DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Decolonising Sambo

Transculturation, Fungibility and Black and People of Colour Futurity

Shirley Anne Tate author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Emerald Publishing Limited

Published:29th Nov '19

Should be back in stock very soon

Decolonising Sambo cover

Using a Black decolonial feminist approach, this book deconstructs 'the white sambo psyche' of white European settler colonialism, which classifies the colonised and enslaved into 'sambo': a category of racial subjection and utter negation which is now so normalized that we are inured to it. 
Drawing on voyages both real and metaphorical to places such as Australia, South Africa, Jamaica, the Dutch West Indies, and the UK, Decolonizing Sambo positions itself amongst the global entanglements of white European settler colonialism, racial capitalism and contemporary culture. This cultural analysis analyses archival data, artefacts, commemorative spaces, films, children's books, and sweets to show sambo's genealogy, transculturation, fungibility, and continuation in contemporary racialising assemblages. 
As we continue to live in an era of 'samboification', this book provides scholars and students with the materials to start thinking about sambo as an (un)known part of colonialism and explore 'post-race' racism within which professions of sincere love for the racialised other are an active aspect of (post) colonial states' self-deception about being 'post-race'.

This is a passionate, powerful and hugely impressive piece of scholarship. Shirley Tate’s best work yet. The breadth of material, the innovative use of language and above all the power of the critique of racism and racialized representations – just tremendous. -- Professor Ian Law, University of Leeds, UK

ISBN: 9781789733488

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 400g

184 pages