Echoes in the Bone: Nelisiwe Xaba’s Sakhozi Says “Non” to the Venus and the Capture of Performance’s Immaterial Remains

Abstract

If it is true that performance remains, what do we make of these remains when subsumed into the house of culture such as the museum? Beyond reiterating the storied debates about the ontology of performance as (either) disappearing and/or remaining, I maintain, through a reading of Nelisiwe Xaba’s dance work entitled Sakhozi Says “Non” to the Venus (2010)that the machinations of antiblack capitalism co-opt all sides of the debate. In this case, an argument previously made about performance ephemera’s resistance of capital now endows capital. That is, while those non-reproductive and immaterial aspects of performance may have promised a way out of capture, it is precisely that refusal which becomes attractive for institutional possession and co-optation. Both the non-reproductive and reproductive accounts of performance’s ontology are susceptible to capture. I focus on dance performance to present a broader understanding of what counts as (immaterial) remains in performance theory and archival studies. This is also to draw attention to the renewed mode of salvaging ownership of repatriated African objects by inviting African performers to surrogate, or act as substitutes for those remains/materials and in the process, restoring white psychic rehabilitation and redeeming enduring European colonial violence.