Morgan Ndlovu 
Performing Indigeneity 
Spectacles of Culture and Identity in Coloniality

Colonised subjects can play roles that sustain the power structure of coloniality. In this book, Morgan Ndlovu asks why people help support a system responsible for their own subjugation.



Morgan Ndlovu provides a critique of the agency of the colonised subjects as exercised under coloniality. Eschewing abstract theory, he takes a ‘bottom up’ approach to theorising the agency of indigenous people. Through analysis of the experiences of the performance of indigeneity and the staged representations of commodified culture in South Africa, he recognises the efforts of the colonised subjects and the conditions under which they survive. However, he also cautions against choices and actions that may aggravate their conditions.



Performing Indigeneity provides an insightful evaluation of what could constitute an ‘authentic’ indigenous agency among the colonial subalterns in India, Australia, Canada, Africa and the Americas.

Table of Content

Acknowledgements

1. Introduction: Why Performing Indigeneity Matters

2. Decolonising the Drama-Stage Conundrum

3. The Invasion of African Culture

4. Being and Becoming Zulu in Modern/Colonial South Africa

5. The Idea of Cultural Villages in South Africa

6. The Crisis of Indigenous Agency in Cultural Villages

7. Being and Becoming a Traditional Healer in Modern South Africa

8. Performing Indigeneity: A Global Perspective

Appendix: List of Cultural Villages in South Africa

References

Index

About the author

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).