Wilhelm Bleek and the Khoisan Imagination: A Study of Censorship, Genocide and Colonial Science

Abstract

In 1864 Wilhelm Bleek published a collection of Khoi narratives titled Reynard the Fox in South Africa, or Hottentot Fables and Tales. This paper critically examines this foundational event in South African literary history, arguing that it entailed a Victorian circumscription of the Khoisan imagination, containing its libidinal and transgressive energies within the generic limits of the naïve European children's folktale. Bleek's theories of language and race are examined as providing the context for his editorial approach to Khoi narratives in which the original 'nakedness' was written out. The extent of Bleek's censorship of indigenous orature becomes visible when comparing his 'fables' to a largely unknown corpus of Khoi tales, collected by the German ethnographer Leonhard Schultze during the Nama genocide in the early 20 th century. The paper compares these collections of oral narratives, and suggests that this has implications for the way the famous Bleek and Lloyd /Xam archive was subsequently constituted in the 1870s. Wilhelm Bleek's interventions in civilizing the Khoisan imagination marks a move away from a potentially Rabelaisian trajectory in South African literature through which the Khoisan could be represented and represent themselves. In admitting a sanitized indigenous orature into the colonial literary order, it is argued that Bleek helped to create a restrictive cultural politics in South Africa from which the country is yet to emerge fully.

Smoking Around the Campfire: A San Encounter with the Colonial

“…She notes of the colonial secretary, Donald Moodie, for instance, that it was 'ironically incongruous' that he pursued enquires into the origins of the San in 'his leisure hours in Natal' while planning military action against them in the course of his official duties. The German missionary Leonhard Schultze, who collected Nama stories while accompanying a German expedition of extermination against the Nama, is an extreme example of this fracture (Wittenberg 2012). However, many other colonial officials were in the same ambiguous position, notably Louis Anthing (De Prada-Samper 2012a), who administered the frontier zone but also tried to prevent the genocide conducted against the San there.…”

The Khoisan Origins of the Interconnected World View in Antjie Krog'sBegging to be Black

“…An interesting case could be made that the recuperation of the San and their positioning as quintessential spiritual man has been accompanied by the suppression of their sexuality, a privileging of "the transcendental over the profane, and the mythic over that of the mundane" (Wittenberg 2012). There are a great variety of popular, academic, metropolitan and frontier perspectives to consider over a broad stretch of time, but it can be noted here that the interests of philologists and physical anthropologists diverged in the late nineteenth century in a way that corresponded to the physical/spiritual divide.…”

“…Herman Wittenberg (2012) describes, in relation to Bleek's Reynard the Fox (1864), how "Bleek's scientific and editorial approach not only censored scatological material, but also suppressed a rich vein of erotic and sexually explicit narrative that was strongly present in the indigenous imagination." Herman Wittenberg (2012) describes, in relation to Bleek's Reynard the Fox (1864), how "Bleek's scientific and editorial approach not only censored scatological material, but also suppressed a rich vein of erotic and sexually explicit narrative that was strongly present in the indigenous imagination."…”

The boer and the jackal: satire and resistance in Khoi orature

“…Schultze's 67 tales were collected during extended field trips in the northern Cape and southern Namibia. While Schultze's scientific work became entangled with and tainted by his involvement in imperial Germany's notorious Herero and Nama wars of extermination (see Wittenberg 2012), his fluency in Nama, and his rigorous fieldwork methodology of transcription produced a qualitatively different body of narratives:…”

“…As shown elsewhere (Wittenberg 2012), Bleek suppresses the disruptive, erotic and scatological elements of indigenous narration that he deems unsuitable for a Victorian reading public. As Bleek himself put it in the preface, to make these Hottentot fables readable for the general public, a few slight omissions and alterations of what would otherwise have been too naked for the English eye were necessary.…”