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, their 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.

About the Author
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.

Reviews
"Indenture Aesthetics is an outstanding contribution to transnational queer studies, African and South Asian diaspora studies, visual culture studies, and the study of race and sexuality in South Africa. Focusing on 'Afro-Indian intimacies' through a queer studies lens, Jordache A. Ellapen's work is a significant addition to African queer studies and the study of South African sexualities specifically as well as queer diaspora and queer of color scholarship more broadly. Indenture Aesthetics represents the next generation of exciting new scholarship in each of these fields." -- Gayatri Gopinath, author of * Unruly Visions: The Aesthetic Practices of Queer Diaspora *
"In this fascinating book Jordache A. Ellapen shows that by turning to the history of Indian indentureship in South Africa we might find a different vocabulary through which to understand South Africa's Indian population and its relationship to black Africans. This book's uniqueness rests on two foundations: its unexpected pairing of black African and Indian artists, on the one hand, and Ellapen's critical reading and analytical practice, which is a refreshing and needed departure from the way that Indian communities and their cultural practices are currently discussed. A beautiful and timely book." -- Xavier Livermon, author of * Kwaito Bodies: Remastering Space and Subjectivity in Post-Apartheid South Africa *



Book Information
ISBN 9781478028109
Author Jordache A Ellapen
Format Hardback
Page Count 288
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 572g