Hershini Bhana Young

Illegible Will

Coercive Spectacles of Labor in South Africa and the Diaspora

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

In Illegible Will Hershini Bhana Young engages with the archive of South African and black diasporic performance to examine the absence of black women's will from that archive. Young argues for that will's illegibility, given the paucity of materials outlining the agency of black historical subjects. Drawing on court documents, novels, photographs, historical records, websites, and descriptions of music and dance, Young shows how black will can be conjured through critical imaginings done in concert with historical research. She critically imagines the will of familiar subjects such as Sarah Baartman and that of obscure figures such as the eighteenth-century slave Tryntjie of Madagascar, who was executed in 1713 for attempting to poison her mistress. She also investigates the presence of will in contemporary expressive culture, such as the Miss Landmine Angola beauty pageant, placing it in the long genealogy of the freak show. In these capacious case studies Young situates South African performance within African diasporic circuits of meaning throughout Africa, North America, and South Asia, demonstrating how performative engagement with archival absence can locate that which was never recorded.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Duke University Press
• Seitenzahl: 282
• Erscheinungstermin: 10. März 2017
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 15mm
• Gewicht: 413g
• ISBN-13: 9780822363200
• ISBN-10: 0822363208
• Artikelnr.: 44946322

Autorenporträt

Hershini Bhana Young

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction  1
1. Returning to Hankey: Sarah Baartman and Endless Repatriations  29
2. "Force Refigured as Consent": The Strange Case of Tryntjie of
Madagascar  73
3. Performing Debility: Joice Heth and Miss Landmine Angola  109
4. Slow Death: "Indian" Performances of Indenture and Slavery  149
5. Becoming Undone: Performances of Vulnerability  181
Notes  217
Bibliography  249
Index  263