blacks. He shows that the colonial contract still stands, with the land question unresolved by the new constitutional dispensation. For Sithole, being and land are indissoluble, and the denial of the centrality of land restitution is a denial of the black being. Drawing on the Black Consciousness philosophy of Steve Biko, he critiques the manner in which Marx and Marxism evade the reality of antiblack racism and landlessness as drivers of colonial conquest and ongoing forms of oppression, and emphasises the existential struggle of the black subject as explicated in Mabogo P More's African philosophy. Sithole gathers these iterations under the mark X, and shows how the black subject, as a dehumanized figure, continues to radically insist on alternative forms of being in an antiblack world, and on Azania as the true form of liberation.
This timely and relevant book offers a way to rethink the meaning of liberation in a country that has yet to rename and redefine itself.
Black X examines the signifier X, a marker of the dehumanization of the black subject, and argues for Azania as a liberatory project in South Africa.
About the Author
Tendayi Sithole is Professor in the Department of Political Sciences, University of South Africa and Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation, University of Johannesburg. His recent books include The Letter in Black Radical Thought (2023).
Book Information
ISBN 9781776148684
Author Tendayi Sithole
Format Paperback
Page Count 184
Imprint Wits University Press
Publisher Wits University Press
