Product Code Database
Dorothea Frances Bleek (later Dorothy F. Bleek; born 26 March 1873, Mowbray, Cape Town – died 27 June 1948, Newlands, Cape Town) Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa vol. 2 was a South African-born German anthropologist and philologist known for her research on the Bushmen (the San people) of Southern Africa.
Laurens van der Post, who liked to think of himself as "a white Bushman", credited her book Mantis and His Hunter (along with Specimens of Bushman Folklore by her father and aunt) as "a sort of Stone Age Bible". This is in the introduction to The Heart of the Hunter (1961), a follow-up to The Lost World of the Kalahari, the book based on the BBC series that brought the Bushmen to international attention.
Bleek's research and findings are often overshadowed by the work of her father, and she has been criticised for lacking the empathy and intuition of him and her aunt. For example, a section in her 1928 volume on the Naron Nharo includes a section on their 'Capacity as workmen', which has contributed to a perception of her as a racist.Jill Weintroub. Dorothea Bleek: A Life of Scholarship (February 2016); (PDF),
Despite this, Bleek's research on the language, customs, and especially rock art of Southern Africa (present-day South Africa, Tanzania, Botswana, and Namibia) stands as a vital contribution to scholarship on the region. Her photographs and audio recordings were especially important to later researchers.Andrew Bank, Anthropology and Fieldwork Photography: Dorothea Bleek's Expedition to the Northern Cape and the Kalahari, July to December 1911, africabib.org; accessed 4 February 2017.
|
|
