The Idea of Matabeleland in Digital Spaces

Book excerpt: 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.