In search of the "real KhoiSan". Museal space as a place of negotiating the cultural identity of South African Natives
##The present paper is a contribution to the studies of representation. It takes under consideration the role of material culture (for example museum objects) in the constitution of a new social representation. In the case of South Africa the paper discusses the problems arising within the negotiation of a new representation of the KhoiSan who see themselves as the indigenous people of the country.
The way in which the non-white cultures have been represented in the museums during the apartheid has been a bone of contention that has brought disgrace to the discipline. Nowadays the museums try to find a radical new approach regarding the representation of the indigenous people in South Africa. But the corrective steps taken by the museums in terms of the changed situation are held up by the political ambitions of the KhoiSan. The aim of the KhoiSan is not to support the deconstructionist attempts of the academic discourse of ethnicity but to find a pattern for their collective identity. The KhoiSan's politics of identity ruin the revisionist efforts of the museums to deconstruct their own practices as a part of the apartheid system.##
Keywords: KhoiSan and identity, identity of KhoiSan, deconstructing KhoiSan representation, representation of KhoiSan, museums and KhoiSan, Apartheid and KhoiSan
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