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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
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| Title: | Sol Plaatje, orality and the politics of cultural representation |
| Author: | Mpe, Phaswane |
| Year: | 1999 |
| Periodical: | Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa |
| Volume: | 11 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 75-91 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | oral literature literature |
| About person: | Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje (1876-1932) |
| Abstract: | This article examines Sol Plaatje's perceptions of and attempts at preserving Setswana oral art forms. This is done in the light of Eileen Julien's argument that mediation of orality in written texts is often deliberate. She argues that orality must be examined for the ideological and aesthetic ends that it serves, rather than as an agent of establishing authenticity (Africanness) and continuity (of the oral in the written) in African literature. In particular, the question of representations of orality and its aesthetic, ideological and political possibilities, has to be addressed. The article investigates how Plaatje, who recorded and translated Setswana proverbs, poetry and folktales in book form, negotiated his way around questions of correspondence, equivalence and translation across language, medium and often continents. His perception and preservation of the art forms cannot be separated from the ideas that he gained about literature from colonial mission education. In particular, Shakespeare and the Bible became major imaginative templates through which he recast Setswana oral forms in English. The dialectic of cross-referencing and complementarity between orality and literacy is also implied in Plaatje's preservation of Setswana poetry and folktales. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |