The Idea of Matabeleland in Digital Spaces: Genealogies, Discourses, and Epistemic Struggles

(Hardback)

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The Idea of Matabeleland in Digital Spaces: Genealogies, Discourses, and Epistemic Struggles establishes a debate and dialogue between critical and post-/de-colonial approaches in the study of subalternity in online media representations. Editors Khanyile Mlotshwa and Mphathisi Ndlovu curate chapters that deal specifically with the intersectional subalternity of Matabeleland, a political and geographical region in the Southwest part of Zimbabwe comprising of three provinces: Matabeleland South, Matabeleland North, and Bulawayo metropolitan province. The subalternity of this region emerges in politics and popular culture, including media, as intersectional in terms of ethnicity, region, gender, class, and beyond. This book argues that in online spaces the liberatory politics of Matabeleland emerges as trapped in coloniality.

Reviews

"Mlotshwa and Ndlovu have successfully assembled a stellar cohort of young and brilliant intellectuals to engage the important and often ignored question of Matebeleland in Zimbabwe from the vantage point of media studies. The result is a treasure trove, indeed a rich, enriching, and eye-opening study of the multifaceted aspects of the Matebeleland question and idea ranging from memory, nationalism, identity, search for peace, cyberspace activism, performances, to photography. Just like they have Yoruba Studies in Nigeria, here we have a good start in Matebeleland Studies. I have nothing but praises for this well-curated and very relevant work of the mind."

-- Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, University of Bayreuth

"This fine collection of essays is a must-read for scholars interested in the imaginations and re-imaginations of Matabeleland in digital spaces. This tour de force is a welcome addition to a growing debate on the future of Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, and African identity politics."

-- Morgan Ndlovu, University of Zululand

"A compelling book that offers an excellent set of analytic tools to understanding the internet as a transformative and emancipatory tool in identity construction for the subaltern. Drawing from a diverse canon of Marxism, representation, subalternity and decolonial theories, the book provides an insightful examination of the deleterious historical reality of colonization and how it is challenged and subverted by the medium of the internet in the pursuit of constructing a new reality within the totality of social relations by the marginalized Matebeleland people of Zimbabwe. A must-read!"

-- Blessed Ngwenya, Vaal University of Technology

Author Bio

Khanyile Mlotshwa is a Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Global Scholarly Dialogue Programme research fellow.

Mphathisi Ndlovu is research fellow of journalism at Stellenbosch University.