Identity, memory and countermemory - The archaeology of an urban landscape

Urban landscapes are both expressions of identity, and a means of shaping the relationships between those who inhabit them. They are palimpsests in which buildings, street layouts and monumental structures are interpreted and reinterpreted as changing expressions of relations of power. The urban landscape of the Cape of Good Hope started with the establishment of a Dutch East India Company outpost in 1652, was restructured by the British after 1795, and gave form to spatial segregation in the apartheid years. More recently, aspects of these historical landscapes have been reinvented as entertainment centres in the 'experiential economy'. Differing ways of understanding these mixes of physical form, identity and recollection either lead to closure - retrospective celebrations in the interests of dominant interests - or to challenge: 'countermemories' that look for contradictions and uncertainties, keeping open the discourse of identity and relations of power.