Text or Presence: On Rereading the /Xam and the Interpretation of their Narratives
Abstract
The Bleek and Lloyd collection of /Xam materials has elicited a variety of responses from scholars in different disciplines. These include interpretation of the texts, history and biography. Most of this writing has not been subjected to close criticism. I will argue in this paper that Jacques Derrida’s critique of the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Claude Lévi-Strauss in Of Grammatology (1976) is applicable to some of the writing that has been produced in relation to the Bleek and Lloyd archive. Derrida’s work also illuminates Bleek’s ideological framework and the attitudes displayed towards the Bushmen during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Opsomming
ʼn Verskeidenheid response uit verskillende dissplines het gevolg op die Bleek en Lloyd-versameling van /Xam tekste. Dit sluit interpretasies van die tekste self in, die geskiedenis en biografiëe. Die meeste van hierdie werke is nog nie blootgestel aan noukeurige ondersoek nie. Ek voer in hierdie artikel aan dat Jacques Derrida se kritiek van die werke van Jean-Jacques Rousseau en Claude Lévi-Strauss in Of Grammatology (1976) ook van toepassing is op die literatuur voortspruitend uit die Bleek en Lloyd-versameling. Derrida se werk lig Bleek se ideologiese raamwerk en die houdings teenoor die Boesmans gedurende die negentiende en twintigste eeue uit.
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