Browsing by Author "Stewart, Karen"

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    Opening the curiosity box : botanical images as sites of transformation for the scientific practices of annotation and display in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2007-03) Stewart, Karen; Dietrich, Keith; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Visual Arts.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis investigates the hidden narratives of South African botanical images made in the late seventeenth to eighteenth century. Plant collecting and image making was part of early modernist scientific practice of collection and display. These images are examined from postmodern perspectives that treat them as "texts" that validated colonial botanical agendas. Botanical art objectified "nature" enforcing it into a textual code that sanitised it and made it suitable for study by Eurocentric natural philosophers. The impact of particular scientific agendas about "nature" can be linked to the stereotyping and subjugation of both indigenous knowledge systems and women. This thesis considers the impact that the complex historical and socio-political situations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had to bear on the discursive formations associated with the botanical sciences, of which botanical art forms an integral part. The process whereby indigenous knowledge was effectively written out of acceptable botanical practice (a trend that persists today) is evaluated. I determine what the current negative stigmas associated with the art form are and conclude that artists and botanists working within the discipline do not acknowledge the limitations of the art form in reflecting empirical "truths" and this leads to the creation of images that rely on tradition rather than innovation. I discuss my practical work in relation to the ideas presented in this thesis.