INTRODUCTION

Controversy has attended rock art interpretation and the applicability of the category of hunter-gatherer to the Bushmen in the Kalahari and Namibia. However, as I have noted before, controversy has been curiously absent from discussions about the reading of the |Xam narratives. In this chapter, I wish, at least, to stimulate some theoretical discussion in relation to these narra - tives by considering one of the recurring questions in the broader field of folklore and mythography, that of the distinction among genres of oral literature. I will focus, in particular, on the designation of the |Xam materials as mythology. My interest is not so much in mythology itself, however, as in the ideological and hermeneutic act of reading the narratives in terms of this category. I do not hope to discuss all the implications of describing the |Xam materials as myths, nor can I provide an exhaustive examination of the way in which different writers have used the term in relation to the |Xam texts. What I wish to do, rather, is point out some of the theoretical and ideological implications of the use of such a term and initiate a debate about its deployment in the study of the |Xam narratives. By doing so, I hope to provoke discussion rather than present a watertight case. The chapter also includes a consideration of fresh approaches to reading the narratives and a short examination of a narrative that has been identified as a myth.

‘Mythology’ was a potent ideological sign for Wilhelm Bleek. In his report to parliament in 1873, Bleek maintained that the importance of the |Xam materials ‘lies in the mythological character of the stories’, a characteristic that separates Bushman from Bantu literature since the latter have ‘legends, but, strictly speaking, no mythologies’ (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 445). Bank (2006: 158) argues that Bleek was more interested in myths than in ‘legends or information of an everyday kind’, since he believed that the ‘Bushman mind’ was more closely related to the European mind of distant times and was of a far more poetic cast than ‘“the mind” of Bantu-speakers’.