ABSTRACT
/Xam was the language of a Bushman people who, in the opinion of 19th-century evolutionist thought, were doomed to vanish from the face of the earth. The /Xam people were a museum piece, a living fossil in the modern world and the study of their language, culture and mythology might even provide a link between the evolution of apes and humans. In modern class society, the literary is separated from ordinary fiction by its quality and its relationship with an elite group of consumers. It exists by virtue of a value judgement that is sanctioned by university departments and book prizes. The /Xam stories are more historically situated than the term ‘traditional’ would allow, although they are clearly embedded in a /Xam discursive tradition.
