Tribing and Untribing the Archive: Identity and the Material Record in Southern KwaZulu-Natal in the Late Independent and Colonial Periods, Vol. 1 & 2 [book review]

This two-volume set, composed of nineteen substantive chapters, seeks to address the material culture of collections and archives as a topic of interrogation. The volumes open with a thorough framing of the project in the form of a preface and introductory essay. The biographical authors’ list, bibliography, illustration lists, and indexing are all worthy of emulation. The double volume then closes with a forward-thinking epilogue by Mbongiseni Buthelezi entitled “We Need New Names Too,” (pp. 586–99), which interrogates contemporary dichotomous legacies of colonial thinking and calls for attention to the use of language and deeper historical chronologies so that scholars might consider and enliven terms relevant to contemporary political realities