The state as a whiteman, the whiteman as a /’hun: personhood, recognition, and the politics of knowability in the Kalahari

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.