Performing Indigeneity by Morgan Ndlovu

Author:Morgan Ndlovu [Ndlovu, Morgan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780745338590
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Pluto Press
Published: 2019-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Cultural Villages and the Challenge of Reductionist Perspectives

Cultural villages in South Africa are generally popular with both local and international tourists. However, in spite of their popularity, the manner in which they represent culture and identity has attracted a barrage of scholarly criticism (Marschall 2003). In general, the criticism levelled against the villages ranges from the point that they represent myths instead of culture (Tomaselli and Wang 2001) to the claim that they present cultural practices in a romanticized, superficial and ahistorical manner, frozen in time (De la Harpe, De la Harpe, Leitch and Derwe 1999). Moreover, it has been argued that they reproduce stereotypes, generated by the West’s desire for exoticism and imaginations of the primitive ‘Other’ (Jansen van Veuren 2003: 150; see also Craik 1997: 118), and that they treat tourists as if they were for the most part uncritical, passive consumers who enjoy such representations because these confirm tourists’ preconceived stereotypes (Marschall 2003: 110).

In South Africa, cultural villages are heavily criticized for a lack of ‘objective authenticity’ and/or their claim to it. Thus, as Jansen van Veuren (2003: 74) has argued:

The question arises to what extent the product of cultural villages consists of indigenous/traditional culture products. Based on observation, it would appear that the cultural village often is built to a larger extent, on an understanding of what Western tourists want, and how best to provide this. Cultural villages as such, are not a form of hospitality or sharing of culture, which exists in indigenous culture, but a construct of Western culture, which probably developed out of early open-air museums. Thus the very concept on which the product is based, the selection of elements from indigenous cultures, and ways in which they are altered and mediated, are all very important inputs into a typical cultural village product, which are based on Western culture.

The above comment suggests that although cultural villages pretend, in their marketing statements, to be sites where indigenous cultures are shared with tourists, they instead conform to the influence of a hegemonic Western world view about the primitive ‘Other’. This becomes problematic because the Western world view about the primitive ‘Other’, which influences the cultural content of the villages, not only carries ‘myths’ about the communities whose cultures are claimed to be displayed in an objective way, but also represents a colonization of time and space, since indigenous people are represented as outside of the ‘here and now’. Thus, because it is not possible to display culture objectively ‘as it is or was in the past’, as culture is neither monolithic nor static, it is problematic for cultural villages to insist that they are displaying true versions of what are supposedly the ways of life by indigenous communities. Doing so is tantamount to imposing and universalizing the views of those who construct them across different people.

The sentiment that cultural villages of South Africa represent a Western imagination of the ‘Other’ is also shared by Marschall (2003: 113) in her analysis of the cultural village at PheZulu Safari Park.

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