Foragers and fictions in the Kalahari: Indigenous identities and the politics of deconstruction

In this paper I examine assumptions about race and identity that inform debates about indigenous rights in southern Africa. I illustrate how the ‘Kalahari debate’ and the more recent ‘indigenous peoples debate’ both rely on dubious assumptions about what ‘social construction’ means. I draw from public controversies and academic debates surrounding the forced relocation of San from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana to illustrate two key arguments in this paper: The first is that deconstructionism does not always confront the forms of justice it claims as its priorities, such as racism and class inequalities; the second is that the deconstructionist project commits us to problematic assumptions about what ‘race’ means and what ‘real’ identities must be.