Aporias of Rock Art Interpretation: Advancing a Phenomenological Reading

all photos by the author, except where otherwise noted

Aporia: … the nonpassage, or rather … the experience of the nonpassage, the experience of what happens [se passe] and is fascinating [passionne] in this nonpassage

(Derrida 1993:309).

Aporias—from the Greek a + poros (“without” + “passage”)—are defined by Jacques Derrida (1993) as philosophical expressions of doubt and confusion; they are irresolvable logical disjunctions in a given line of enquiry. Stuart Murray (2009:11) describes aporias as being constituted by “an intrinsic undecidability … a contradiction, a puzzle or a paradox.” In this article, I argue that academic interpretation of San rock art has been marked by certain aporias—moments of inherent, irresolvable confusion or doubt—because of the methodological tendencies that contemporary researchers have employed. By viewing the interpretation of San paintings as a detective-like “deciphering”—that is, as a journey that must end at the “arrival” of a static meaning—researchers have created pockets of contradictions: San rock art paintings are part of a process of perceptual meaning-making through aesthetic expression, not merely clues for deciphering a simplified “bygone” past. In this view, I advance a phenomenological approach to interpreting these paintings. As Firnhaber explains, rock art is accessed and experienced with the entire body:

In order to examine rock art, we must travel into the land; we must walk, hike, climb, and move about. Rock art is not just a visual medium …

(Firnhaber 2007:1).

Methodologically speaking, phenomenology—which takes the body as the “first coordinates” (Merleau-Ponty 1962:115)—allows contemporary researchers to work with the aporias of interpreting San rock art, as opposed to being confounded by them. Hans Penner contends that “to experience is to interpret” (2000:57); I argue that, by shifting the goal of analysis away from determining fixed meanings of individual painted elements and towards an understanding of the experiential capacity and work of those elements as they operated and operate holistically with their environments and their various audiences, academic rock art interpretation can move closer to understanding the work and purpose of these paintings. Phenomenology highlights the perspective of the subject being studied (Wilson and Washington 2007:63); it can therefore facilitate a more nuanced understanding of art works made in a context that is today wholly inaccessible.

The starting point for my analysis was the so-called motif of the elephant therianthrope—exemplified by the Elephant Man, from eBusingatha in the Drakensberg (Fig. 1).¹ Therianthropes are understood as figures that have both human and animal features (cf. Jolly 2002); thus elephant therianthropes are figures that have both elephant and human parts, grafted to form a unified body. Therianthropes generally have been given an iconic status in academic interpretations of San rock art, a status that separates them from their contexts, both physical and conceptual. For this study, I chose two sites with elephant therianthropes in the Cederberg region in the Western Cape, South Africa. Both sites are located on the western border of the Cederberg mountains, at the very edge of the mountain range, the beginning of its incline. Monte Christo is 10 kilometers northeast of the town of Porterville, and Groothexrivier is 84 kilometers north of Monte Christo (Fig. 2). Both sites are also located in close proximity to water.²

My choice of sites was informed by a number of factors: First, in order to enact a phenomenological approach and explore the notion of embodiment, it was crucial that I visited the sites in person. This requirement therefore confined my choice to sites that had been interpreted in the literature previously, but would still be accessible to me in person. Two of the sites discussed in Tim Maggs and Judith Sealy’s article “Elephants in Boxes” (1983) matched those criteria: Monte Christo and Groothexrivier. I spent ten days, on and off, in the Cederberg mountains in early July 2015. Before embarking on my trip to the Western Cape, I had no indication of the details of either of the sites—their topography, proximity to landmarks or water, inter alia—nor did I know the size or positioning of the individual paintings within...