ABOUT THIS BOOK

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.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Jeremy Foster teaches architecture and planning at Cornell University. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including Journal of Historical Geography, Cultural Geographies, and Journal of Southern African Studies.

REVIEWS

“Beautifully written and sumptuously illustrated . . . This nuanced analysis (so much more than ‘mere’ deconstruction) of texts, images and landscapes against the backdrop of place, space and imperial visions is also a visually rich and most enjoyable read.”
—The Geographical Journal

“I recommend [Foster’s] book . . . to anyone seeking to understand the complex, mutually constitutive interplay between land and Land.”
—Journal of Regional Science

“Intelligent, appealing, and engaging. This well-written and richly illustrated work offers a sophisticated model for interpretation of identity and landscape. Indispensable for students of South Africa, and most useful for scholars of the cultural landscape. Essential.”
—Choice

TABLE OF CONTENTS

<Foster, Contents>
<p. v, no folio, p. vi, cont'd or blank>
Contents	000
List of Illustrations	000
Acknowledgments	000
1. Introduction: Landscape, Character, and Analogical Imagination	000
2. From Imperialism to Nationalism: South Africanism and the Politics of White Nationhood	000
3. Visual Representation, Discursive Landscape, and "A Simple Life in a Genial Climate"	000
4. Between Corporeality and Representation: Theoretical and Methodological Excursus	000
5. Baden-Powell and the Siege of Mafeking: The Enactment of Mythical Place	000
6. John Buchan's Hesperides: The Aesthetics of Improvement on the Highveld	000
7. Parktown Ridge and the Horizons of Potentiality	000
8. Mrs. Everard's Lonely Career: The Komati Valley and the Depiction of Nostalgic Displacement	000
9. Modernity, Memory, and the South African Railways: The Iconography of Emptiness	000
10. The Life and Afterlife of a Contrapuntal Subjectivity	000
Notes	000
Bibliography	000
Index	000

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