The state as a whiteman, the whiteman as a/’hun: personhood, recognition, and the politics of knowability in the Kalahari

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the loving memory of !A|'xuni.The Ju|'hoansi of east central Namibia sometimes refer to the state as a whiteman and to the whiteman as a /'hun (steenbok). In this article, I contextualize these naming practices by tracing the history of colonial encounters on the fringes of the Western Kalahari through a small-scale animist perspective. I then discuss what this means for the concept of 'recognition', which I treat as a two-way intersubjective process of making oneself un/knowable to others. I argue that the Ju|'hoansi have engaged in parallel processes of mis/recognition vis-à-vis their colonial Others. By failing to enter into reciprocal relations with the Ju|'hoansi, the whiteman and the state have remained outside of the Ju|'hoansi's social universe and have thus compromised their own personhood. Rethinking colonial encounters from an animist perspective in the KalahariOne windy early afternoon in November 2018, I was sitting in the company of four young Ju|'hoan men in the shadow of a small brick house in the resettlement farm of Skoonheid in east central Namibia. 1 The men were passing a hand-rolled cigarette as Kxao 2 -a tall, slim man in his mid-twenties -was recounting a recent successful hunting trip. One night, Kxao had dreamt that two fat warthogs were standing in a particular spot by a Boer farm's fence. The young man believed that the dream was sent to him by Jesus, who had taken pity on him because of his poor luck of late. The next morning, Kxao approached a friend he goes hunting with and, after discussing their chances, they convinced one another that they should go. The two men took their metal spears and ventured in the direction of the spot Kxao had seen in his dream, followed by two hunting dogs. After walking for some hours, they stopped to rest; then, just as they were lighting a cigarette, the dogs sensed something and alarmed the two hunters. The men followed the dogs to the spot Kxao had seen in his dream and there they were:

Thinking with relations in nature conservation? A case study of the Etosha National Park and Haiǁom

“…In this respect, they do not differ from what has been reported for some other KhoeSan groups in Southern Africa (e.g. Guenther 2015; Low 2014;Ninkova 2022) and many other indigenous groups around the world. These humananimal relations are one particular expression of what has been called 'animism' or 'new animism' (e.g.…”

“…2005; 2013; 2015), and by many others who have either published on specific cases of hunter‐gatherer ecologies, ontologies, and animisms or contributed to theoretical debates in the fields of relational ontologies and new animism, as well as by scholars from the fields of posthumanism, multispecies studies, and environmental humanities. I also drew on writers who have engaged with ontologies of other KhoeSan groups in Southern Africa (Guenther, 2015; 2020 a ; 2020 b ; Hannis & Sullivan 2018; Low 2007; 2012; 2014; Ninkova 2022; Schnegg 2019; 2021; Sullivan, 2013; 2017). With this new academic equipment, I revisited the material gathered between 2000 and 2006 (interviews, field notes, field trip protocols, and datasets on plants and places) and looked at it in new light.…”