Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- PART I TO DRESS: BACKGROUND AND PERSPECTIVES
- PART II DRESSED IN SOCIAL STRUCTURE: THE BUSHMAN DRESS OF DOROTHEA BLEEK
- PART III DRESSED IN GROUP RELATIONS: THE BUSHMAN DRESS OF LOUIS FOURIE
- PART IV DRESSED AS TOLD: INTERPRETING DRESS PRACTICES FROM/XAM BUSHMAN NARRATIVES
- Chapter 7 Body Modifications: How to Live Life in a Sometimes-Unpredictable World
- Chapter 8 The Embedded Properties of Clothing: Human and Animal Relations
- Chapter 9 Identities in the Making: Being Dressed
- Conclusion: A World of Dress
- Appendix 1 Note on Nomenclature
- Appendix 2 Map of Southern Africa
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 7 - Body Modifications: How to Live Life in a Sometimes-Unpredictable World
from PART IV - DRESSED AS TOLD: INTERPRETING DRESS PRACTICES FROM/XAM BUSHMAN NARRATIVES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 May 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- PART I TO DRESS: BACKGROUND AND PERSPECTIVES
- PART II DRESSED IN SOCIAL STRUCTURE: THE BUSHMAN DRESS OF DOROTHEA BLEEK
- PART III DRESSED IN GROUP RELATIONS: THE BUSHMAN DRESS OF LOUIS FOURIE
- PART IV DRESSED AS TOLD: INTERPRETING DRESS PRACTICES FROM/XAM BUSHMAN NARRATIVES
- Chapter 7 Body Modifications: How to Live Life in a Sometimes-Unpredictable World
- Chapter 8 The Embedded Properties of Clothing: Human and Animal Relations
- Chapter 9 Identities in the Making: Being Dressed
- Conclusion: A World of Dress
- Appendix 1 Note on Nomenclature
- Appendix 2 Map of Southern Africa
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The narratives presented in this chapter all exemplify different practices of body modification, such as fragrance, body paint, cuts and tattoos. Some are set within the time of the Early Race and others are presented within the material present, but they are all educative and instructive in the way that they describe a range of normative actions necessary for survival and subsistence, peace, harmony and affluence.
The first section below concerns the Rain, and how dressing the body of the water as well as the human body prevents the terrible consequences of the angry Rain. The next section concerns the use of Ssho /oa, and different ways of dressing the body in order to make the game act according to the needs of the hunter. The narratives also offer examples of the embedded animal properties in clothing and of contexts of transformation that are essential to the argument in chapter 8. For the time being, however, it is more pertinent to point out how elements of dress seem to have been of direct relevance to how people co-habited in the world with other beings.
The main stories under discussion in each section are presented in summary with selected citations, followed by a more analytical synthesis and discussion.
‘ Acting nicely’ towards the Rain
‘ What the Rain Does to People and Their Things When He is Angry’
If the Rain gets angry, it attacks the huts and the people with hail and cold wind. It is the new water that is angry if people throw stones into it. The man who caused the Rain's anger is carried off first and dropped into the pond. In the pond he becomes a frog.
Then the people one after another go out and fly up into the sky, the cold wind blows them up into it. Then they keep coming out of it, floating down and falling into the pond, where they become frogs. Meanwhile the karosses become springbok which lie down and roll, thereby shaking out (the water from their skins), while the sticks and branches (of the hut) become bushes; then the arrows (or reeds) just stand about, and so do the quivers.
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- Information
- Dress as Social RelationsAn Interpretation of Bushman Dress, pp. 142 - 147Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2018