Joost Fontein is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Johannesburg. Previously he was director of The British Institute in Eastern Africa (2014-18), and before that, he lectured anthropology at the University of Edinburgh (2007-2014). He is currently co-editor of the (IAI) journal AFRICA, a former editor of The Journal of Southern African Studies, and co-founder and former editor of Critical African Studies. He is also on the editorial board of various other journals, including Human Remains & Violence.
He has done long term fieldwork in Zimbabwe since the late 1990s, and since 2015, in Nairobi, Kenya. His first monograph The Silence of Great Zimbabwe: Contested Landscapes and the Power of Heritage (UCL Press) was published in 2006. This was followed by Remaking Mutirikwi: Landscape, Water and belonging in Southern Zimbabwe (James Currey) in 2015. In the late 2000s, he co-founded the Bones Collective research group in Edinburgh, bringing together anthropologists, archaeologists, artists and others interested in research on human remains. Through this group, Joost was involved in initiating, and engaging with, a series of international research events and publications that sought to bring theoretical insights drawn from the then emerging materiality debates to burgeoning research focused on human remains, bodies, bones, and the politics of post-violence and commemoration.
Joost published his third monograph, The Politics of the Dead in Zimbabwe 2000-2020: Bones, Rumours & Spirits (James Currey) in 2022, bringing together almost two decades of research on the politics of human remains and spirits in Zimbabwe. His more recent work focuses on urban materialities in Nairobi, where he co-curated a series of critical, multi-modal collaborative exhibitions at the National Museum, bringing artists and scholars together to forge new forms of collaborative, and experimental research methodologies. A multi-authored and open access book from this project, which he co-curated, entitled Nairobi Becoming: Security, Uncertainty and Contingency (Punctum Press) was published in February 2024 (https://punctumbooks.com/titles/nairobi-becoming-security-uncertainty-contingency/).
Publications related to Joost’s work on human remains:
Monographs
The Politics of the Dead in Zimbabwe 2000-2020: Bones, Rumours & Spirits (James Currey, 2022) https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781847013644/the-politics-of-the-dead-in-zimbabwe-2000-2020/
In 1898, just before she was hanged for rebelling against colonial rule, Charwe Nyakasikana, the spirit medium of the legendary ancestor Ambuya Nehanda, famously prophesied that "my bones will rise again". A century later bones, bodies and human remains have come to occupy an increasingly complex place in Zimbabwe's postcolonial milieu. From ancestral "bones" rising again in the struggle for independence, and later land, to resurfacing bones of unsettled wardead; and from the troubling decaying remains of post-independence gukurahundi massacres to the leaky, tortured bodies of recent election violence, human materials are intertwined in postcolonial politics in ways that go far beyond, yet necessarily implicate, contests over memory, commemoration and the representation of the past. In this book, Joost Fontein examines the complexities of human remains in Zimbabwe's 'politics of the dead'. Challenging and innovative, he takes us beyond current scholarship on memory, commemoration and the changing significance of 'traditional' death practices, to examine the political implications of human remains as material substances, as duplicitous rumours, and as returning spirits. Linking the indeterminacy of human substances to the productive but precarious uncertainties of rumours and spirits, the book points to how the incompleteness of death is politically productive and ultimately derives from the problematic, entangled excessivities of human material and immaterial existence, and is deeply intertwined with the stylistics of postcolonial power and politics.
Special Issues (with co-authored introductions)
Major, Laura, and Joost Fontein. 2015. “Corporealities of Violence in Southern and Eastern Africa.” Critical African Studies 7 (2): 89–98. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21681392.2015.1055549
Fontein, Joost, and John Harries. 2013. “The Vitality and Efficacy of Human Substances.” Critical African Studies 5 (3): 115–26. Contributions by Florence Bernault, Jean-Pierre Warnier, Mike Rowlands, Diana Espírito Santo, Anastasios Panagiotopoulos, Katerina Kerestetzi. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21681392.2013.847660
Cara Krmpotich, Joost Fontein, and John Harries. 2010. “The Substance of Bones: the emotive materiality and affective presence of human remains.” Special issue Journal of Material Culture 15(4). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1359183510382965
Journal Articles & Book Chapters
Fontein, Joost. Forthcoming. “Decolonising the dead or decolonising death in southern Africa? Some hesitations.” In Routledge Handbook for Cultural Heritage Studies in Africa, edited by Ashton Sinamai, John D. Giblin, Shadreck Chirikure, Ishanlosen Odiaua Giblin. London: Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003025832/routledge-handbook-critical-african-heritage-studies-ashton-sinamai-john-giblin-shadreck-chirikure-ishanlosen-odiaua
Fontein, Joost. 2020. “Burying Bob.” The Thinker, 84: 4-12. https://journals.uj.ac.za/index.php/The_Thinker/article/view/210
Fontein, Joost. 2018. “Political accidents in Zimbabwe.” KRONOS, 44 (1). https://www.chrflagship.uwc.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/KRONOS-44-a3.pdf
Fontein, Joost. 2018. “Death, corporeality and uncertainty in Zimbabwe.” In Anthropology of Death, Companion Volume, edited by Anthony Robben. London: John Wiley & Sons. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/A+Companion+to+the+Anthropology+of+Death-p-9781119222293
Mujere, Joseph, Munyaradzi Elton Sagiya, and Joost Fontein. 2017. “‘Those Who Are Not Known, Should Be Known by the Country’: Patriotic History and the Politics of Recognition in Southern Zimbabwe.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 11 (1): 86–114. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17531055.2017.1290765
Fontein, Joost. 2014. “Remaking the Dead, Uncertainty and the Torque of Human Materials in Northern Zimbabwe.” In Governing the Dead: Sovereignty and the Politics of Dead Bodies, edited by Finn Stepputat. Manchester: Manchester University Press. https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719096082/
Fontein, Joost. 2011. “Graves, Ruins & Belonging: Towards an Anthropology of Proximity.” JRAI – Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17: 706-727 (based on RAI Curl Lecture 2009, British Museum, September 2009. https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2011.01715.x
Fontein, Joost. 2011. “Between Tortured Bodies and Resurfacing Bones: the Politics of the Dead in Zimbabwe.” revised version of Dec. 2010 JMC paper, published in German in volume edited by Sommer, M. & Kruger, G. Biohistorical Anthropology: DNA and Bones in Cultures of remembrance.
Fontein, Joost. 2011. “The Politics of the Dead: Living Heritage, Bones and Commemoration in Zimbabwe.” In Media Rituals and Ritual Media, edited by K. Polite & C. Brosius. Weisbaden: Harrasowitz (revised and reprinted version of that published in ASAOnline 2009)
Fontein, Joost. 2010. “Between Tortured Bodies and Resurfacing Bones: the Politics of the Dead in Zimbabwe.” In Special issue on “The Substance of Bones” in Journal of Material Culture, 15(4). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1359183510383105
Fontein, Joost. 2009. “The Politics of the Dead: Living Heritage, Bones and Commemoration in Zimbabwe.” ASAonline .
Other(Blogs, Exhibitions, etc)
2022: Blog/Interview about ‘The Politics of the Dead in Zimbabwe 2000-2020’ in African Griot: https://boydellandbrewer.com/african-griot-politics-of-the-dead-in-zimbabwe-2000-2020/
2014: The Bones Beneath the Face June 2014 Interactive Exhibition Smith, J, Harries, J, Fontein, J & Fibiger, L 2014, 'The Bones Beneath the Face’ conference fringe event, which asked delegates to interact with human remains, during Association of Social Anthropologists Annual conference, 2014. Surgeons Hall Museum, Edinburgh.
Images from Politics of the Dead (2022):