Research Articles (Anthropology and Sociology)

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Browsing by Subject "Authenticity"

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    Ons is Boesmans: commentary on the naming of Bushmen in the southern Kalahari
    (National Inquiry Services Centre, 2015) Ellis, William F.
    This paper examines academic debates about the nomenclature of the San in light of recent ethnographic data. Academic debates centre around two aspects: the apparent complicity of the term �bushman� in construing the San as lower on the hierarchy of race and class; and the construction of the San as being in close contact with animals and nature. Academics have sought to resolve this dilemma of complicity by adopting self-referential terms, which would allow them to overcome the effacement of cultural and linguistic variation. Critically, the paper argues that this turn to self-referential terms is problematic in the case of the ?Khomani San of the southern Kalahari because the San themselves claim �bushman� as their identity. The analysis suggests that the ?Khomani San claim this name for themselves in a context of developmental needs. Thus, ?Khomani San chose the name �Bushman� for themselves because it can be commoditised.
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    Simulacral, genealogical, auratic and representational failure: Bushman authenticity as methodological collapse
    (Taylor & Francis, 2014) Ellis, William F.
    This article engages with the concept of authenticity as deployed in anthropology. The first section critiques authenticity as a simple reference to cultural purity, a traditional isomorphism or historical verisimilitude or as an �ethnographic authenticity�. Demarcation of authenticity must take into account philosophical literature that argues that authenticity is an existential question of the �modern� era. Thus, authenticity is offered to us as individuals as a remedy for the maladies of modernity: alienation, anomie and alterity. Authenticity is then discussed as a question of value within an economy of cultural politics that often draws on simulacra, creating cultural relics of dubious origin. The final section discusses various methodological failures and problematiques that are highlighted by the concern for, and scrutiny of, authenticity. The first is the simulacral failure. The subjects of anthropology are mostly real flesh-and-blood people-on-the-ground with real needs. In contrast is the simulacral subject, the brand, the tourist image, the media image or the ever-familiar hyper-real bushmen. Lastly, the article considers what Spivak calls �withholding� � a resistance to authentic representation by the Other. Resistance suggests a need for a radically altered engagement with the Other that includes both a deepening, and an awareness, of anthropology as a process of common ontological unfolding.