San Representation : Politics, Practice and Possibilities

This book examines various aspects of San and Khoe representation, in the sense of both representation of the Khoe and San by others, including academic writing and also representation of various sorts by people who have been identified as Khoe or San in the past or who themselves claim such an identity today. This book was originally published as two special issues of Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies.

The San or Bushmen of southern Africa have exerted a fascination over generations of writers and scholars, from novelists and anarchists to ethnologists and geneticists, and also occupy a special place in the popular imagination as the First People and the contemporary remnant of spiritual and natural man. The ways in which particular groups of people from southern Africa have been traditionally categorised and positioned as objects of scrutiny by a range of academic disciplines is increasingly being contested and questioned. There is a growing awareness of the cultural, economic and genetic entanglement of the peoples of the region.

This book examines how San and Khoe people are represented, by others, as well as by those who identify as San or Khoe. It interrogates the ways in which disciplines, through their methodologies and ways of authorising knowledge, not only "discover" or "reveal" knowledge but produce it in ways that involve complex and often ambiguous relationships with power structures and forms of intellectual, symbolic and cultural capital. One major trend that emerges is that the San and Khoe can no longer be seen as people of the past but have to be acknowledged as contemporary and socially situated individuals and communities who are increasingly contesting the representations which others have imposed on them.

This book was originally published as two special issues of Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies.