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ABSTRACT
The word busongo names a kind of technological ‘know-how’ across a large number of languages in south central Africa, a distribution that is a testament to the word’s age. This essay reconstructs the history of the invention and changing meanings of busongo from its first millennium origins and tracks its use to the present using the methods of comparative historical linguistics. The resulting history illustrates the interplay of affective and sensory dimensions of technology in the creation of new understandings of technological practices in medieval central Africa. As a form of conceptual history, the story of busongo also raises new questions about the relationship between tacit knowledge, explicit knowledge and speech: is speech a form of tacit knowledge? If so, what are the implications for the distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge?
Acknowledgements
I appreciate the invitation to participate in this issue and the helpful comments and suggestions of the editors, Pablo Gómez and Gabriela Soto Laveaga. Three generous colleagues, Cyrus Mody, Robyn d’Avignon and Joshua Grace, took the time to read and make suggestions, sharpening the arguments here and providing more fodder than I was able to digest for this piece. I appreciate their insights and improvements and take responsibility for any remaining errors.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Fowler, Dictionary of Ila, 64; and Mukanzubo, Chitonga-English Dictionary, 773.
2. I borrow these glosses of “science” and “technology” from Mavhunga, “Introduction,” 10. See also Pickstone, Ways of Knowing.
3. Among many, two influential examples: Marx, “Technology: the Emergence”; Schatzberg, “Technik Comes to America.”
4. For an introduction to the methods of comparative historical linguistics as used by historians in Africa, see Ehret, History and the Testimony; de Luna and Fleisher, Speaking with Substance and citations therein. For other examples, consider Schoenbrun, Green Place, Good Place; Stephens, History of African Motherhood; and Vansina, How Societies are Born.
5. For studies of this kind of interaction and translation-work in Africa, see Landau, Realm of the Word; and Peterson, Creative Writing.
6. Cf. Guy and Thabane, “Technology, Ethnicity, and Ideology.”
7. On the construction of boundaries between technology and non-technology, see Lerman, “Categories of Difference.”
8. The name “transformative” technology comes from Herbert, Iron, Gender and Power. The “professoriate of the hunt” discussed in Mavhunga, Transient Workspaces also belongs to this class of endeavor.
9. Bastin and Schadeberg, eds., “Bantu Lexical Reconstructions 3,” ID 670 and derivatives.
10. de Luna, Collecting Food, Cultivating People.
11. This and the next two paragraphs build on material in de Luna, Collecting Food, Cultivating People; and de Luna, “Marksmen and the Bush.”
12. Archaeological data locate and date the invention of the bush as a transfer of metallurgy out of the village between the 7th and 11th centuries. For the full list of citations to regional archaeological studies illustrating this pattern, see de Luna, “Marksmen and the Bush,” 49. n. 26.
13. Keane applies Peircean semiotics to a reading of the material world in “Signs are not the Garb.”
14. de Luna, “Marksmen and the Bush.”
15. Bastin and Schadeberg, eds., “Bantu Lexical Reconstructions 3.” ID 644-5; Fowler, Dictionary of Ila, 242, 652–3; Mukanzubo, Chitonga-English Dictionary, 970, see also 861 for cisokwe. Consider the related term cisoko: ‘a bush, a hiding-place, refuge; the usual way; the origin or nature of a thing’ in Fowler, Dictionary of Ila, 129.
16. The heteronormative cast to this discussion masks the complex histories of sexuality yet to be researched for early African pasts. This is a glaring absence in the historiography.
17. Eugenia Herbert has eloquently written about how sex explained and intersected with the transformative power involved in activities like smelting, hunting and chiefly investiture (many others have contributed to this vast literature). Herbert, Iron, Gender, and Power. See also Schmidt Iron Technology; Turner, Forest of Symbols. See de Luna, “Marksmen and the Bush” for ethnographic examples from the Botatwe area.
18. For examples integrating studies of science and technology with the sensory studies, see Parr, Sensing Changes; Pinch and Bijsterveld, eds., Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies. For examples integrating STS with emotions studies, consider Malin, Feeling Mediated as well as Dror, et al., “Introduction.” For an example that links all three, consider Dant, “Work of Repair.”
19. Edgerton, “Innovation, Technology, or History.”
20. Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension.
21. Collins, “Language as a Repository”; See also Collins, “Interactional Expertise”; Collins, Tacit and Explicit Knowledge.
22. Mukerji, “Cultural Power of Tacit.” See also Deleuze, Difference and Repetition.
23. These points – and the necessity for a longer treatment – arise from much appreciated exchanges with Josh Grace.
24. My thanks to Cyrus Mody who raised this question in his thoughtful commentary on my paper at the Society for the History of Technology meetings in Philadelphia in October, 2017. Collins makes a similar observation in Tacit and Explicit Knowledge but does not consider the historical implications.
25. In Tacit and Explicit Knowledge, Collins suggests that it is not tacit knowledge that deserves explanation, but the notion of explicit knowledge.
26. For example, consider the significance of Antique and medieval ways of knowing to arguments about early modern pasts in Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship; and Mukerji, Impossible Engineering. How might linguistic evidence buttress or complicate their arguments?
27. Mavhunga is paraphrasing Masolo. Quoted from Mavhunga, “Introduction,” 22.