Opening the curiosity box : botanical images as sites of transformation for the scientific practices of annotation and display in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis investigates the hidden narratives of South African botanical images made in the lateseventeenth to eighteenth century. Plant collecting and image making was part of early modernistscientific practice of collection and display. These images are examined from postmodernperspectives that treat them as texts that validated colonial botanical agendas. Botanical artobjectified nature enforcing it into a textual code that sanitised it and made it suitable for studyby Eurocentric natural philosophers.The impact of particular scientific agendas about nature can be linked to the stereotyping andsubjugation of both indigenous knowledge systems and women. This thesis considers the impactthat the complex historical and socio-political situations of the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies had to bear on the discursive formations associated with the botanical sciences, of whichbotanical art forms an integral part. The process whereby indigenous knowledge was effectivelywritten out of acceptable botanical practice (a trend that persists today) is evaluated. I determinewhat the current negative stigmas associated with the art form are and conclude that artists andbotanists working within the discipline do not acknowledge the limitations of the art form inreflecting empirical truths and this leads to the creation of images that rely on tradition ratherthan innovation. I discuss my practical work in relation to the ideas presented in this thesis.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University