In the course of this book, I have concentrated on the body of inter - pretation that exists in relation to the |Xam narratives of the Bleek and Lloyd Collection. I have, in addition, attempted the analysis of some of these narratives. It has been my contention that much of the interpretation of the stories reflects the intellectual tradition from which it has emerged rather than the |Xam materials themselves. I have followed Derrida in characterising this tradition as predicated on the myth of the lost origin and a metaphysics of presence. I have detected this complex in the interest in the figure of the ‘Bushman’ in its various manifestations and the way in which this figure has been constructed as a pre-historical, pure huntergatherer with little relationship to the heterogeneity of colonial or postcolonial space. In the interpretation of the materials, I have especially discovered the metaphysics of presence in the use of universal, crosscultural, comparative discourses involving, particularly, the trickster and the idea of the myth of origin, as well as in the concentration on the function of the stories. I have also argued that the lack of attention to the detail of individual stories points to a hermeneutic practice that is more interested in overarching or underlying patterns and structures than it is in the signifying practices of the |Xam discursive tradition itself.

I have attempted in a discussion of a number of narratives to offer a mode of interpretation that concentrates on their details. I have discussed these stories in terms of their own modes of signification, situated within the wider circuits of |Xam discursive practice. The details of the stories, I maintain, are not subordinate to a hidden social function, nor are the clusters of elements in the stories mere variations on universal themes. The stories do, however, signify in the wider intertextual field of |Xam discursive practice. For reasons I make clear at different points in the book, my interpretation cannot elude the interpretations I criticise, and I cannot pretend to evade their shortcomings. I have tried to compensate for this inescapable feature of intellectual practice by opting for a self-reflexive, ironic and tentative mode of analysis.