Riotous Deathscapes

by Hugo ka Canham

Overview

In Riotous Deathscapes, Hugo ka Canham presents an understanding of life and death based on indigenous and black ways of knowing that he terms Mpondo theory. Focusing on amaMpondo people from rural Mpondoland, in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, Canham outlines the methodologies that have enabled the community’s resilience and survival. He assembles historical events and a cast of ancestral and living characters, following the tenor of village life, to offer a portrait of how Mpondo people live and die in the face of centuries of abandonment, trauma, antiblackness, and death. Canham shows that Mpondo theory is grounded in and develops in relation to the natural world, where the river and hill are key sites of being and resistance. Central too, is the interface between ancestors and the living, in which life and death become a continuity and a boundlessness that white supremacy and neoliberalism cannot interdict. By charting a course of black life in Mpondoland, Canham tells a story of blackness on the African continent and beyond.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478024224
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	02/01/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	28 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Hugo ka Canham is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand and coeditor of Black Academic Voices: The South African Experience.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  vii
Introduction: Mpondo Orientations  1
1. Watchful Ocean, Observant Mountain  37
2. Fortifying Rivers  68
3. Riotous Spirits—Ukukhuphuka Izizwe  104
4. Levitating Graves and Ancestral Frequencies  139
5. Rioting Hills and Occult Insurrections  173
Fitful Dreamscapes: An Afterword  208
Notes  213
References  231
Index  259

What People are Saying About This

In the Wake: On Blackness and Being - Christina Sharpe

“Hugo ka Canham’s Riotous Deathscapes is a Mpondo theory-method that ‘looks askance,’ ‘crafts rampant dying as a way of living,’ and ‘draws on black and indigenous ways of being and resisting.’ Canham’s work is particular (to Mpondoland and then to other African and global South communities) and it is diasporic; it is a profound vernacular theory of being in an antiblack world.”

The Terrorist Album: Apartheid’s Insurgents, Collaborators, and the Security Police - Jacob Dlamini

“This is, quite simply, one of the most remarkable books I have read in a long time. Written in anger, despair, and disenchantment, this book is nonetheless about hope. From the spectacularly scenic but stunningly poor South African region of Mpondoland, Hugo Canham finds what he calls Mpondo theory, a body of knowledge that eschews capitalist notions of ownership and instead favors communal, environmentally conscious uses of the land and the ocean. If South Africa has been waiting for the postapartheid text par excellence, the sad, powerful, and insightful Riotous Deathscapes could well be that text.”

Editorial Reviews

"Darkly and lyrically written, Hugo ka Canham’s Riotous Deathscapes is a transdisciplinary treatise theorizing Blackness through death. It offers Afrocentric theoretical and methodological resources for history, anthropology, and Black and indigenous studies, as well as critical perspectives for living in the wake of violence."

-- Casey Golomski American Historical Review

"The volume Riotous Deathscapes is an experience; trying to review it is akin to describing a meal or experience, a war zone or a love affair, in words. . . . I want to thank Hugo Canham for this language—a delicate corporeal recognition of touch, membranes, exchange of molecules and language, maybe conquest, assault, a mugging or perhaps a love affair, as a theory-method for re-visioning a world of deep, tragic, unpredictable, and often joyful interdependencies."
-- Michelle Fine South African Journal of Psychology

"Canham’s monograph, Riotous Deathscapes, is an exceptional, theoretically challenging and highly complex read for anyone interested in death studies, Black studies and rethinking the practices of the academy. . . . It is incredibly lyrical and has a prose style that exceeds the boundaries of convention with ease and joy. There is a combination of memoir, critical thinking and recovered histories, written in exquisitely elegant but sometimes non-standard prose, combined with high-level academic discourse. It is a dizzying and affective read."
-- Claire Nally Contemporary European History

From the Publisher