What is remembered & what is forgotten: shipwrecks and social memory on South Africa’s Sunshine Coast
- Authors: Dickson-Bow, Emma Jane
- Date: 2024-10-11
- Subjects: Collective memory , Memorialization , Shipwrecks , Maritime heritage , Settler colonialism
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/465876 , vital:76664
- Description: Maritime heritage and its representation in South Africa, has been shaped by a settler colonial community heritage consciousness emphasising a heroic moral discourse legitimising local presence by settler communities. While much has been done to decolonise the representation of South African maritime heritage, at the local level small scale memorialisation continues to valorise maritime narratives that highlight the heroic aspects of historical settler colonial society, effectively concealing more fulsome of historical maritime events. Shipwrecks can function as potent tangible and intangible symbols of historical events, articulating a variety of perspectives on what constitutes social memory and history. This thesis examines the extension of public knowledge and representation of shipwreck maritime heritage on the Eastern Cape’s coastal belt, known in tourist branding vernacular as the ‘Sunshine Coast’ (East London to Port Elizabeth). The case study of ‘The Volo’, a Norwegian barge wrecked near present day Kenton-on-Sea and Bushman’s River Mouth (Boesmansriviermond) demonstrates how shipwreck narratives presented at the local public level can articulate a settler colonial community heritage consciousness that erases wider accounts of such stories. The reinterpretation and decentring of settler colonial maritime heritage stories allows for a more diverse and inclusive narrative that has the potential to promote social cohesion and social justice within restorative history work. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Anthropology, 2024
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- Date Issued: 2024-10-11
“Forgetting Ntaba kaNdoda”: reciting performative memories at the Ntaba kaNdoda Monument
- Authors: Mama, Luthando Vukile James
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Memorialization , Collective memory in art , Memorials in art , Memorials -- South Africa -- Dimbaza , Imperialism in art , Ntaba kaNdoda Monument (Dimbaza, South Africa)
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/63866 , vital:28499
- Description: “Forgetting Ntaba kaNdoda”: Reciting Performative Memories at the Ntaba kaNdoda Monument serves as a theoretical examination of the Ntaba kaNdoda Monument as a commemorative marker. My mini-thesis unpacks the notions of memory and performative memorialisation at a nationalist memorial in the former Ciskei by examining the concepts of place, memory and memorialisation, which are theoretically integral in my professional practice. This research initiates an investigation into the effects on memory in a situation where the construction of the Monument disrupted an efficacious memorialisation by the communities of Ntaba kaNdoda. In my accompanying MFA exhibition Forgetting Ntaba kaNdoda, I explore notions of place, memory and memorialisation through installations of a variety of photographic processes that are based on what I call ‘de-monumental’ and performative monuments (Widrich2014). The written component of my MFA submission relates directly to my professional art practice, developing and situating it within a relevant context. In my mini-thesis, I consider photographers working with notions of place, memory and memorialisation. Lebohang Kganye and Nassim Rouchiche’s works retrace and recall past memory in the present, while David Goldblatt and Cedric Nunn, who have photographed the Ntaba kaNdoda Monument, point the viewer to the values and histories of the communities most affected by colonialism and apartheid. These photographers’ works operate as mnemonic devices that seek to translate a lived experience at a particular place. I use Widrich’s (2009; 2014) conception of “performative monuments”, Lippard’s (1997) “sense of place” and Nora’s (1989) “lieu[x] de mémoire” and “milieux de mémoire” in approaching my professional art practice and my research into the Ntaba kaNdoda memorial. Using these entwining nodes of theories in formulating what I term ‘demonumentalisation’ in my photography practice at the Ntaba kaNdoda Monument, my photography functions as both performative memorialisation and de-monumentalisation. Remembrance, using photography as a vehicle to represent this notion at Ntaba kaNdoda, transcends the materiality of the Monument. My exhibition, in conjunction with this mini-thesis, therefore reframes and reconfigures theNtaba kaNdoda Monument as a multiplex memory place.
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- Date Issued: 2018