R Verbuyst
Biographic Data
| ID | 54777 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R Verbuyst |
| GIVEN NAMES | R |
| FAMILY NAME | Verbuyst |
| SIGNATURE | VERBUYST R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ghent University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1987-1642 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 46 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
South Africa, Gaza, Greenland: Trump 2.0 and the global settler colonial imaginary
We analyse statements by US President Trump issued since returning to the White House in early 2025 and focus on pronouncements concerning three particular sites: South Africa, Gaza and Greenland. A coordinated array of specifically settler colonial imaginings emerges: South Africa is a site of past settler struggle–a spectre, it must be punished and turned into a warning; Gaza is a site of contemporary settler struggle–it must be erased and empt…
Why and when should we (not) distinguish between academic and therapeutic discourses on the past? A response to Burnett et al.’s ‘Indigenous resurgence, collective “reminding”, and insidious binaries’
In this final response to Burnett et al., I make my case for why and when we should and should not distinguish between academic and therapeutic discourses on the past when studying how marginalized people engage with the past. Whereas Burnett et al. regard this as an 'insidious binary', I point to various reasons for why it is productive to think through these categories as productive, albeit imperfect analytical lenses
Indigeneity, subversion, and the trauma of settler colonialism: A reply to Kurzwelly and Mullard
In her response to my article, “Authenticity and Decolonization: On the Subversive Authenticity of Indigenous Resurgence,” Jordan Mullard invites me to regard subversive authenticity as a way of reckoning with the trauma of settler colonialism through a process of “becoming.” Conversely, Kurzwelly doubts the political and analytical efficacy of the concept, offering an anti-realist “alternative point of departure.” Engaging with Kurzwelly's criti…
Grappling with Refusal, Self-representation, and Visual Sovereignty at the Knoflokskraal Khoisan “Reclaim”
In 2020, a group Khoisan activists began occupying state-owned land near Grabouw, South Africa. Knoflokskraal has since attracted thousands of residents against the backdrop of widespread disappointment with land reform, heritage policies, and various forms of socio-economic marginalisation. The common labelling of Knoflokskraal as a land invasion overlooks the unique features of this self-styled reclaim, not least the agency that its residents e…
Transgressing the urban–rural divide alongside newly identifying Indigenous people in South Africa
Rural ways of life are frequently upheld as the pinnacle of Indigenous authenticity. It is often argued that urban-based and newly identifying Indigenous people model their authenticity after these ideals, or, conversely, that they pursue hybridity and Indigenous modernity instead of authenticity. Crucially, however, how and why Indigenous people themselves regard authenticity, rural, and urban as meaningful social constructions and expressions o…
Therapeutic historicity and the colonial condition: Pasts for Healing and Empowerment
Authenticity and decolonization: On the subversive authenticity of Indigenous resurgence
Authenticity is often regarded as an impediment to decolonization, particularly in contexts involving Indigenous people. Some frame authenticity as a colonialist construct, perpetuated by Indigenous people and others to contest or enforce power relations. Others dismiss authenticity altogether as an illusory, essentialist and divisive concept. Yet others marshal 'hybridity' and 'Indigenous modernity' as conceptual alternatives. While these lenses…
Everything We Do Is About Our History: Indigenous Resurgence and Its Critique of History
The role of history in perpetuating settler colonialism is well documented. However, the manner in which Indigenous people draw on the past to resist this oppressive structure remains undertheorized. An anthropological approach is needed to appraise how Indigenous people entwine past and present in the context of Indigenous resurgence. I illustrate this by drawing on the concept of historicity as well as ethnographic fieldwork conducted among 'Kh…
Indigenous Resurgence in the Cape: The Intellectual Roots and Political Aspirations of Khoisan Revivalism
The Khoisan were decimated, dispossessed, and assimilated into the mixed-race group 'coloured' during colonialism and apartheid, spawning the myth of their extinction. However, Cape Town, where colonial history is most deeply entrenched, became the focal point of 'Khoisan revivalism' after the dismantling of apartheid. The origins and aims of the movement remain poorly understood, largely because of a lack of scholarly engagement with Khoisan rev…
Sensing indigeneity: A sensory ethnography of the presence of the past among newly identifying indigenous people in South Africa
Sensory ethnography offers hitherto under-explored perspectives on why and how people claim and experience indigeneity by elucidating how the past and the present become entangled through sensory experiences. I illustrate this by drawing on fieldwork that I carried out among newly identifying indigenous people in South Africa between 2014 and 2022. As they grapple with centuries of assimilation and destruction, including the myth of their extinct…
Feeling their way through their cultural roots: Theorising the Khoisan revivalist critique of authenticity from below
Authenticity is a longstanding concern in Khoisan Studies. Most scholarship has examined how stereotypical, essentialist and static notions of “authentic” Khoisan identity and culture are habitually reproduced and demanded of the Khoisan for economic or political gain. Recent work instead emphasises agency, hybridity and dynamism, and increasingly draws attention to interlocutors’ own views on authenticity. I make a contribution to this literatur…
Introducing “navigating failure in ethnography”: A forum about failure in ethnographic research
Purpose The authors introduce a recurrent section for the Journal of Organizational Ethnography which scrutinizes the various manifestations and roles of failure in ethnographic research. Design/methodology/approach The authors peruse a wide body of literature which tackles the role of failure in ethnographic research and draw on the experiences to argue for a more sustained and in-depth conversation on the topic. Findings “Failure” regularly occ…
Settler colonialism and therapeutic discourses on the past: A response to Burnett et al.’s ‘a politics of reminding’
In 'A politics of reminding: Khoisan resurgence and environmental justice in South Africa's Sarah Baartman district', Burnett et al. scrutinize the memory activism of the Gamtkwa Khoisan Council, which is part of the wider 'Khoisan resurgence' sweeping across post-apartheid South Africa. Although the authors missed important nuances, they also pointed out flaws in the way I used Niezen's 'therapeutic history' [Niezen, R. (2009). The rediscovered …
The Decolonial Turn in Khoisan Studies: Opportunities, Pitfalls, and new Directions in Longstanding Debates Concerning Southern Africa’s Indigenous People
A "decolonial turn" is arguably afoot in Khoisan Studies, an interdisciplinary field of enquiry that originated in the colonial era and focuses on the Khoisan indigenous peoples of Southern Africa. This trend is exemplified in three recent publications: [overnes, Siv. 2019. Street Khoisan: On Belonging, Recognition and Survival. Pretoria: Unisa Press, Bam, June. 2021. Ausi Told Me. Why Cape Herstoriographies Matters. Sunnyside: Jacana, and Muthie…
Khoisan Consciousness: An Ethnography of Emic Histories and Indigenous Revivalism in Post-Apartheid Cape Town
The Khoisan of the Cape are widely considered virtually extinct as a distinct collective following their decimation, dispossession and assimilation into the mixed-race group ‘coloured’ during colonialism and apartheid. However, since the democratic transition of 1994, increasing numbers of ‘Khoisan revivalists’ are rejecting their coloured identity and engaging in activism as indigenous people. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Cape To…
Khoisan Consciousness: Articulating Indigeneity in Post-Apartheid Cape Town
The Khoisan were decimated, dispossessed and assimilated into the mixed-race “Coloured” group during colonialism and apartheid, spawning the notion of their supposed extinction. However, Cape Town, where colonial history runs deepest, became the epicentre of “Khoisan revivalism” after apartheid. Khoisan revivalists reject Coloured identity and campaign for cultural development, historical justice and indigenous rights. Many also claim land and tr…
Fraught with Friction: Inclusive Development for Informal Workers in Urban Ghana
Informal workers are a heterogeneous group distinguished by diverse activities and interests, but they have in common that they operate largely outside state regulations. In this article, we analyse the ways in which informal workers in Ghana are organising (themselves) in response to proposed relocations of their workspace. Borrowing from Tsing, we distinguish three layers of friction that can lead to (structural) change, collective action, and …
The real history of the country'? Expropriation without Compensation and Competing Master Narratives about Land (Dis)Possession in South Africa
In 2018, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced his government’s intention to pursue land expropriation without compensation. In a country where wealth and poverty still run largely along apartheid-era racial lines, this policy is widely associated with transferring white-owned agricultural property to landless and impoverished blacks. As with preceding land reform policy, expropriation without compensation is informed by a ‘master nar…
South Africa's settler-colonial present: Khoisan revivalism and the question of indigeneity
South Africa’s settler-colonial past is widely acknowledged. And yet, commonplace understandings of the post-apartheid era and a focus on the end of segregation make an appraisal of settler colonialism in present-day South Africa difficult and controversial. Nonetheless, we argue that an understanding of South Africa’s “settler-colonial present” is urgent and needed. We suggest that settler colonialism as a specific mode of domination survives ap…
Claiming Cape Town: Towards a symbolic interpretation of Khoisan activism and land claims
Current political negotiations in South Africa which explore the possibility of pre-1913 land claims and the recognition of Khoisan traditional authorities have spurred the growth of the “Khoisan revival”: the phenomenon of people identifying as Khoisan and asserting indigenous rights. Based on fieldwork conducted in Cape Town in 2014 and 2015, this paper discusses the motivations and strategies of several Khoisan activists. After outlining the p…
History, historians and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Whether or not the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) intended to write history, it certainly engaged with the past while historians were virtually absent. This article therefore sets out to take a closer look at the relationship between history, historians and the TRC. An overview of the literature reveals that historians have examined the TRC from a philosophical perspective and analysed its report as a historical narrative…
Claiming Cape Town: Towards a symbolic interpretation of Khoisan activism and land claims
Current political negotiations in South Africa which explore the possibility of pre-1913 land claims and the recognition of Khoisan traditional authorities have spurred the growth of the “Khoisan revival”: the phenomenon of people identifying as Khoisan and asserting indigenous rights. Based on fieldwork conducted in Cape Town in 2014 and 2015, this paper discusses the motivations and strategies of several Khoisan activists. After outlining the p…
South Africa's settler-colonial present: Khoisan revivalism and the question of indigeneity
South Africa’s settler-colonial past is widely acknowledged. And yet, commonplace understandings of the post-apartheid era and a focus on the end of segregation make an appraisal of settler colonialism in present-day South Africa difficult and controversial. Nonetheless, we argue that an understanding of South Africa’s “settler-colonial present” is urgent and needed. We suggest that settler colonialism as a specific mode of domination survives ap…
The Decolonial Turn in Khoisan Studies: Opportunities, Pitfalls, and new Directions in Longstanding Debates Concerning Southern Africa’s Indigenous People
A "decolonial turn" is arguably afoot in Khoisan Studies, an interdisciplinary field of enquiry that originated in the colonial era and focuses on the Khoisan indigenous peoples of Southern Africa. This trend is exemplified in three recent publications: [overnes, Siv. 2019. Street Khoisan: On Belonging, Recognition and Survival. Pretoria: Unisa Press, Bam, June. 2021. Ausi Told Me. Why Cape Herstoriographies Matters. Sunnyside: Jacana, and Muthie…
The real history of the country'? Expropriation without Compensation and Competing Master Narratives about Land (Dis)Possession in South Africa
In 2018, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced his government’s intention to pursue land expropriation without compensation. In a country where wealth and poverty still run largely along apartheid-era racial lines, this policy is widely associated with transferring white-owned agricultural property to landless and impoverished blacks. As with preceding land reform policy, expropriation without compensation is informed by a ‘master nar…
Settler colonialism and therapeutic discourses on the past: A response to Burnett et al.’s ‘a politics of reminding’
In 'A politics of reminding: Khoisan resurgence and environmental justice in South Africa's Sarah Baartman district', Burnett et al. scrutinize the memory activism of the Gamtkwa Khoisan Council, which is part of the wider 'Khoisan resurgence' sweeping across post-apartheid South Africa. Although the authors missed important nuances, they also pointed out flaws in the way I used Niezen's 'therapeutic history' [Niezen, R. (2009). The rediscovered …
Authenticity and decolonization: On the subversive authenticity of Indigenous resurgence
Authenticity is often regarded as an impediment to decolonization, particularly in contexts involving Indigenous people. Some frame authenticity as a colonialist construct, perpetuated by Indigenous people and others to contest or enforce power relations. Others dismiss authenticity altogether as an illusory, essentialist and divisive concept. Yet others marshal 'hybridity' and 'Indigenous modernity' as conceptual alternatives. While these lenses…
Grappling with Refusal, Self-representation, and Visual Sovereignty at the Knoflokskraal Khoisan “Reclaim”
In 2020, a group Khoisan activists began occupying state-owned land near Grabouw, South Africa. Knoflokskraal has since attracted thousands of residents against the backdrop of widespread disappointment with land reform, heritage policies, and various forms of socio-economic marginalisation. The common labelling of Knoflokskraal as a land invasion overlooks the unique features of this self-styled reclaim, not least the agency that its residents e…
Fraught with Friction: Inclusive Development for Informal Workers in Urban Ghana
Informal workers are a heterogeneous group distinguished by diverse activities and interests, but they have in common that they operate largely outside state regulations. In this article, we analyse the ways in which informal workers in Ghana are organising (themselves) in response to proposed relocations of their workspace. Borrowing from Tsing, we distinguish three layers of friction that can lead to (structural) change, collective action, and …
History, historians and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Whether or not the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) intended to write history, it certainly engaged with the past while historians were virtually absent. This article therefore sets out to take a closer look at the relationship between history, historians and the TRC. An overview of the literature reveals that historians have examined the TRC from a philosophical perspective and analysed its report as a historical narrative…
Claiming Cape Town: Towards a symbolic interpretation of Khoisan activism and land claims
Current political negotiations in South Africa which explore the possibility of pre-1913 land claims and the recognition of Khoisan traditional authorities have spurred the growth of the “Khoisan revival”: the phenomenon of people identifying as Khoisan and asserting indigenous rights. Based on fieldwork conducted in Cape Town in 2014 and 2015, this paper discusses the motivations and strategies of several Khoisan activists. After outlining the p…
South Africa's settler-colonial present: Khoisan revivalism and the question of indigeneity
South Africa’s settler-colonial past is widely acknowledged. And yet, commonplace understandings of the post-apartheid era and a focus on the end of segregation make an appraisal of settler colonialism in present-day South Africa difficult and controversial. Nonetheless, we argue that an understanding of South Africa’s “settler-colonial present” is urgent and needed. We suggest that settler colonialism as a specific mode of domination survives ap…
Khoisan Consciousness: An Ethnography of Emic Histories and Indigenous Revivalism in Post-Apartheid Cape Town
The Khoisan of the Cape are widely considered virtually extinct as a distinct collective following their decimation, dispossession and assimilation into the mixed-race group ‘coloured’ during colonialism and apartheid. However, since the democratic transition of 1994, increasing numbers of ‘Khoisan revivalists’ are rejecting their coloured identity and engaging in activism as indigenous people. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Cape To…
Khoisan Consciousness: Articulating Indigeneity in Post-Apartheid Cape Town
The Khoisan were decimated, dispossessed and assimilated into the mixed-race “Coloured” group during colonialism and apartheid, spawning the notion of their supposed extinction. However, Cape Town, where colonial history runs deepest, became the epicentre of “Khoisan revivalism” after apartheid. Khoisan revivalists reject Coloured identity and campaign for cultural development, historical justice and indigenous rights. Many also claim land and tr…
Fraught with Friction: Inclusive Development for Informal Workers in Urban Ghana
Informal workers are a heterogeneous group distinguished by diverse activities and interests, but they have in common that they operate largely outside state regulations. In this article, we analyse the ways in which informal workers in Ghana are organising (themselves) in response to proposed relocations of their workspace. Borrowing from Tsing, we distinguish three layers of friction that can lead to (structural) change, collective action, and …
The real history of the country'? Expropriation without Compensation and Competing Master Narratives about Land (Dis)Possession in South Africa
In 2018, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced his government’s intention to pursue land expropriation without compensation. In a country where wealth and poverty still run largely along apartheid-era racial lines, this policy is widely associated with transferring white-owned agricultural property to landless and impoverished blacks. As with preceding land reform policy, expropriation without compensation is informed by a ‘master nar…
Introducing “navigating failure in ethnography”: A forum about failure in ethnographic research
Purpose The authors introduce a recurrent section for the Journal of Organizational Ethnography which scrutinizes the various manifestations and roles of failure in ethnographic research. Design/methodology/approach The authors peruse a wide body of literature which tackles the role of failure in ethnographic research and draw on the experiences to argue for a more sustained and in-depth conversation on the topic. Findings “Failure” regularly occ…
Settler colonialism and therapeutic discourses on the past: A response to Burnett et al.’s ‘a politics of reminding’
In 'A politics of reminding: Khoisan resurgence and environmental justice in South Africa's Sarah Baartman district', Burnett et al. scrutinize the memory activism of the Gamtkwa Khoisan Council, which is part of the wider 'Khoisan resurgence' sweeping across post-apartheid South Africa. Although the authors missed important nuances, they also pointed out flaws in the way I used Niezen's 'therapeutic history' [Niezen, R. (2009). The rediscovered …
The Decolonial Turn in Khoisan Studies: Opportunities, Pitfalls, and new Directions in Longstanding Debates Concerning Southern Africa’s Indigenous People
A "decolonial turn" is arguably afoot in Khoisan Studies, an interdisciplinary field of enquiry that originated in the colonial era and focuses on the Khoisan indigenous peoples of Southern Africa. This trend is exemplified in three recent publications: [overnes, Siv. 2019. Street Khoisan: On Belonging, Recognition and Survival. Pretoria: Unisa Press, Bam, June. 2021. Ausi Told Me. Why Cape Herstoriographies Matters. Sunnyside: Jacana, and Muthie…
Indigenous Resurgence in the Cape: The Intellectual Roots and Political Aspirations of Khoisan Revivalism
The Khoisan were decimated, dispossessed, and assimilated into the mixed-race group 'coloured' during colonialism and apartheid, spawning the myth of their extinction. However, Cape Town, where colonial history is most deeply entrenched, became the focal point of 'Khoisan revivalism' after the dismantling of apartheid. The origins and aims of the movement remain poorly understood, largely because of a lack of scholarly engagement with Khoisan rev…
Sensing indigeneity: A sensory ethnography of the presence of the past among newly identifying indigenous people in South Africa
Sensory ethnography offers hitherto under-explored perspectives on why and how people claim and experience indigeneity by elucidating how the past and the present become entangled through sensory experiences. I illustrate this by drawing on fieldwork that I carried out among newly identifying indigenous people in South Africa between 2014 and 2022. As they grapple with centuries of assimilation and destruction, including the myth of their extinct…
Feeling their way through their cultural roots: Theorising the Khoisan revivalist critique of authenticity from below
Authenticity is a longstanding concern in Khoisan Studies. Most scholarship has examined how stereotypical, essentialist and static notions of “authentic” Khoisan identity and culture are habitually reproduced and demanded of the Khoisan for economic or political gain. Recent work instead emphasises agency, hybridity and dynamism, and increasingly draws attention to interlocutors’ own views on authenticity. I make a contribution to this literatur…
Why and when should we (not) distinguish between academic and therapeutic discourses on the past? A response to Burnett et al.’s ‘Indigenous resurgence, collective “reminding”, and insidious binaries’
In this final response to Burnett et al., I make my case for why and when we should and should not distinguish between academic and therapeutic discourses on the past when studying how marginalized people engage with the past. Whereas Burnett et al. regard this as an 'insidious binary', I point to various reasons for why it is productive to think through these categories as productive, albeit imperfect analytical lenses
Indigeneity, subversion, and the trauma of settler colonialism: A reply to Kurzwelly and Mullard
In her response to my article, “Authenticity and Decolonization: On the Subversive Authenticity of Indigenous Resurgence,” Jordan Mullard invites me to regard subversive authenticity as a way of reckoning with the trauma of settler colonialism through a process of “becoming.” Conversely, Kurzwelly doubts the political and analytical efficacy of the concept, offering an anti-realist “alternative point of departure.” Engaging with Kurzwelly's criti…
Grappling with Refusal, Self-representation, and Visual Sovereignty at the Knoflokskraal Khoisan “Reclaim”
In 2020, a group Khoisan activists began occupying state-owned land near Grabouw, South Africa. Knoflokskraal has since attracted thousands of residents against the backdrop of widespread disappointment with land reform, heritage policies, and various forms of socio-economic marginalisation. The common labelling of Knoflokskraal as a land invasion overlooks the unique features of this self-styled reclaim, not least the agency that its residents e…
Transgressing the urban–rural divide alongside newly identifying Indigenous people in South Africa
Rural ways of life are frequently upheld as the pinnacle of Indigenous authenticity. It is often argued that urban-based and newly identifying Indigenous people model their authenticity after these ideals, or, conversely, that they pursue hybridity and Indigenous modernity instead of authenticity. Crucially, however, how and why Indigenous people themselves regard authenticity, rural, and urban as meaningful social constructions and expressions o…
Therapeutic historicity and the colonial condition: Pasts for Healing and Empowerment
Authenticity and decolonization: On the subversive authenticity of Indigenous resurgence
Authenticity is often regarded as an impediment to decolonization, particularly in contexts involving Indigenous people. Some frame authenticity as a colonialist construct, perpetuated by Indigenous people and others to contest or enforce power relations. Others dismiss authenticity altogether as an illusory, essentialist and divisive concept. Yet others marshal 'hybridity' and 'Indigenous modernity' as conceptual alternatives. While these lenses…
Everything We Do Is About Our History: Indigenous Resurgence and Its Critique of History
The role of history in perpetuating settler colonialism is well documented. However, the manner in which Indigenous people draw on the past to resist this oppressive structure remains undertheorized. An anthropological approach is needed to appraise how Indigenous people entwine past and present in the context of Indigenous resurgence. I illustrate this by drawing on the concept of historicity as well as ethnographic fieldwork conducted among 'Kh…
South Africa, Gaza, Greenland: Trump 2.0 and the global settler colonial imaginary
We analyse statements by US President Trump issued since returning to the White House in early 2025 and focus on pronouncements concerning three particular sites: South Africa, Gaza and Greenland. A coordinated array of specifically settler colonial imaginings emerges: South Africa is a site of past settler struggle–a spectre, it must be punished and turned into a warning; Gaza is a site of contemporary settler struggle–it must be erased and empt…
Sociology (16 works) · Political science (14 works) · Indigenous (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Anthropology (10 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · History (8 works) · South African History and Culture (8 works) · Aesthetics (7 works)