‘van die oorspronklike lippe’ (‘from the original lips’): The 19th-Century Cape Colony, Holographic Archaeology and the Historicity of Gideon von Wielligh’s /xam–Afrikaans Collection

Abstract

This article investigates the historicity of Gideon von Wielligh’s collection of /xam folklore, history, and observational accounts published predominantly in Afrikaans during the early 20th century. Von Wielligh’s collection is often portrayed as suspect in relation to the ‘great’ /xam archive, namely that of Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd – with accusations of plagiarism a common charge. Through a holographic archaeological reading, an approach conceptualised by drawing on linguistic archaeology and philology specifically, and the holographic paradigm and archaeology of knowledge in general, the article analyses the traces of /xam in Von Wielligh’s otherwise Afrikaans texts. The reading focuses on Von Wielligh’s texts on the one hand and Specimens of Bushman Folklore (1911) on the other. Since Specimens was the only selection from the Bleek and Lloyd archive to which von Wielligh had access when he published his collection between 1919 and 1921, it is, within holographic archaeological terms, the ‘urtext’ or ‘source of certainty’. In contrast, von Wielligh’s texts are regarded as the ‘source of suspicion’, with the /xam linguistic data within it ‘dated’ in relation to Specimens. The analysis leads to the following three conclusions: first, von Wielligh’s command of /xam linguistic data validates the authenticity of the collection; second, we can use von Wielligh’s recordings to change the idea of the extant /xam archive in a way that challenges the fixation on Bleek and Lloyd; third, the politics of intellectual history, such as the defaming of von Wielligh, is tied not simply to ideas but to the history of the book as a material object. This acknowledgement and changed perspective on the /xam and the available records could, in turn, lead to deeper and more generative research on the /xam specifically, Khoesan studies generally and South (and southern) African studies more broadly.