The state as a whiteman, the whiteman as a /’hun : personhood, recognition, and the politics of knowability in the Kalahari
Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: The article is dedicated to the loving memory of !A|’xuni. The Ju|’hoansi of east central Namibia sometimes refer to the state as a whiteman and to the whiteman as a /’hun (steenbok). In this article, I contextualize these naming practices by tracing the history of colonial encounters on the fringes of the Western Kalahari through a small‐scale animist perspective. I then discuss what this means for the concept of ‘recognition’, which I treat as a two‐way intersubjective process of making oneself un/knowable to others. I argue that the Ju|’hoansi have engaged in parallel processes of mis/recognition vis‐à‐vis their colonial Others. By failing to enter into reciprocal relations with the Ju|’hoansi, the whiteman and the state have remained outside of the Ju|’hoansi's social universe and have thus compromised their own personhood.
Author: Velina Ninkova
Institution: UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $4,000
OpenAlex ID: W4214701230