Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Terminology
- Note on References to the Bleek and Lloyd Notebooks
- Introduction
- SECTION 1 TEXT, MYTH AND NARRATIVE
- SECTION 2 INTERPRETING THE |XAM NARRATIVES: A Discussion of Three Books
- SECTION 3 READING THE NARRATIVES
- Chapter 8 Hare's Lip and Crows’ Necks: The Question of Origins and Versions in the |Xam Stories
- Chapter 9 The Story in Which ‘The Children Are Sent to Throw the Sleeping Sun into the Sky’: Power, Identity and Difference in a |Xam Narrative
- Chapter 10 The Story Of ‘The Girl Of The Early Race Who Made Stars’: The Discursive Character of the |Xam Texts
- SECTION 4 CONTROVERSIES
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 9 - The Story in Which ‘The Children Are Sent to Throw the Sleeping Sun into the Sky’: Power, Identity and Difference in a |Xam Narrative
from SECTION 3 - READING THE NARRATIVES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 April 2018
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Terminology
- Note on References to the Bleek and Lloyd Notebooks
- Introduction
- SECTION 1 TEXT, MYTH AND NARRATIVE
- SECTION 2 INTERPRETING THE |XAM NARRATIVES: A Discussion of Three Books
- SECTION 3 READING THE NARRATIVES
- Chapter 8 Hare's Lip and Crows’ Necks: The Question of Origins and Versions in the |Xam Stories
- Chapter 9 The Story in Which ‘The Children Are Sent to Throw the Sleeping Sun into the Sky’: Power, Identity and Difference in a |Xam Narrative
- Chapter 10 The Story Of ‘The Girl Of The Early Race Who Made Stars’: The Discursive Character of the |Xam Texts
- SECTION 4 CONTROVERSIES
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The |Xam texts, I have argued in this book, owe their signifying capacity to their place within |Xam discourse rather than to a location within a universalising narrative of generic types. In this chapter, I will discuss the multivocality of the |Xam texts in greater detail, a quality that, to my mind, resists attempts to reduce them to structural skeletons or to assign them a social function. The basis for this discussion will consist of an examination of the story entitled ‘The Children Are Sent to Throw the Sleeping Sun into the Sky’. I will use two similar versions of the narrative that occur in the Bleek and Lloyd materials. Both versions were related to Lucy Lloyd by ||Kabbo. The first version (L.II.15:487–99) was published in Specimens of Bushman Folklore (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 44–57). The second and longer version, on which I have mostly relied, is to be found in the unpublished notebooks (L.II.35:3150–59 & 3165–236), as well as in Guenther (1989: 75–81). These texts are consistent, on the whole. I will not explore the differences between them, as I did with the story of ‘The Origin of Death’ in the last chapter, but assume instead that taken together they provide a fuller account than if each were to be taken on its own. Lucy Lloyd, it should be noted, has already expanded the narrative before including it in Specimens of Bushman Folklore by incorporating a section that was recorded on the reverse side of Bleek's notebook pages (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 45–51). This piece is a narrative in itself, but it also augments and helps interpret the wider narrative within which Lloyd has embedded it. Much of the story consists of the recounting of the same events by different actors, a feature of ||Kabbo's narratives (Hewitt 1986: 240). The plot is thus quite easily summarised if these repetitive elements are left out. The result appears scanty, however. This is perhaps one of the reasons why Roger Hewitt (91) observes that the plots of such stories are undeveloped. In my opinion, however, the story's real interest resides in its textual elements rather than in its plot. The narrative's repetitive features, I will argue, are integral to its rhetorical effect.
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- Information
- Bushman LettersInterpreting |Xam Narrative, pp. 217 - 240Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2010