A web of knowledge
The Emagusheni trading station in the then-Pondoland has come into view again, because of an invitation to contribute a chapter to a book concerned with everyday writings and writers. The trading station collection is composed by orders for goods, as well as business documents like invoices, ledgers and correspondence, some of which was written by African people, the other part of which comes from the traders and others who operated in and around the station. It has been awhile since these documents were first looked at, and along the way a fair amount of new information has been pieced together and joined up with other information which throws a rather different light on the contents, with these all re-read last week. It is not what this new light says about the contents that this blog comments on, but the piecing together and what, standing back a little from it, it indicates about the knowledge assembly process.
Knowledge is often seen as being rather like a deep well. The more knowledge one has of something, the deeper the well, and the more the contents can be dipped into by the well owner. Depth is considered the key element. It conveys possession and expertise. ‘This is my well, I plumb its depths, and I pull up that exquisite life-giving water/wealth-giving oil at the bottom’.
This is not my experience. Knowledge for me is more like a web of gossamer threads. Seemingly fragile, astonishingly strong, amazingly flexible, and always being repaired and extended. And rather than a single depth, it has many dimensions as it collects up this raindrop and that small insect and that small grain of sand blown by the wind. Each new filament and what is attached to it is joined to the others. And so with knowledge-making: the assembly process is the essence. No matter how much information one has at the start, there is no framework on which to hang it, it’s just stuff which may or may not be connected. Once the framework begins to be assembled, then rather like the straight edges of a jigsaw puzzle, the picture can start to be glimpsed, even if but partially. There is the sense that, yes, it does probably hang together or connect in some way.
And so with knowledge about the trading station and the different writers who contributed to its remaining records. What I have slowly begun to realise, as one piece of new information threw light on an older seemingly unconnected one, and then another threw light on both, is that the people involved were African grandees, the Great King and members of his inner circle, mainly men but some women and all literate to one degree or another. In their writings they are making use of the medium of writing in doing their business with the flotsam and jetsam of whites associated with the trading station and associated gun-running.
The metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle is helpful in thinking about this, a puzzle for which no picture exists and so the pieces have to be pieced together purely by shape and colour. But eventually, a picture begins to emerge. However, standing behind this metaphor is the business of how to think about the knowledge assembly process itself. And so the other metaphor, of the deep well versus the gossamer web, the web of knowledge, comes into play.
Last updated: 4 February 2021
