Broken strings: interdisciplinarity and /Xam oral literature

Critical Arts, July, 2009 by Anne Solomon

Abstract

Long of interest to archaeologists and anthropologists, the Lloyd-Bleek archive of /Xam narratives and accounts has recently engaged literary scholars and poets. Yet this engagement has produced few dedicated studies, and little critical analysis of conventional anthropological readings. Consideration of the well-known 'Song of the Broken String' suggests that the material demands further attention to methods and neglected interpretive problems, in both anthropological and literary accounts. Such a focus on reading(s) and methods highlights common ground for debate amongst researchers who, despite diverse disciplinary interests, face the same hermeneutical task.

Keywords: Bleek and Lloyd archive, colonialism, interpretation, poetry, San history, San mythology, /Xam narrative

Introduction

The nineteenth-century encounter of Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd with /Xam-speaking San from the northern Cape generated a unique archive. Comprising the only detailed accounts of southern San hunter-gatherers, their lives and worlds, these unique testimonies to an indigenous consciousness are of cross-disciplinary academic interest.

For archaeologists and anthropologists the /Xam testimonies (with English translations/transliterations) are of evidential value: a rich seam to be mined for historical and sociocultural facts. In archaeo-anthropological research, Vinnicombe (1976) and Lewis-Williams (1980, 1981) demonstrated their utility in illuminating San cultural life and 'symbolism', but were largely unconcerned with their aesthetic, 'formal' or poetic qualities. Yet the material includes songs, poems and mythological narratives that, as 'probably the earliest forms of literary expression from the African subcontinent' (Brown 1998: 36), are of cultural and literary interest. Literary attention has focused on rewriting the nineteenth-century translations to enhance their literary qualities and accessibility (in recent scholarship, e.g. Brown 1998; James 2001; Watson 1991 ; and cf. Krog 2004). Watson and James aimed to use poetic form to highlight aspects of the texts assessed as encapsulating a poetic 'truth' (James 2001: 24) or 'poetic idea' (Watson 1991: 16). Brown's approach situated the texts in relation to /Xam society and forms of African oral literature.

Though different disciplines have divergent aims, priorities and 'disciplinary technologies' (Preziosi 1989: passim), researchers working with the /Xam materials are all engaged in essentially the same exercise: interpreting language texts. Disciplinary grounding aside, with the /Xam language extinct all researchers are dealing with English language texts, albeit rooted in a different cultural universe. Literary scholars must therefore familiarise themselves with hunter-gatherer social and cultural dynamics and San histories. Archaeological and anthropological readings should recognise the rhetorical and textual attributes of the materials, even if (or especially because) the aim is extraction of historical and cultural facts rather than aesthetic or literary appreciation.

In practice, the crossover remains limited. Archaeologists and anthropologists typically fail to consider the testimonies as textual and/or imaginative works; literary scholars often defer uncritically to social scientists' readings of 'meaning', despite awareness that such readings are manifestly unconcerned with their literary, discursive or 'expressive' character (cf. Brown 1998: 37). In this article I argue that literary scholars have much to offer interpretations of San ethnographies because of their expertise in language, form, textuality and reading. However, literary approaches might profitably attend further to the 'meanings' of the texts, since, even in translation, there can be no ultimate distinction between 'form(s)' and 'content(s)'. Indeed, this principle is fundamental to poetic recastings of the /Xam materials, in which revised forms are sought to enhance poetic 'meanings'.

Even acknowledging the 'fusion of horizons' that reading entails, and irrespective of the escape of language from intention, engagement with the texts demands attention to 'original meanings' and allied interpretive problems. In fact, critical assessment and debating of meanings and readings is sparse. Received accounts depend significantly on Lewis-Williams's work (especially Lewis-Williams 1980, 1981). His anthropological interpretation, emphasising 'shamanism' and ritual, extends that of Hewitt (1986 [1976])--still the only full-length analysis dedicated to the /Xam texts--which combined anthropological, linguistic and literary approaches, though from a structural perspective that seems problematic today. Lewis-Williams too favoured a structural-semiotic approach (Lewis-Williams 1981), with an influential paper (Lewis-Williams & Dowson 1988) initiating analysis of San arts as surface expressions of underlying neurological structures. (1) This neuropsychological model grounds the hypothesis that San rock arts and some narratives reproduce the contents of shamanic visions.