In Black X: Liberatory Thought in Azania, Tendayi Sithole elaborates on the problematic signifier X, a marker of the dehumanization of the black subject, and makes an argument for the struggle for Azania as a liberatory project. Azania refers to the land that became South Africa after its conquest by settler-colonialists. Sithole argues that post-1994 South Africa retains the markers of its colonial past and remains a territory of unfreedom for blacks. He shows that the colonial contract still stands, with the land question unresolved by the new constitutional dispensation. For Sithole, being and land are indissoluble, and the denial of the centrality of land restitution is a denial of the black being. Drawing on the Black Consciousness philosophy of Steve Biko, he critiques the manner in which Marx and Marxism evade the reality of antiblack racism and landlessness as drivers of colonial conquest and ongoing forms of oppression, and emphasises the existential struggle of the black subject as explicated in Mabogo P More’s African philosophy. Sithole gathers these iterations under the mark X, and shows how the black subject, as a dehumanized figure, continues to radically insist on alternative forms of being in an antiblack world, and on Azania as the true form of liberation.This timely and relevant book offers a way to rethink the meaning of liberation in a country that has yet to rename and redefine itself.
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Explores the problematic signifier X, a marker of the dehumanization of the black subject, and makes an argument for the struggle for Azania as a liberatory project. This timely and relevant book offers a way to rethink the meaning of liberation in a country that has yet to rename and redefine itself.
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Introduction: X, The InceptualChapter 1 The Black and the Colonial ContractChapter 2 On Land and BeingChapter 3 Steve Biko: The Matter of Ante-Marx(ism)Chapter 4 Mabogo P More’s IntensificationsPostscript – The ‘X File’ (Notes on Extended Thought) ReferencesIndex
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Black X examines the signifier X, a marker of the dehumanization of the black subject, and argues for Azania as a liberatory project in South Africa.
Black X: Liberatory Thought in Azania is a no-holds-barred critique of Marxism’s and postcolonialism’s inability to grasp the essence of Black suffering. It is also a brilliant triangulation of Azanian political theory and two interventions that emerged from the diaspora, Black Existentialism and Afropessimism. ‒ Frank B. Wilderson III, Chancellor’s Professor of African American Studies, University of California Irvine
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781776148684
Publisert
2024-02-01
Utgiver
Vendor
Wits University Press
Høyde
203 mm
Bredde
127 mm
Aldersnivå
G, P, 01, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
184

Forfatter

Om bidragsyterne

Tendayi Sithole is Professor in the Department of Political Sciences, University of South Africa and Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation, University of Johannesburg. His recent books include The Letter in Black Radical Thought (2023).