Broken strings: interdisciplinarity and /Xam oral literature

Critical Arts, July, 2009 by Anne Solomon

   taking their thoughts away from us.... For they ought to look if we
   are still at the same place. They ought to look down on us.... Then
   I should see whether it were true, that in dying they took their
   thoughts away from us.... But their thoughts seem to go away from
   us, so that when we call upon them we do not see what they are
   doing for us, that we may see whether they still know us. For we
   call without getting an answer from them; they will not talk to us,
   that we may know! (Bleek 1935: 30)

Rainmakers (the 'gallopers' mentioned above) were implored as follows: 'Do you not know me?/You do not seem to know my hut' - a variation on the theme of being forgotten or ignored. Lamentation in the /Xam texts approaches a conventional rhetorical form, employed specifically in relation to relationships with dead kin who seem to have abandoned the living (or, in !nuin-|kuiten's case, because of his 'death'). Dia!kwain was the narrator of several of these laments and further attention might usefully be paid to individual narrators' styles.

This method of reading texts in relation to other texts is, I suggest, essential in establishing the 'meanings' of the /Xam testimonies, not least because it allows such quasi-formal conventions or rhetorical devices to be identified. Placing Xa:a-tin's song in relation to similar lamentations supports the hypothesis that SoBS too concerns relations with negligent spirits. Identifying such formal regularities also highlights the account's literary status, conforming to criteria other than factuality.

With the attention to reading that is central to literary approaches, literary scholars may contribute to understanding the /Xam materials by critically examining readings of 'original meanings' in tandem with exploring literary qualities. Literary scholars may also contribute to allied debates about ethnography that ultimately concern language and/or literature. Lewis-Williams's contention (e.g. 1980) that southern San texts are phrased in 'trance metaphors' is such an argument. This 'metaphorical' reading, and the notion of shamanic metaphors as 'enduring knowledge structures' (Whitley 2008), is insensitive to the character of language, myth and/or literature, as well as visual arts (cf. Solomon 2008). Underlying such ideas are problematic notions of language (and art) as reflecting neurological structures and encoding neurophysiological functioning, rather than actively shaping experience.

Seeking 'original meaning' is not necessarily another kind of search for fact and evidence, but may be conceptualised as an hermeneutic exercise (basic to all disciplinary approaches) that addresses persistent positivistic and scientistic thinking in archaeology. Equally, 'original meanings' - no matter how fugitive, fleeting or indeterminate - are crucial to debates over recuperations and appropriations of indigenous literature. Fidelity to the originals may not be the only, or primary, criterion when assessing reworkings of the /Xam testimonies, but it is always fundamental.