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In spite of its evident presence in Southern Africa's rich cultural heritage, the bird metaphor has received surprisingly little attention. The cultural materials analysed in this article include children's stories, songs, heroic poetry and ethnographic accounts of rites of passage. At first the data seems to suggest that bird symbolism could be interpreted in terms of a simple dual conception of gender identity. Some magical birds signify the prowess and authority of men. Others could be linked symbolically to the procreative powers of women. On further reflection, however, we identified a third category of more ambiguously gendered birds. It is contended that this additional bird type can be explained in terms of the female-male dialectic that shaped gender relations in small-scale societies. It is further proposed tentatively that the bird metaphor could have provided women with a symbolic means to negotiate their identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The materials collected from /Xam informants in the second half of the nineteenth century by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd have received attention from historians, anthropologists, rock art interpreters, and poets. Generic categories have been imported into /Xam studies in ways that are derivative and critically unreflexive. This article argues that the consequences have been far-reaching for the reading of the texts as well as for the ways that the materials have been positioned ontologically and in relation to history and period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In enacting his ritual of kingship, the Xhosa imbongi (praise poet) in South Africa is marked by his accoutrements and his artistic performance as separated from society; he assumes a sacred stance in a transitional position and effects the social incorporation of his audiences; he mediates between chief and subjects, serving as both upholder of the chief's status and as social critic. His liminal location invites comparison with other trickster figures of African mythology and folklore like Ananse and Legba. This perspective explains the occasional self-belittling assertions by the imbongi, as well as the imbongi's license to criticize and use ribald language with impunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there have been several attempts, through UNESCO and other international cultural agencies, to preserve African oral 'folklore'. Many of the supporting arguments for such actions are based on a simplistic binary model of African oral culture, contrasting modern, individually authored, cultural products backed up by copyright laws, with anonymous, static and collective pre-capitalist cultural traditions. This article argues that the binary is itself questionable, since the collective nature of oral culture is more in the reception than the creation of artworks. In addition, a simplistic account of a shift from oral to literary/mediated culture as a shift from traditional to modern, ignores the complexity and dynamism of African cultural responses to globalisation. While not denying the possibility of African artists being exploitated in a modern context of industrial cultural production, the article suggests that African ambiguity to legalistic intellectual property rights may be part of a larger Third World dialectic struggling against globalised culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]