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Making Englishness

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Embodying Cape Town

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Abstract

This chapter is a critical rethinking of architectural theory and the architectural history of the Cape Colony, to challenge the orthodox view of a colonial order structured by dualisms of self and other, intellect and emotion. The built environment worked as a mediator in the imagining of colonial order, but it also mediated self-objectifications. The question posed in this chapter is how and why did architecture become good to think with, good to experiment with particularly by women, who are overlooked as British Empire builders? Cape Town was the capitol of the colony and had become a literal and imaginative symbol of imperial mastery, but the written works of women illustrate there was a more performative and embodied relationship formed between Englishness and the making of colonial space. Empire building is generally understood as the exclusive domain of autonomous agents equipped with capacity to contain and constrain the wilderness of landscapes, racialized others, and women. Read backwards, architectural history in Cape Town simply confirms this.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri, USA

    Shannon M. Jackson

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  1. Shannon M. Jackson
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Jackson, S.M. (2017). Making Englishness. In: Embodying Cape Town. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58711-4_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58711-4_2

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-58710-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-58711-4

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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