The other aim of the dissertation is to provide a close reading of certain of the /Xam texts themselves. CHAPTER THREE: THE UNIVERSAL AND THE SPECIFIC: THE CONCEPT OF THE TRICKSTER AND THE /XAM. Two versions of 'the story of the moon and the hare' 301 CHAPTER NINE: 'THE STORY OF THE GIRL OF THE EARLY.
At present, the use of one or the other seems to be a matter of writer's preference.3. In citing the unpublished volumes of the Bleek and Lloyd collection, my primary source, I have followed generally accepted practice.
Introduction to thesis
7 Sun, moon and star stories are often referred to as side material in literature. In particular, I discuss the impact of this ideological complex on the collection and interpretation of /Xam narratives. The remainder of this chapter provides a survey of the literature in the field of Bushman studies itself.
Many of the ideological themes and patterns that I will explore in my thesis also appear in this review. In these chapters, I mainly criticize the notion of tricksters as applied to the figure of /Xam, /Kaggen.
Introduction to the Bleek and Lloyd collection and review of the literature related to it
Examples of Bushman folklore reproduces notebook format with /Xam and English. Today the handwritten notebooks form the core of the Bleek and Lloyd collection housed in the Department of Manuscripts and Archives at the University of Cape Town. Bleek influenced and participated in the "discourse of dying races" that inspired much of the intellectual interest in the.
In an essay in Alternation (1994) in which she emphasizes the unequal power relations that prevailed in the household of Bleek and Lloyd and the role of the narrators as 'objects of study', Helize van Vuuren notes that the /Xam. This question has a special complexity with regard to the materials from the Bleek and Lloyd collection that come to us in the form of.
Derrida
Meaning is never absolutely present, fixed or one-sided, as it was understood to be in the "theological age of the sign; it is always deferred, always unstable. This is particularly appropriate for reading /Kaggen as the representative /Xam of a universal .type and for defining stories as mythology.In Tristes tropiques (1961), Levi-Strauss expresses the belief that his introduction of the idea of writing in Nambikwara has corrupted immediacy.
77 As I will show in chapter 4, Hewitt's influential study of the /Xam narratives (1986) is also framed in terms of a nature/culture binary. This indicates the limits of the compassion for the other that Levi-Strauss admires in Rousseau's writing. The difference between the savage and the civilized must be maintained, because it is precisely his distance from the origin that resulted in the development of modern man.
Something similar has occurred, I will argue, with regard to reading the /Xam material. In terms of the parameters of this thesis, it is significant that Anne Douehi (1993) has used Derrida's critique to deconstruct the idea of the universal trickster figure regularly applied to the /Xam figure of /Kaggen (see Chapter 3). She claims that the trickster is a product of the metaphysics of presence, whose dominance in the interpretation of stories has obscured its discursive properties.
The oral lecture is "written in the soul of the listener", while writing is only an external appearance. Much of the discourse that characterizes writing on Bushmen and /Xam narratives relies on a system of contrasts such as modern/premodern. This approach to reading yields results when applied to texts that engage in narrative analysis /Xam.
Other theoretical debts
These systems of thought, or epistemes, are made up of the possible discourses that dominate the period. The attributes that Foucault ascribes to discursive practices are thus applicable both to the interpretation of narratives and to the narratives themselves. Ideas and theories seem to have been revised and shifted according to the internal dynamics of the field.
The relationship of /Xam narratives to knowledge has been widely discussed in the literature. This undertaking is performed under conditions and for purposes beyond the control of /Xam. Knowing people and culture is still critical in the era of globalization of capital.
In the context of the intellectual field, habitus refers to the ways in which the intellectual. 117 See chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6 for my critique of this phenomenon in the interpretation of Xam texts. Her discussion of the local informant (1999), in particular, has proved invaluable in examining the relationship between Xam texts and their narrators.
The /Xam informants of the colonial heyday were not allowed into the center except in a narrowly geographical and temporal sense. And, I would argue, of the /Xam storytellers and their legacy in the mainstream of the South African national imaginary. This makes many of her insights and concepts valuable in relation to a contemporary consideration of the /Xam texts.
CHAPTER THREE: THE UNIVERSAL AND THE LOCAL: THE TRICKSTER AND THE /XAM NARRATIVES
The work of Roger Hewitt on the /Xam narratives
However, rather than the dispositions of narrators, I focus on the production of discursive plurivocality. Brown's statement is accurate given Hewitt's mapping of narrative typologies. In this chapter I will show how Hewitt's narrative analysis fits these broad features of functionalism.
Such a language of reason would absolutely guarantee that the presence of the world – the essence of everything in the world – would be (re)presented transparently to an observing subject who could speak about it with complete certainty' (Appignanesi and Garratt 1995: 78, emphases in the original. 172 Hewitt emphasizes, as we have seen, the role of stories in confirming social truths. Each part of a culture contributes uniquely to the maintenance of the overall cultural ecosystem.
It is true, as I have already pointed out, that Hewitt expands the sphere of the social. Hewitt argues that /Kaggen's antisocial role in the narratives parallels his extranarrative role as game protector (see section iv below). Kaggen's narratives differ from those of Winnebago precisely because of the hybridity of the central character.
Kaggen is also closely associated with these animals in the stories of the First Times. If a hunter shot a gemsbok, /Kaggen became a rabbit and got in the hunter's way. 192 Salomon (in preparation: 34) notes that "the motif of the body is central to the functioning of the narrative.
A knock on the ribs indicates the presence of a bouncy flank as it correlates with the black hair on the antelope's flank. The /Xam informant, however, places both in a single character interpretation field.
A consideration of Hewitt's work in relation to 'the story in which the Mantis assumes the form of a hartebeest'
His other thigh ran forward and quickly connected to the other side of the mantis' back. The singularity of the story disappears and with it the discourse game in which its meaning-giving power lies. Conflict inevitably ensues in the unruly space of the wilderness, Kaggen's true stage, before the home is reclaimed.
In terms of Hewitt's delineation of narrative functions, this should make them protagonists of the story. This kind of hybridity, a story that possesses elements of the First Times and the current order, cannot be. However, this story exhibits none of the other features that Hewitt ascribes to cluster B narratives.
In the following chapters I will return to the question of the relationship between present and past orders repeatedly. Many of the hunting observances, as I showed earlier in the chapter, do not include it at all. Kaggen occupies the pole associated with nature in the case of narratives and the pole associated with.
The story fits more easily into the structure of hunting rituals, as Kaggen's actions in the story depict the intractable and unpredictable aspects of nature. Such a reading of the story supports some of the functional elements that Hewitt ascribes to stories. Even when structural similarities with other /Xam materials can be found, such as in the example.
The hartebeest and /Kaggen in /Xam discourse
I will concentrate on the obvious figure of the hartebeest from the story and not on a peripheral element, as I will do with the reference to the springbok in my analysis of 'the story of the girl and the stars' in the latter chapter. I explore the ways in which the hartebeest is connected to /Kaggen, as well as other signifiers whose contributions to the overall meaning of the story are intangible, but. Nevertheless, an exploration of these references quickly reveals a broader referential context for the story and reveals the exuberance of the signifier itself.
For further discussion of the presence or absence of death in Early Times, see Chapter B, Chapter B, and Chapter 8, Section i. 209 At this point we could move away from following the hartebeest and turn to the role of signifier. In 'The Story of the Mantis and the Eland' / Kaggen's unsuccessful return home with honey alerts his family group to the fact that something is afoot.
I argue that honey is absent from 'the story of the girls and the wildebeest' as a signifier, but is present as a signifier because of its relationship with signifiers that appear directly in the narrative. I discuss this aspect of them in more detail in 'the story of the sun's armpit' in Chapter 7. Eland would always be a silent but significant presence in the narrative of 'the story of the girls and the hartebeest.' Guenther connects, as we have seen, "the story of the girls and the hartebeest" with sexuality.
This piece is not only about the elk and the deer, it also provides information about the relationship between /Kaggen and the deer which has an obvious and immediate relevance to a consideration of 'the story of the deer and the girls.' . See chapter 6 for a discussion of the /Xam material and the idea of the myth of origin. See chapter 8 for a discussion of this paradox in 'the story of the moon and the hare.'.
