This book traces and analyses the role of heritage in the urban transformation of the city of Cape Town. By looking at discourses of heritage and urban design, the book shows how Cape Town positions itself as an emerging global city in the context of a series of global events. The book points at how a heritage focus on the themes of post-colonial and post-apartheid reconciliation, restitution and memory in the city shifts to a focus on creativity, design and the arts. Thereby showing how traumatic remnants of colonialism and apartheid are reframed as “design challenges”. Furthermore, it argues that the idea of a transformed society is projected into a future time and the chaotic present everyday life is left to its own devices. Against this backdrop, the book lays out the opportunities for epistemological reset and decolonial reflection on the city’s deep histories, its embedded injustices and traumas that surfaced.
Author(s): Christian Ernsten
Series: Studies in Art, Heritage, Law and the Market, 2
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 194
City: Cham
Preface
Contents
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Rebirth of an African City
1.2 Newness in the Old Colonial City
1.3 District One and District Six
1.4 Global Imaginaries and Local Identities
1.5 Renaissance and Revenants
1.6 Probing the Contemporary Condition
1.7 Redressing Silence
1.8 A Note on Methodology
References
Chapter 2: Walking Back Time
2.1 Discourse of the Cape
2.2 The Fort
2.3 The Garden
2.4 The Grid
2.5 The Slum
2.6 The Ruin
2.7 The Cemetery
2.8 Following the Ancestors
References
Chapter 3: Resurfacing Colonial Dead
3.1 Coffee and Skeletons
3.2 The Unknown at Prestwich Street
3.3 Realigning the Past
3.4 Exhumation Inc.
3.5 A Lack of Love
3.6 Improvisation and Historical Recapitulation
3.7 The Idea of the Return
References
Chapter 4: Engineering an Urban Renaissance
4.1 Perceiving Freedom
4.2 Talking Apartheid Out of Existence
4.3 Business as Usual
4.4 A Time to Come
4.5 Old and New Global Designs
4.6 Separated by Apartheid; Reconnected by Design
4.7 Irony of Design
4.8 The Bigger Picture
References
Chapter 5: Contesting Apartheid Ruins
5.1 ``Zonnebloem Renamed´´ at Art Basel
5.2 From Hands off to Hands on
5.3 The Ideology of the Museum
5.4 The Legibility of District Six
5.5 Thinking About Fragments
5.6 A Time for District Six
5.7 Restitution Gone Rogue
5.8 Unruly Citizens
5.9 Echoes and Residues
References
Chapter 6: Scripting Utopias and Dystopias
6.1 Leapfrogging Into the Future
6.2 Lynedoch and Oude Molen
6.3 Visions for Renewal
6.4 Slow Violence and Deep Crisis
6.5 A Praxis of the Future
6.6 Abstract Space
6.7 Broken City
References
Chapter 7: Reimagining Urban Truth
7.1 Afterlife
7.2 Homage
7.3 Witness
7.4 Truth
7.5 Percolate
7.6 Scar
7.7 Drama
References
Chapter 8: Conclusion
8.1 Glimpses Beyond History
8.2 Play of Time
8.3 Horizon of Expectations
References
Chapter 9: Epilogue
9.1 Who Is Doing the Knowing?
9.2 Frontier Histories
References
Index
