Human-Animal Relationships in San and Hunter-Gatherer Cosmology, Volume I

Exploring a hitherto unexamined aspect of San cosmology, Mathias Guenther's two volumes on human-animal relations in San cosmology link new Animism with Khoisan Studies, providing valuable insights for Khoisan Studies and San culture, but also for anthropological theory, relational ontology, folklorists, historians, literary critics and art historians.

In Volume I, therianthropes and transformations, two manifestations of ontological mutability that are conceptually and phenomenologically linked, are contextualized in broader San myth. Guenther explores the pervasiveness of human-animal hybridity and transformation in San expressive culture (myth, stories and storytelling, ludic dancing and art, ancestral rock art and contemporary easel art), ritual (trance dance curing, female and male rites of passage) and hunting. Transformation is shown to be experienced by humans, particularly via rituals and dancing that evoke animal identity mergers, but also by hunters who may engage with their prey animals in terms of sympathy and inter-subjectivity, particularly through the use of hunting medicines.

Applies the New Animist paradigm developed after Anthropology's ontological turn to African hunter-gatherer societies Brings together considerable fieldwork with historical and interdisciplinary Khoisan Studies framework to explore experiential, cultural, and psychological dimensions of transformation Particularly considers art, rituals experienced by both males and females, trance and ludic dance, and hunting

Autorentext

Mathias Guenther is Professor Emeritus at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada. He is the author of over 100 journal articles and six books, including Tricksters and Tracers: Bushman Religion and Society (1999).

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 2. Therianthropes.- 3. Transformation in Myth.- 4. Therianthropes and Transformation in San Art.- 5. Transformation in Ritual.- 6. Animals in San Dance and Play: Between Mimesis and Metamorphosis.- 7. Transformation and Hunting.