Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Note to the Reader
- 1 Introduction: Unity in Diversity
- 2 Colonial Intellectual
- 3 On the Origin
- 4 Human/Animal
- 5 Writing Bushmen
- 6 Language and Blood
- 7 Colonial Family Crypt
- 8 Bushman Literature
- 9 Conclusion: Presentiment
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
5 - Writing Bushmen
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Note to the Reader
- 1 Introduction: Unity in Diversity
- 2 Colonial Intellectual
- 3 On the Origin
- 4 Human/Animal
- 5 Writing Bushmen
- 6 Language and Blood
- 7 Colonial Family Crypt
- 8 Bushman Literature
- 9 Conclusion: Presentiment
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
Summary
I know that some learned men have asserted that between some human races and the larger apes there is only a slight difference of degree, and none of kind. As I absolutely reject such an insult to humanity, I may be also allowed to take no notice of the exaggerations by which it is usually answered. I believe, of course, that human races are unequal; but I do not think that any of them are like the brute, or to be classed with it. The lowest tribe, the most backward and miserable variety of the human species, is at least capable of imitation; and I have no doubt that if we take one of the most hideous bushmen, we could develop—I do not say in him, if he is already grown up, but in his son or at any rate his grandson—sufficient intelligence to make his acts correspond to a certain degree of civilization, even if this required some conscious effort of study on his part. Are we to infer that the people to which he belongs could be civilized on our model? This would be a hasty and superficial conclusion. From the practice of the arts and professions invented under an advanced civilization, it is a far cry from that civilization itself. … There is a great difference between imitation and conviction.
Arthur de Gobineau, “Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races”In his discussion of the radical translations effected as part of the colonial encounter, Stephen Greenblatt remarks on the importance of gesture. Prospective colonialists resorted to improvised communicative signs, a universal language of hands according to writers such as Augustine and Quintillian, involving the whole body, common to all people.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Representing BushmenSouth Africa and the Origin of Language, pp. 67 - 79Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009