Heteroglossic heritage and the first-place of the Kalahari

Abstract

Using Bakhtin’s concept of ‘heteroglossia,’ this article examines the layering and intersections of multiple claims to heritage places that form dialogics about heritage truths. Social groups derive their collective-self, in part, through association with a place, or places, to which they attribute their origin, described here as a ‘first-place.’ Identity maintenance can occur through the praxis of heritage tourism in which group members exhibit emotional performances during their visits to a first-place. Through the extended example of the Tsodilo Hills in Botswana and the various social groups – local ethnic communities, national citizens, and segments of the global community – who each form a collective-self using Tsodilo as a first-place, this article addresses the roles of science (archaeology) and tourism, and their interplay, in enabling several languages or dialects of belonging to coexist without dissonance. The argument is that heteroglossic heritage is possible because visitors’ affect-mediated encounters with heritage places facilitate the reaffirmation of their shared group identity. While all heritage discourse is heteroglossic, the article focuses on claims to a first-place set within a postcolonial context of nation building and modernising that involves the politicisation and re-spatialization of heritage places through tourism development.

Keywords:

• Heteroglossia
• heritage tourism
• postcolony
• affect
• Botswana

Notes

1. ‘Collective-self’ is a concept derived from psychology that refers to how individuals are able to identify themselves to a group. It is not synonymous with the concept of ‘community,’ unless self-defined.

2. Social group members collectively conceive of, or imagine, a first-place. These places may not exist in a physical sense, or there may be other forms of evidence to dispute claims to physical places, such as land claims.

3. For my purposes, I see the overlap between pilgrims and tourists as heritage tourists and incorporate pilgrimage as one facet of heritage tourism, which also includes leisure tourists (see Di Giovine’s [2013] work on the subject).

4. In 2014, Botswana’s Okavango Delta, the world’s largest in-land delta, was designated the 1,000th World Heritage site, the country’s second.

5. The Ju|’hoansi and Hambukushu served as guides for visitors to Tsodilo for several decades before the Botswana National Museum fixed its presence in the mid-1990s. Archaeological ‘experts’ with university degrees coach local community guides into repeating scientific interpretations of rock imagery, archaeological sites, and the overall significance of the hills, thereby attempting to replace Indigenous knowledge that, ironically, is also used in ethnoarchaeological interpretations of the prehistory of the hills, as well as toward the intangible heritage criterion of its World Heritage status.

6. In 2010, the Ju|’hoan and Mbukushu communities at Tsodilo received several water tanks from the Diamond Trust, which was created to manage corporate social responsibility funds granted by De Beers and Debswana diamond corporations toward implementing a new heritage management plan to help develop the Tsodilo communities. A cell tower was also erected, and a mobile building unit brought in to provide community members paid access to computers and the Internet.

7. Some of the local community members working at the site museum also belong to the Zion Christian Church, which is known for being very secretive. I was told about some of the visits and noticed that they were rarely if ever recorded. Other local community members, also belonging to the Zion Christian Church, visit the hills, but like all other local inhabitants their visits are not officially recorded.

8. On a return visit to Chokamo in late 2008, we spotted an African rock python, of which I had heard numerous stories attesting to the inherent risks of visiting hills without permission from the spirits.