Reflecting on the conference

Abstract

I found the conference on San Representation a refreshing occasion where scholars from different academic disciplines and racial and ethnic groups re-engaged with one of Africa’s First Peoples. In many ways the presentations made each and every one of us obliquely or directly counterpoise her or his own identity with that of the imagined San. This was not always reassuring, since there were no San or Bushmen scholars to speak for themselves, or even to speak about us ‘outsider’ researchers who depend on their cultural capital for our own academic careers. Indeed, at least one paper raised the issue of mentoring San graduate and postgraduate researchers who are a necessarily intellectual alter-ego to all those who attended the conference. This is a practical redressing of a glaring absence, where each one of us spoke on behalf of the San, notwithstanding our varied hesitations induced by that reflexive tendency that requires exposure of how we come to know about the San, why we want to know and for whose benefit.