Textual production and contested histories in a performance of the Namibian storyteller Dawid Plaatjies

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Periodical article

Title:	Textual production and contested histories in a performance of the Namibian storyteller Dawid Plaatjies
Author:	Willemse, Hein
Year:	2003
Periodical:	Research in African Literatures
Volume:	34
Issue:	3
Pages:	27-45
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Namibia
Subjects:	Nama oral literature literature history ethnic groups
About person:	Dawid Plaatjies
External link:	http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/research_in_african_literatures/v034/34.3willemse.pdf
Abstract:	The author has positioned his ongoing research of Afrikaans oral tradition within a performance framework exploring individual communicative events and the sociopolitical contexts of contemporary articulations. One such event was the telling of a historical, authentically indigenous tale by Dawid Plaatjies, a storyteller born in the town of Keetmanshoop (originally /Nu/goaes), southern Namibia, in 1921. The author's fieldwork in 1993 provided Plaatjies with a rare opportunity to publicly address what he regarded as the common disregard for, or at least silence on, the role of the Kharo-!oab or the Plaatjies people, in the history of /Nu/goaes and southern Namibia. Following a brief summary of the historical context of the Nama people and the role of the Kharo-!oab in the history of Keetmanshoop, the author explores the textual production strategies that Plaatjies engaged in his performance, which was recorded in July 1993. Bibliogr., notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]