Casts, bones and DNA: interrogating the relationship between science and postcolonial indigeneity in contemporary South Africa

Abstract

This paper discusses the articulation and complex enactment of postcolonial indigeneity, commonly referred to as Khoesan revivalism in contemporary South Africa. Through a close examination of the “substances of indigeneity,” i.e. body casts, human remains and DNA, it interrogates the partial imbrication of past and present scientific and classificatory practices with contemporary political and affective identifications. It argues that, in this constellation, the indigenous does not signify a stable point of reference or remnant of the past, but rather a subject position that is actively claimed and enacted in the present.