Traditional Chinese subtitles for clip: File:People-are-Knowledge.ogv
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1 00:00:25,800 --> 00:00:30,560 我覺得這非常有趣，因為此案運用了「知識是對話」的概念 2 00:00:30,806 --> 00:00:33,880 引導我們回去思考柏拉圖的名言。 3 00:00:34,040 --> 00:00:39,481 He said "What is the point of writing if every time you go back to a book, it gives you the same answer?" 4 00:00:52,682 --> 00:00:56,841 There are so many times like that in our histories, where there really was no written record. 5 00:01:12,880 --> 00:01:14,163 What is that? Why are you doing that? 6 00:01:16,201 --> 00:01:18,000 We're filming the road, it's not the..... 7 00:01:18,081 --> 00:01:20,640 No, he's filming me. Let me see this. 8 00:01:26,609 --> 00:01:33,201 There are a lot of things which my father and my grandmother tell me.... 9 00:01:34,600 --> 00:01:36,200 and if we use Wikipedia to actually capture that, 10 00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:41,759 it will benefit my grandchildren and their children as well. 11 00:01:42,000 --> 00:01:45,000 Don't look directly at the camera! 12 00:01:59,960 --> 00:02:06,401 Coming from a culture such as India, coming from a culture where so little is written down, 13 00:02:08,639 --> 00:02:09,881 do we then say we know nothing? 14 00:02:11,801 --> 00:02:14,440 Do we then say that we have no knowledge base, 15 00:02:17,561 --> 00:02:19,200 because we don't have those big libraries of Europe and America? 16 00:02:21,560 --> 00:02:26,790 Where does our knowledge...where does our understanding of wisdom come from? 17 00:02:28,121 --> 00:02:29,560 African history as a field is built around oral sources. 18 00:02:31,560 --> 00:02:33,880 I mean, of course there are other sources that are used, 19 00:02:35,120 --> 00:02:36,401 from archaeological to ethnographic material, 20 00:02:37,361 --> 00:02:42,600 but given the lack of written material in much but not all of the continent, 21 00:02:44,240 --> 00:02:46,500 the field wouldn't exist had there not been a long tradition of oral history. 22 00:02:47,520 --> 00:02:50,801 So the idea that 'oral societies' are completely different 23 00:02:52,360 --> 00:02:53,641 from 'literate societies' is a powerful idea, 24 00:02:55,440 --> 00:02:58,040 and it formed a key platform in colonial thinking, 25 00:03:00,080 --> 00:03:01,200 of the civilising mission... 26 00:03:02,720 --> 00:03:05,000 that one of the things that made Europe more 'superior' or more 'civilised' 27 00:03:06,520 --> 00:03:13,600 was 'writing', and so you have this idea that Europe is 'literate' and Africa is 'oral'. 28 00:03:15,801 --> 00:03:20,280 And then, on the basis of that difference, people build up major ideological differences. 29 00:03:22,281 --> 00:03:23,360 Hallo Rajesh 30 00:03:25,250 --> 00:03:27,700 I am putting this call on the loudspeaker. 31 00:03:28,200 --> 00:03:32,000 Will you please introduce yourself for me? 32 00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:37,000 My name is Dr. Rajesh, and I work in a college in Rajasthan. 33 00:03:37,500 --> 00:03:41,000 I am a Senior Demonstrator in microbiology. 34 00:03:44,300 --> 00:03:45,800 Hallo... is that Biju? 35 00:03:46,500 --> 00:03:48,000 Is that Biju? 36 00:03:50,500 --> 00:03:55,000 Biju, I am going to ask you some questions in a particular way... 37 00:03:55,500 --> 00:04:00,300 because I am going to try to simultaneously translate this conversation into English. 38 00:04:00,300 --> 00:04:06,000 Biju, can you answer in English? 39 00:04:06,500 --> 00:04:08,000 No.... 40 00:04:08,680 --> 00:04:16,761 This will be an audio file, this interview, that will be put on Wikipedia, on Wikimedia, okay? 41 00:04:19,560 --> 00:04:20,680 Thank you Josephine. 42 00:04:22,640 --> 00:04:25,241 Thank you! Okay. 43 00:04:36,600 --> 00:04:41,000 When I was thinking about it, I'm excited about the fact that there is more Wikipedia in India, 44 00:04:41,500 --> 00:04:47,800 but I think it would be equally interesting if there was more India in Wikipedia. 45 00:04:50,440 --> 00:04:51,320 And I think that works for South Africa as well, in a sense. 46 00:04:53,159 --> 00:05:00,201 So, for me, I think a sophisticated exchange is one in which there is two-way learning. 47 00:05:02,240 --> 00:05:08,361 There are things that happen, well, with 1.2 billion people, certainly a lot of things happen, 48 00:05:09,721 --> 00:05:15,721 which are then not being documented in a way which allows them entry 49 00:05:16,721 --> 00:05:21,320 into the formal world of knowledge. 50 00:05:36,640 --> 00:05:41,360 The thing is, many of us, people like me, played this game in our childhood. 51 00:05:42,841 --> 00:05:48,121 So we know the rules of the game, and we know how to write content for an article on it. 52 00:05:49,801 --> 00:05:54,801 But the thing with Wikipedia is that for whatever facts we write, 53 00:05:45,801 --> 00:05:59,280 we need to provide citations. But we are unable to provide citations 54 00:06:00,720 --> 00:06:02,680 because...currently, there are two reasons: 55 00:06:04,440 --> 00:06:06,440 there might not be any published source, 56 00:06:07,000 --> 00:06:09,000 and then there might be some published source, but which we don't have access to. 57 00:06:12,760 --> 00:06:14,161 So this is one perfect example of the situation. 58 00:06:42,400 --> 00:06:45,200 This game is called Kandakali by some, 59 00:06:45,700 --> 00:06:47,800 and here we call it Dappa. 60 00:06:48,300 --> 00:06:52,300 In some places, it is called Chattiyeru. 61 00:06:52,800 --> 00:00:01,280 It is also called Chilleru. <i>This game has 3 different names?</i> Yes. 62 00:06:58,100 --> 00:06:59,500 What are the rules of this game? 63 00:07:00,000 --> 00:07:03,950 We use Olapandu for this game... 64 00:07:04,450 --> 00:07:07,450 which is a ball made out of coconut leaves. The children usually make it themselves. 65 00:07:07,950 --> 00:07:13,950 They use pieces of tile which are called Dappa. 66 00:07:14,450 --> 00:07:18,200 Is this game still popular in the villages? 67 00:07:18,700 --> 00:07:22,950 Not really, children nowadays prefer cricket. 68 00:07:23,450 --> 00:07:32,500 But in this school, we conduct an annual tournament for games like Dappa, Killithattu, etc. 69 00:07:33,000 --> 00:07:39,200 It is a tournament for folk games. 70 00:07:39,700 --> 00:07:43,400 There are a vast number of folk games here; our tournament is only for some of them. 71 00:07:43,900 --> 00:07:50,850 <i>The special feature of this game is that only natural materials are used for it, right?</i> Yes, absolutely. 72 00:07:52,150 --> 00:07:55,700 <i>And it is cheap as well, isn't it?</i> Yes, you need not spend any money to play this game... 73 00:07:56,650 --> 00:08:04,400 and children get exercise. It improves their attention span and flexibility. 74 00:08:17,500 --> 00:08:23,500 I am from Blathur in Kannur district. 75 00:08:34,200 --> 00:08:37,950 I have been editing Wikipedia for 2 years... 76 00:08:38,450 --> 00:08:43,799 and organising gatherings to make Wikipedia more popular. 77 00:08:44,300 --> 00:08:52,800 I participted in the 10th anniversary celebrations of Wikipedia in Kannur. 78 00:08:53,300 --> 00:09:00,600 I myself seriously understood Wikipedia only after attending a conference on it. 79 00:09:01,100 --> 00:09:09,550 I work with the hope that Wikipedia will become a treasure-house of knowledge... 80 00:09:10,050 --> 00:09:14,400 ...and continue to provide knowledge to the world for free. 81 00:09:53,000 --> 00:09:56,921 When we start talking about the question of what is 'oral' on the internet, it's no longer restricted only to audio files. 82 00:09:58,320 --> 00:10:02,840 It's also about different ways and transitions by which people translate different cultural contexts, 83 00:10:04,201 --> 00:10:08,481 physical practices, material practices, everyday life, onto different forms on the internet. 84 00:10:10,040 --> 00:10:12,800 Which is why we've always talked about the internet as an alternative space. 85 00:10:15,040 --> 00:10:18,040 Not alternative because it necessarily allows for 'different' kinds of voices - it generally does not - 86 00:10:19,000 --> 00:10:21,360 the internet is often a very homogenised space, 87 00:10:23,361 --> 00:10:27,560 but it allows for people to express, articulate and document things which would otherwise not find 88 00:10:29,281 --> 00:10:30,561 place within the canons of literature and documentation and so on. 89 00:10:32,320 --> 00:10:37,320 It is interesting to see that while Wikipedia claims to be an internet form, 90 00:10:38,000 --> 00:10:42,401 it doesn't necessarily look at internet objects as sources of verification. 91 00:10:43,640 --> 00:10:48,080 And by that I mean not just blogs which are traditional ways of writing on the internet, 92 00:10:49,560 --> 00:10:54,000 but things that the internet has itself evolved and developed in order to create systems and designs of trust. 93 00:10:55,360 --> 00:11:01,360 But I think my argument is, is something true only because it has been validated by a scholarly tradition 94 00:11:02,680 --> 00:11:07,800 of academics in universities, or is something true because it is? 95 00:11:09,360 --> 00:11:10,320 And how can we show it? 96 00:11:12,160 --> 00:11:15,160 Within the women's movement, one of the things that was a real learning experience for me, 97 00:11:15,560 --> 00:11:18,880 and other middle-class activists like me who were mainly urban, 98 00:11:20,081 --> 00:11:24,240 was to actually come into contact with women and listen to their stories. 99 00:11:25,920 --> 00:11:30,920 And in listening to their stories, we began to learn how to... 100 00:11:31,920 --> 00:11:36,040 how very different a perspective they gave us, on what their received knowledge was... 101 00:11:37,279 --> 00:11:41,279 which we knew through the things that are called fact.... 102 00:11:42,000 --> 00:11:45,841 which are things like documented information, things like statistical information and so on. 103 00:11:47,120 --> 00:11:51,120 I began to learn then that there are stories and realities that lay behind and beyond these things, 104 00:11:51,520 --> 00:11:55,160 which were equally important for us to try and understand. 105 00:11:56,880 --> 00:12:01,880 Time and again, I came up against this whole business of...how factual is fact? 106 00:12:02,280 --> 00:12:05,201 If you like...or, how much can you trust the document? 107 00:12:08,240 --> 00:12:17,280 My primary and high school education was up north in Polokwane, and the medium of instruction was Sepedi. 108 00:12:20,080 --> 00:12:31,721 From there I moved to Pretoria, to Pretoria Technikon, where the medium of instruction there, at the time, was Afrikaans, with a bit of English thrown in. 109 00:12:34,760 --> 00:12:44,481 Sepedi is the preferred language that I would like to use, but when I started working, I realised that there aren't any Sepedi books that we could use, 110 00:12:46,001 --> 00:12:50,120 especially in IT, there is nothing there in Sepedi. 111 00:13:02,640 --> 00:13:13,960 There were a few articles that I really wanted to do, on things that I heard growing up, but the issue is that there is no reference material that we can use. 112 00:13:16,481 --> 00:13:22,120 So there was interest, but there was nothing to support it, so I didn't persist. 113 00:13:23,720 --> 00:13:34,280 I think there are a lot of potential articles from cultural aspects where elderly people would know more about it than I would. 114 00:13:35,680 --> 00:13:40,160 And I think that Wikipedia could be used to transfer that knowledge from people who have it, 115 00:13:42,360 --> 00:13:46,400 the know how - especially when talking of culture - and those kinds of articles, 116 00:13:47,921 --> 00:13:54,280 to write them in English would not benefit the Sepedi-speaking community at large. 117 00:13:56,120 --> 00:14:05,560 Some of these things, if I was trying to say them in English, would lose a lot of meaning. So they have to be done in Sepedi. 118 00:14:07,201 --> 00:14:12,920 I have this article that I want to do on the Mopani worms on Sepedi Wikipedia. 119 00:14:14,480 --> 00:14:20,840 Mopani worms are eaten quite a lot in the north. They're nutritional, they are.... 120 00:14:23,800 --> 00:14:27,680 I'm told they are tasty, I've not yet had the opportunity to eat them.... 121 00:14:29,281 --> 00:14:37,800 there's an old lady in the north who I'm going to call to give us a recipe and tell us a bit of the history of Mopani worms.... 122 00:14:39,320 --> 00:14:41,881 where do they get them? And how do they go about preparing them. 123 00:14:45,680 --> 00:14:48,280 Hallo Josephine! 124 00:14:53,800 --> 00:15:03,450 We squeeze the Mopani worms, then put them into boiling water for a bit... 125 00:15:03,950 --> 00:15:12,350 and add some salt to the mixture. Finally, we take the whole thing outdoors and put the Mopani worms in the sun to dry... 126 00:15:28,500 --> 00:15:34,000 My name is Josephine Moremi 127 00:15:34,300 --> 00:15:43,400 Marula is from this tree up here; the fruits fall to the ground... 128 00:15:43,900 --> 00:15:48,300 and when they mature, we take their skins out and collect the insides of the fruit. 129 00:15:48,800 --> 00:15:53,300 We put the insides of the fruit in water, and mix it, and that is how we make Amarula. 130 00:15:58,000 --> 00:16:03,400 We drink Amarula during the months of March and April... 131 00:16:03,900 --> 00:16:08,800 because after that, the trees stop producing these fruit. 132 00:16:18,760 --> 00:16:22,960 It's seen that interviews are proprietorial because they are the product of an individual's labour. 133 00:16:24,560 --> 00:16:27,920 And here, there's an entire structure of authority that's built around this. 134 00:16:29,720 --> 00:16:35,320 The historian acts as the intermediary between the archive - whether it's a written archive or an oral archive - and the audience. 135 00:16:36,401 --> 00:16:41,241 And by doing so, he gains authority. He also frames the archive in ways that he wants it to be framed. 136 00:16:42,681 --> 00:16:47,120 Now, the interesting question is, what happens if we open up that process? 137 00:16:49,761 --> 00:16:54,240 Then suddenly, the audience has access to the archive that the historian is basing his arguments on. 138 00:16:55,641 --> 00:17:05,319 There's no reason right now why every single journal article couldn't have not only just the written sources hyperlinked, as footnotes, 139 00:17:06,481 --> 00:17:11,480 but also oral interviews or video interviews hyperlinked as footnotes. 140 00:17:13,440 --> 00:17:15,839 In that case, suddenly that entire structure of authority disappears. 141 00:17:17,241 --> 00:17:25,240 If you let people have access to your interviews, and particularly in such a way that you can get nuance and context, 142 00:17:26,920 --> 00:17:30,801 then suddenly the authorship of the text is opened up. It explodes in multiple ways. 143 00:17:32,400 --> 00:17:36,921 And so the very authority on which the discipline of history is founded becomes much more uncertain. 144 00:17:37,241 --> 00:17:39,281 But that's also quite exciting... 145 00:17:40,921 --> 00:17:47,560 Our countries, India, Pakistan, countries in this part of the world, we don't set a value on the written word, 146 00:17:48,720 --> 00:17:51,400 as much as we do on orality - the passing on of information. 147 00:17:53,320 --> 00:17:58,280 And this is why, when you're trying to look back at Indian history, and when you're trying to look back at ancient India, you really find nothing, 148 00:17:58,481 --> 00:18:02,480 because there wasn't a written history, it was more of a symbolic history. 149 00:18:02,840 --> 00:18:15,280 So in a sense, you also have to be aware of that, that when you're getting an oral interview, you're getting one person's interpretation, 150 00:18:15,480 --> 00:18:17,761 one person's recounting of a situation. 151 00:18:18,520 --> 00:18:22,960 If you have a hundred people who live through that situation, you will get a picture that is broadened out. 152 00:18:23,920 --> 00:18:26,680 You'll get much more nuance, and you might even get some contradictions, 153 00:18:26,920 --> 00:18:29,201 but that is how people experience situations. 154 00:18:30,680 --> 00:18:43,160 So as long as you know what to expect, or as long as you know what to listen for, and you're not taking this as the only truth of a situation, 155 00:18:43,360 --> 00:18:46,600 I think that this is actually something that can be very exciting. 156 00:19:01,000 --> 00:19:04,481 Hindi language publishing is not doing as well as it should have, 157 00:19:05,160 --> 00:19:10,240 considering the huge numbers we have, considering the demands that we have. 158 00:19:10,561 --> 00:19:21,160 My belief is that not a single page that gets printed and published in Hindi goes unread. There's such a huge population to devour that. 159 00:19:28,721 --> 00:19:39,760 Reference section....the Hindi libraries and others. This one...just recently started, this one. <i> The whole thing is the Hindi section? </i> 160 00:19:40,280 --> 00:19:43,040 There's a huge hunger for knowledge. 161 00:19:44,040 --> 00:19:47,840 And all the institutions that we have, even the publishing institutions are not able to cater to them. 162 00:19:48,160 --> 00:19:59,681 They are still dependent upon the old network of government offices and libraries that was set up a long time back. 163 00:19:59,921 --> 00:20:03,600 And they are not trying to enhance their network. 164 00:20:05,480 --> 00:20:13,400 This is the archive of CSDS. Archived materials. <i>And this is all in English?</i> 165 00:20:16,080 --> 00:20:18,960 Yes, all in English. Because, mostly, all the government records are in English. 166 00:20:20,360 --> 00:20:22,241 So no records are in Hindi? 167 00:20:24,280 --> 00:20:28,120 Because Hindi publication is very poor. 168 00:20:30,841 --> 00:20:37,401 Even if you go to the elections office, you will find all the records in the English language. 169 00:20:39,000 --> 00:20:41,800 Hindi cannot hope to compete with English, which is a world language, 170 00:20:42,040 --> 00:20:49,321 which gets fed from so many constituencies, which has a huge backing of knowledge and resources. 171 00:20:49,560 --> 00:20:58,641 There is a definite upswing in publishing - of books and houses in recent years. 172 00:20:58,841 --> 00:21:00,760 But I don't think it's very well networked. 173 00:21:01,040 --> 00:21:07,960 But that raises a larger question about knowledge construction and transmission and distribution in general. 174 00:21:08,240 --> 00:21:12,520 Knowledge is also distributed according to languages. 175 00:21:12,800 --> 00:21:19,040 There is definitely a boundary created: and the publics are also constituted according to linguistic boundaries. 176 00:21:19,280 --> 00:21:28,960 And in Hindi, a large part of the knowledge produced in Hindi does not follow the protocols of research. 177 00:21:29,240 --> 00:21:38,321 For example, you might be surprised to find that there is not a single refereed journal to this date that is published in Hindi. 178 00:21:38,602 --> 00:21:42,360 So how do researchers validate themselves? 179 00:21:42,600 --> 00:21:49,080 How do they publish books, get peer reviewed before publication etc.? 180 00:21:49,321 --> 00:21:53,040 Absolutely not - they don't. 181 00:21:53,280 --> 00:21:58,960 And we'll have to...at Wikipedia, or wherever...we'll have to innovate, to include that knowledge, 182 00:21:59,240 --> 00:22:03,440 so that we speak to the rest of the world with that kind of knowledge. 183 00:22:03,680 --> 00:22:11,360 If Wikipedia is everybody's encyclopaedia, and it's not an expert's encyclopaedia, 184 00:22:11,600 --> 00:22:20,560 and if it is to go on increasing its own knowledge base then the future lies not just with the written world, 185 00:22:20,800 --> 00:22:27,720 but with the audio visual world, which is where a lot of that knowledge still stays. 186 00:22:28,080 --> 00:22:33,079 It's transferred from one generation to another, with alterations, with changes, with modifications... 187 00:22:33,320 --> 00:22:38,040 a lot of things get forgotten, a lot of things get added, but it's still... 188 00:22:38,401 --> 00:22:41,001 you know...a surviving language spoken by millions.... 189 00:22:41,240 --> 00:22:44,880 and I think I'm speaking for many languages like this, with millions... 190 00:22:53,400 --> 00:22:59,225 When I started editing on English Wikipedia, all my edits were reverted. 191 00:23:00,175 --> 00:23:06,200 The administrators would tell me that since I had no references or citations... 192 00:23:06,400 --> 00:23:11,400 I should not assert my 'personal point of view.' 193 00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:19,150 But there are very few printed sources or citations in Hindi Wikipedia... 194 00:23:19,650 --> 00:23:29,200 and similarly so for Punjabi, Sanskrit and Nepali Wikipedias, which I also edit. 195 00:23:29,700 --> 00:23:37,150 In order to address this gap, an interesting solution would be to provide... 196 00:23:37,350 --> 00:23:52,000 references for articles lacking them through oral citations. 197 00:23:57,900 --> 00:24:01,250 Hallo... is this Deepak Tripathi? 198 00:24:03,000 --> 00:24:07,000 I am Siddharth Tripathi calling from Gurgaon. 199 00:24:09,950 --> 00:24:15,575 I am trying to conduct an audio interview for use on Wikipedia, to serve as an oral citation... 200 00:24:15,775 --> 00:24:20,800 and I want to create an article on the game we call Sur. 201 00:24:21,000 --> 00:24:23,375 What can you tell me about Sur? 202 00:24:23,575 --> 00:24:32,375 I should also tell you that I would like to use this conversation on Wikipedia... 203 00:24:32,575 --> 00:24:34,900 and I hope this is okay with you. 204 00:24:35,100 --> 00:24:37,440 No, I have no objection whatsoever... 205 00:24:37,640 --> 00:24:39,960 Could you tell me more of what you know about Sur? 206 00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:46,700 Sur is a game that has been played in villages for a long time. 207 00:24:46,900 --> 00:24:54,500 It is mainly played by children. 208 00:24:55,100 --> 00:25:01,700 This will benefit Wikipedia, its users, and everyone else... 209 00:25:01,900 --> 00:25:07,200 knowledge never causes any harm. 210 00:25:07,400 --> 00:25:12,900 This is knowledge that is available to us, to use if required... 211 00:25:13,100 --> 00:25:17,500 and at least, it gives us something that was missing earlier. 212 00:25:31,960 --> 00:25:37,121 There's this wonderful definition of a language: A language is a dialect backed by an army. 213 00:25:38,800 --> 00:25:47,321 And I think the interesting question here was, how all those different dialects, all those regional variations 214 00:25:47,800 --> 00:25:49,961 spoken across Southern Africa ended up as 11 languages, 215 00:25:50,201 --> 00:25:54,281 is very centrally tied up with the intervention of Christian missions. 216 00:25:54,561 --> 00:26:01,280 South Africa is one of the most heavily missionised parts of the continent, and it's one of the first. 217 00:26:01,520 --> 00:26:08,681 Missionaries come in, and as they move inland, they meet largely non-literate societies. 218 00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:15,560 There would have probably been little bits of writing washing around, letters that had made their way into the interior, 219 00:26:15,880 --> 00:26:22,880 but it's missionaries coming into a situation where there is no written script. 220 00:26:24,001 --> 00:26:29,240 And what tends to happen then, of course, is that the missionaries are the ones who invent orthographies. 221 00:26:29,800 --> 00:26:35,200 And they tend to invent them in keeping with the languages they know. 222 00:26:35,601 --> 00:26:37,760 That produces an incredibly complicated situation, 223 00:26:38,040 --> 00:26:43,760 when what is technically the same language has in one region been written down by French missionaries, 224 00:26:44,161 --> 00:26:46,641 and in the other has been written down by German missionaries. 225 00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:49,800 So the same sound can come to be represented in different ways. 226 00:26:50,560 --> 00:27:04,080 So missions set up orthographies as well as institutions of writing, schooling and printing... and publishing mechanisms. 227 00:27:04,481 --> 00:27:11,960 And generally, they exercised high degrees of control over those mission presses. 228 00:27:12,280 --> 00:27:22,560 And it was generally quite difficult for Africans to publish stuff that didn't conform to mission models. 229 00:27:23,560 --> 00:27:33,840 It often became a real source of contention between the African elites and mission presses. 230 00:27:35,081 --> 00:27:42,360 Anyway, mission presses then had this agenda of producing material that was religious and evangelical, 231 00:27:42,760 --> 00:27:49,720 and missions also assumed major responsibility for the primary and secondary education of Africans, until quite late... 232 00:27:50,001 --> 00:27:51,081 until the 1950s. 233 00:27:51,921 --> 00:27:56,920 The older narrative has a stronger chance of survival, and continuing, on the margins, 234 00:27:57,720 --> 00:28:07,960 outside the mission domain in Africa, because the places in which oral storytelling happens, 235 00:28:08,240 --> 00:28:14,361 the possibilities for that skill to be continued, do persist. 236 00:28:14,760 --> 00:28:21,560 And generally it's a household form...it will be told in the household, so it's got a chance... 237 00:28:21,800 --> 00:28:25,760 and it's a well established tradition, so despite the mission intervention, it does carry on to a certain extent. 238 00:28:38,721 --> 00:28:42,320 And this is generally where you're going to find the books that are written in the languages of Africa. 239 00:28:42,520 --> 00:28:43,601 Right. 240 00:28:44,080 --> 00:28:46,001 Obviously we cover the whole continent, 241 00:28:46,001 --> 00:28:47,560 so you'll have English, French, German... 242 00:28:47,765 --> 00:28:48,881 and South African languages?... 243 00:28:49,680 --> 00:28:54,200 Yes, the preponderance is on the South African languages. 244 00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:15,200 We arrange our book collection according to the Library of Congress classification, 245 00:29:15,440 --> 00:29:22,800 so when you get into among books that have got PL on their spines, that means you're in the languages of Africa, 246 00:29:23,240 --> 00:29:24,521 which can be from the North to the South. 247 00:29:25,200 --> 00:29:33,321 If you come here, you'll see the start of what we can offer people in Northern Sotho. 248 00:29:34,360 --> 00:29:37,840 It's not a very long sequence, it ends at about there. 249 00:29:38,321 --> 00:29:44,600 So...until about here. So the total collection is about this and this...until about here. 250 00:29:45,280 --> 00:29:46,240 It's a shelf. 251 00:29:47,360 --> 00:29:51,360 I would imagine that the amount of scholarly material that exists elsewhere is fairly thin. 252 00:29:51,920 --> 00:29:54,921 I mean, original scholarly material in Northern Sotho? 253 00:29:57,081 --> 00:29:58,521 The impression that I have is yes; I would agree with you. 254 00:29:59,160 --> 00:30:04,160 It's the same old story, if you wish to publish, 255 00:30:04,400 --> 00:30:11,521 you have to find a publisher who's going to find it worth his or her while to print in numbers, and that's a very difficult proposition. 256 00:30:13,881 --> 00:30:19,480 I imagine that there's very little scholarly publishing that happens in languages other than English and Afrikaans, no? 257 00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:23,400 I think that's a fair comment. <i>That's a fair comment...</i> 258 00:30:53,880 --> 00:30:58,801 Do you see a way by which both the openness of Wikipedia, 259 00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:05,120 as well as specific work on Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects has some kind of relationship with the university that could be useful? 260 00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:15,440 Certainly. The university has been doing a lot of...or some...work around publishing work 261 00:31:15,960 --> 00:31:18,721 with Creative Commons licenses. 262 00:31:19,360 --> 00:31:30,480 There's a site for instance, I think it's presentations.wits.ac.za where a number of academics and other members 263 00:31:30,800 --> 00:31:37,200 of the university community put their presentations and many of them use different kinds of CC licenses. 264 00:31:38,720 --> 00:31:44,320 There is interesting work happening in the multimedia space. 265 00:31:44,801 --> 00:31:51,002 And some of the people involved in this, including the Dean of that faculty, the faculty of humanities, are very interested in the work of Wikipedia. 266 00:31:51,400 --> 00:31:55,680 They get it. They understand it, and they can see the potential for collaboration. 267 00:31:56,800 --> 00:32:03,600 The people who are involved in library work, people like Denise Nicholson, have been doing a lot of work around copyright/copyleft. 268 00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:13,560 I think that the chapter really provides an opportunity to give access to information to people who ordinarily don't have that information. 269 00:32:15,240 --> 00:32:19,880 Just in terms of a research tool, in terms of a teaching tool, you know. 270 00:32:21,080 --> 00:32:29,520 Just a few months ago, straight after the World Cup last year, we had a change in our school's curricula. 271 00:32:30,841 --> 00:32:34,721 So the syllabus was changed mid-year and the teachers didn't know what they were teaching. 272 00:32:35,120 --> 00:32:37,280 And it still is that way. 273 00:32:38,120 --> 00:32:43,680 They still have to create the syllabi, they still have to find their feet in terms of what they have to be teaching at school. 274 00:32:44,361 --> 00:32:48,961 So we essentially have our education system in crisis. 275 00:32:59,320 --> 00:33:07,761 I think my concern here is about people's knowledge, versus scholarly knowledge again. 276 00:33:08,241 --> 00:33:11,401 What you call usable knowledge or tacit knowledge. 277 00:33:12,160 --> 00:33:16,720 Tacit knowledge comes from practice, and practice is embodied: 278 00:33:17,160 --> 00:33:19,800 it's embodied in experience. 279 00:33:32,575 --> 00:33:43,975 The name of the temple is Kottathu, and it is also known as Neeliyar Kaavu. 280 00:33:44,175 --> 00:33:47,700 The name Neeliyar Kaavu is more famous. 281 00:33:47,900 --> 00:33:51,370 What is the name of this Theyyam? 282 00:33:51,570 --> 00:33:54,300 The name of this Theyyam is Kottathamma, and it is popularly known as Neeliyar Bhagavathi. 283 00:33:54,500 --> 00:33:57,300 Among locals, the name Kottathamma is used more frequently. 284 00:33:57,500 --> 00:34:01,100 Olathara is another local name by which this Theyyam is known. 285 00:34:01,300 --> 00:34:06,500 What is the distinguishing feature of the costume of this Theyyam? 286 00:34:06,970 --> 00:34:11,600 This Theyyam has long hair and is dressed completely in red. 287 00:34:21,120 --> 00:34:28,350 There was an illam, a Brahmin residence, at Manathara, near Kottiyur in Kanur. 288 00:34:28,235 --> 00:34:35,199 Since that illam was in a remote place, when other Brahmins visited, they were forced to stay there. 289 00:34:35,400 --> 00:34:48,900 It is said that when people went to bathe in the illam pond, they would disappear. 290 00:34:50,875 --> 00:34:59,370 Once, Kalakaad Thanthri, a famous Brahmin, visited this illam. 291 00:34:59,570 --> 00:35:09,120 In the evening, he went to the illam pond to bathe, taking a towel and thali (leaves used as soap) with him. 292 00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:16,800 He saw a beautiful lady standing on the other side of the pond. 293 00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:23,300 The lady asked him - Who are you? He replied - I am Kalakaad. 294 00:35:23,500 --> 00:35:27,450 Then the lady said - I am Kali (the Goddess). 295 00:35:27,650 --> 00:35:34,400 Kali took the thali from him and squeezed it and gave him the juice. 296 00:35:34,600 --> 00:35:39,170 He drank it, saying that it was amruth (holy nectar), given to him by the Goddess. 297 00:35:39,370 --> 00:35:46,300 The Goddess Kali was pleased with him and told him to install her in a place where the tiger and the cow graze together. 298 00:35:46,500 --> 00:35:51,800 He installed Goddess Kali at Mangattu Parambu. As the myth goes, that is how she came here. 299 00:36:04,035 --> 00:36:08,500 Theyyam is a form of worship. 300 00:36:08,700 --> 00:36:16,475 We worship through idols, pictures, etc. 301 00:36:16,675 --> 00:36:27,870 God incarnates as human beings and devotees are then able to interact with Him directly... 302 00:36:28,070 --> 00:36:33,000 and this is the premise of Theyyam worship. 303 00:36:33,200 --> 00:36:51,600 About Neeliyar Bhagavathi, there are many stories in the villages here... 304 00:36:51,800 --> 00:36:57,970 but the songs in the performances do not mention these stories. 305 00:36:58,170 --> 00:37:04,000 They do not mention anything beyond the manifestation of a divine power, Shakti. 306 00:37:04,200 --> 00:37:14,235 The myths that circulate about the Goddess Kali are not substantiated by the lyrics of the songs. 307 00:37:14,435 --> 00:37:23,170 I haven't come across any basis for the stories. 308 00:37:51,321 --> 00:37:56,801 This library started funtioning in 1998, and it was open to the public in 1999. 309 00:37:57,280 --> 00:38:01,320 This is the history section. History. And this is the Malayalam section. 310 00:38:04,681 --> 00:38:11,360 We have more than 30,000 books, and out of this, about 20% is Malayalam. 311 00:38:12,360 --> 00:38:15,960 Here we have a collection on sociology, written in Malayalam. 312 00:38:17,240 --> 00:38:27,680 Kerala Paddanam. Adivasi Puravarta...about tribals. This is the tribal...folklore section. 313 00:38:44,121 --> 00:38:51,080 When we started our work with Kali, the most difficult thing was to work with women 314 00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:55,080 and actually get them to feel a sense of confidence 315 00:38:55,400 --> 00:38:57,840 that what they had to say had any value at all. 316 00:38:58,641 --> 00:39:05,960 Because by that time the hierarchies of what constituted legitimate knowledge and what was outside the frame of that, 317 00:39:06,880 --> 00:39:11,960 what the canons were, and what those boundaries were, had been set.... 318 00:39:12,480 --> 00:39:13,360 set in stone almost. 319 00:39:13,840 --> 00:39:21,041 Now to rupture that, to enter that, to stretch and expand the boundaries of that, to nuance that, 320 00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:24,081 to bring in new forms of knowledge into that, 321 00:39:24,441 --> 00:39:25,720 was a very difficult enterprise. 322 00:39:26,600 --> 00:39:34,680 And it was more difficult because those people who could produce that knowledge themselves did not have the confidence to be able to do that. 323 00:39:35,720 --> 00:39:42,600 So then a space was opened up, for a much greater sense, of not just oral history as sources for facts, 324 00:39:43,721 --> 00:39:50,481 but oral history as a key avenue to understanding different forms of historical experience. 325 00:39:51,400 --> 00:39:55,840 But what you are posing is the possibility of a new stage. 326 00:39:56,400 --> 00:40:00,841 Which is to be able to put all of these different modes of producing history... 327 00:40:01,280 --> 00:40:06,961 to make them all open to a kind of equal access... 328 00:40:07,680 --> 00:40:11,321 so where writers of history have access to them and can produce from them, 329 00:40:11,760 --> 00:40:14,920 but also where readers of history have access to them. 330 00:40:14,920 --> 00:40:18,560 And that invites readers of history to act as writers of history. 331 00:40:19,040 --> 00:40:29,800 This game (tsere tsere) is usually played by very young children, starting from about the age of 4. As they grow older, they stop playing it. 332 00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:37,530 Today is something like a memorial to the game; that's the spirit in which we are playing it. 333 00:40:38,700 --> 00:40:42,900 The younger generation, they no longer play this game; they are only interested in playing ball. 334 00:40:49,000 --> 00:40:52,240 The youth of today are definitely not playing this game. 335 00:41:09,700 --> 00:41:12,120 Yes, we still play the game (tsere tsere), though the rules have changed a little. 336 00:41:12,200 --> 00:41:20,300 In our version of the game, we draw small squares which act as symbols for the 'houses'... 337 00:41:20,400 --> 00:41:27,150 and then we play the game, moving from 1 to 8. 338 00:41:27,250 --> 00:41:34,000 When we are done with jumping, we are still not allowed to step between the lines. 339 00:42:03,920 --> 00:42:06,361 Have a nice trip! 340 00:42:19,360 --> 00:42:25,641 A lot of these stories are about, you know, as I was saying, strongly erotic themes, 341 00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:29,841 themes of excess, themes of desire, all of those sorts of things, 342 00:42:30,601 --> 00:42:32,561 and that has been lost. 343 00:42:33,360 --> 00:42:38,800 And they are also wonderfully magical-realist tales, they're bizarre, and unexpected, 344 00:42:39,240 --> 00:42:42,920 and of course a lot of that has also been lost as they've been made more realist. 345 00:42:44,400 --> 00:42:52,240 And of course when missionaries come, they then start to write down those stories in keeping with their understanding of European fairy tale. 346 00:42:53,001 --> 00:42:58,560 And interestingly, this process of writing down European oral narrative happens at much the same time. 347 00:42:59,160 --> 00:43:04,680 So the Grimm Brothers, for instance, start to write down and clean up at the same time.... 348 00:43:05,040 --> 00:43:11,241 Just a footnote: there's a wonderful story about the original version...one of the original versions of Little Red Riding Hood. 349 00:43:11,960 --> 00:43:15,000 It's kind of extraordinary. 350 00:43:15,480 --> 00:43:21,200 She goes off to visit her grandmother, and her grandmother has been fully eaten, 351 00:43:21,681 --> 00:43:25,440 there's a bottle of blood that she thinks is wine and that she drinks, 352 00:43:25,720 --> 00:43:28,560 and of course the wolf in the story seduces her. 353 00:43:29,000 --> 00:02:08,960 So these famous lines from Red Riding Hood, "My, what big ears you have!" is because she's sitting right next to him.