South Africa is
recognized as a site of both
political turmoil and
natural beauty, and yet little work has been done in
connecting these
defining national
characteristics Washed with Sun achieves this conjunction in its multidisciplinary study of South Africa as a space at once natural and constructed. Weaving together practical, aesthetic, and ideological analyses, Jeremy Foster examines the role of landscape in forming the cultural iconographies and spatialities that shaped the imaginary geography of emerging nationhood. Looking in particular at the years following the British victory in the second Boer War, from 1902 to 1930, Foster discusses the influence of painting, writing, architecture, and photography on the construction of a shared, romanticized landscape subjectivity that was perceived as inseparable from “being South African,” and thus helped forge the imagined community of white South Africa. In its innovative approach to South Africa's history,
Washed with Sun breaks important new ground, combining the persuasive theory of cultural geography with the material specificity of landscape history.
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