Mapping and excavating spectral traces in post-apartheid Cape Town

Abstract

This article explores how spectral traces at places marked by acts of violence and injustice allow residents to come into contact with past and future inhabitants of the postcolonial city. We examine controversies surrounding Prestwich Place, Cape Town, an informal burial ground for colonial underclasses that was unearthed when construction began for an upscale ‘New York-style’ apartment and office complex. The human remains that emerged embodied a past that exceeded national narrations of public memory and presented this past as an object of concern for private capital and activists. Rather than offer a biography of the site, we develop two concepts, memorial cartographies and haunted archaeologies, that represent terrains not visible on Cartesian mappings. We understand these narrative strategies as creative acts that honour those who have gone before; both practices encourage us to listen as witnesses to geographies of loss that continue to structure contemporary urbanisms.