The Discursive Character of the /Xam Texts

This paper discusses a single /Xam narrative from the nineteenth-century Bleek and Lloyd archive of Southern African Bushman materials. [1] It delivers a critique of functionalist and structuralist approaches to the materials, as well as of the tendency to characterise the narratives that concern the sun, moon and stars as chiefly aetiological. The paper aims to situate the narrative within a wider /Xam discursive field and to demonstrate something of its protean multivocity. While the paper concentrates on the /Xam materials, it also seeks to address questions that relate to the interpretation of folklore and oral literature in general

Art · Character (mathematics · Folklore · Girl · Interpretation (philosophy · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Race (biology · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies · Gender Studies · History · Philosophy · Psychology · South African History and Culture

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