The "Malaboch" books: Kgalusi in the "civilization of the written word"

Kirsten Rüther

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1 R Koselleck, Zeitschichten: Studien zur Historik (Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2000), p 90         [ Links ]
2 D Blackbourn, The conquest of nature: water landscape, and the making of modern Germany (W W Norton & Co, New York, 2006), pp 52-53         [ Links ]
3 I Hacking, Historical ontology (Harvard University Press, Cambridge - Massachusetts, 2004), pp 99-114         [ Links ]
4 For a superb demonstration of the possibilities of this kind of research, see H J Jackson, Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2001)         [ Links ]
5 Kriel is not unaware of the possibilities of this line of research, as is revealed by her use of marginalia on page 191 to reveal something about the reception history of Rae's text
6 W St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004)         [ Links ]
7 I Hofmeyr, The Portable Bunyan: A Transnational History of The Pilgrim's Progress (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2004);         [ Links ] A van der Vlies, South African Textual Cultures: White, Black, Read All Over (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2007)         [ Links ]
8 Although Kriel's style is generally engaging, the origins of the book as a thesis is revealed in the very formal structure (is it really necessary to have twelve subheadings - none more than a page - under "9 2 2 Rae and Sonntag at Blouberg"?) I also found the potted biographies of scholars and historians, provided in footnotes at the first mention of their names, rather bizarre (though both of these aspects may have been done at the insistence of the publisher) - one would hope South African historians would know by now who Foucault and Said are! The book also contains quite a number of spelling and other errors which will hopefully be rectified in a future edition