Cape Town as Archive: A Material and Ecological History of the Present

Catalog description

This 5-unit seminar will offer the maps and tools students need to navigate the social, political, historical, and geographical contexts that have shaped South Africa from the Colonial period to the post-Apartheid era. Because of its location at the tip of the continent and its extraordinary deposits of diamonds and minerals, South Africa has played a crucial role in the rise of globalization since the 1760s. Its unique ecological and social circumstances have placed Cape Town in a particular relation to the expansion of European power. The course seeks to better understand the global infrastructures that supported the exploitation of South Africa's ecology (through, for example, mining, the establishment of game parks, and the maintenance of a cheap labor force). The course will use theoretical tools from anthropology and literature to engage and analyze Africa as a site of extraction, and the ongoing impact of this history, including readings from decolonial and post-colonial movements across Africa.