Performing Indigeneity

Morgan Ndlovu is Associate Professor of Development Studies at the University of South Africa and a founding member of the Africa Decolonial Research Network. He is the author of Performing Indigeneity: Spectacles of Culture and Identity in Coloniality (Pluto, 2019).

'In this enriching book, Morgan Ndlovu has joined the exalted list of intellectuals of the Global South such as Valentin Mudimbe and Edward Said that have been called 'whistle blowers against ideologies of Otherness.' How coloniality of knowledge masquerades as indigeneity is unmasked and the many-layered onion of cultural imperialism is peeled. This is a disobedient decolonial treatise that throws a telling tantrum at the cognitive Empire' -- William Mpofu, University of the Witwatersrand 'A magisterial study that draws our attention to the dark side of colonial imaginaries of indigeneity and cultural tourism in the post-colony. Ndlovu is profound and prosaic, this book joins the ranks of contemporary voices from the Global South that can only be ignored at our own peril' -- Finex Ndhlovu, Associate Professor of Language in Society, University of New England, Australia

• Acknowledgments1. Introduction: Why Performing Indigeneity Matters2. Decolonising the Drama-Stage Conundrum3. The Invasion of African Culture4. Being and Becoming Zulu in Modern/Colonial South Africa5. The Idea of Cultural Villages in South Africa6. The Crisis of Indigenous Agency in Cultural Villages7. Being and Becoming a Traditional Healer in Modern South Africa8. Performing Indigeneity: A Global PerspectiveAppendix: List of Cultural Villages in South AfricaReferencesIndex