Abstract

In this Inaugural Lecture of the Mapping Africa’s Endangered Archaeological Sites and Monuments project (https://maeasam.org), Dr Vuyiswa Lupuwana engages with the virtual continuity of canon myths in an age of digital mutability and active forgetting, with a particular focus on examples drawn from South Africa and other parts of the continent. Heritage and visuality have always been intertwined. Entangled in historic interpretations of the past – and particularly, the interpretations of ‘the other’ – are several canon stereotypes or myths that have persisted in their pervasive ability to indoctrinate the public. The concept of visuality will be discussed through visual media such as historical photographs, sketches and cinema against the backdrop of the histography of the anthropological and archaeological disciplines. It will be argued that visuality’s power and its problematics are in the conscious and unconscious afterlives that connect it with interpretations of the past, public consumption of the past, and the processes of remembering and forgetting.