Indenture Aesthetics: Afro-Indian Femininities and the Queer Limits of South African Blackness / Jordache A Ellapen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ellapen, Jordache A., Author.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Durham Duke University Press, [2026]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

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 Bikos 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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Dedication

Contents

Preface: Mother, Memory, Movement

Acknowledgments

Epigraph

Gallery

Introduction

1 Afro-Femininities

2 Afro-vulnerabilities and the aesthetics of slow death

3 Afro-intimacies

4 Afro-transgressions

Coda. Afro-Queer Diasporic Femininities and Emergent Imaginaries of Freedom

Notes

References

Index

Notes:

This eBook is made available Open Access under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed April 14 2026)

ISBN:

1-4780-9473-7