Table Mountain and Maps of the CapeAttempts to 'map' the Cape were concurrent with endeavours to place things within a system of knowledge. According to the British geographer, John Brian Harley, a map is a socially constructed form of knowledge that reproduces and reinforces political power: the power to control boundaries, population, commerce, administration and the military. Maps are graphic representations that facilitate both spatial and temporal understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or events in the human world. To this end the landscape was surveyed, organized and reclassified in relation to changing Dutch, French or British interests at the Cape. Harley also draws attention to the way maps are compiled and the categories of information selected; the way they are generalized, a set of rules for the abstraction of the landscape; the way the elements in the landscape are formed into hierarchies; and the way various rhetorical styles that also reproduce power are employed to represent the landscape. Varied pictorial devices offer multiple modes of 'imaging' the Cape which, when taken together, present Cape Town and its environs as a well-surveyed, organized and clearly delimited settlement. To this end the first maps present a grid of co-ordinates that signify the settlers' orientation and imposition on the Cape landscape. One of the more intriguing aspects of the early Cape map was the symbiotic relationship between scientific and artistic modes of 'imaging' the world. Here ground-plans, side-elevations and overhead views were combined with topographical features and ethnographic figures to portray a coherent, well-organized and controlled environment. However, as between any image and its referent in reality, there is always a gap between the map and the world it represents. As images 'divorced' from reality, these maps fail to convey the sense of alienation and anxiety felt by both settlers and natives at the Cape. Adamastor is the spirit of a barbarous continent resentful of any attempt to disturb its ancient ignorance and gloom. Butler 1959 The figure of Adamastor is at the root of all the subsequent white semiology invented to cope with the African experience. Stephen Gray 1979 Adamastor is the spirit of a barbarous continent resentful of any attempt to disturb its ancient ignorance and gloom. Butler 1959 The figure of Adamastor is at the root of all the subsequent white semiology invented to cope with the African experience. Stephen Gray 1979
Table Mountain as a Guardian |
