Description
Book SynopsisHershini 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, showing that alternative critical imaginings juxtaposed against traditional historical research can help to locate where agency and will may reside.
Trade Review"
Illegible Will is a phenomenal book that adds intellectual and theoretical sophistication to the fields of African studies, African history, and African diaspora studies. It has great potential to contribute to the related fields of labor studies, sociology, literary studies, and the performing arts. The book is powerfully written and well researched and is well grounded in the existing scholarship." -- Kwaku Nti * Journal of Global South Studies *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 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
