Author(s): Rob Kitchin
Journal: lo Squaderno
ISSN 1973-9141
Volume: 5;
Issue: 15;
Start page: 7;
Date: 2010;
Original page
Keywords: Maps: beyond the artifact / Mappe: oltre l'artefatto | lo Squaderno No. 15
ABSTRACT
Over the past decade there has been a move amongst critical cartographers to rethink maps from a post-representational perspective – that is, a vantage point that does not privilege representational modes of thinking (wherein maps are assumed to be mirrors of the world) and automatically presumes the ontological security of a map as a map, but rather rethinks and destabilises such notions. This new theorisation extends beyond the earlier critiques of Brian Harley (1989) that argued maps were social constructions. For Harley a map still conveyed the truth of a landscape, albeit its message was bound within the ideological frame of its creator. He thus advocated a strategy of identifying the politics of representation within maps in order to circumnavigate them (to reveal the truth lurking underneath), with the ontology of cartographic practice remaining unquestioned.
Journal: lo Squaderno
ISSN 1973-9141
Volume: 5;
Issue: 15;
Start page: 7;
Date: 2010;
Original page
Keywords: Maps: beyond the artifact / Mappe: oltre l'artefatto | lo Squaderno No. 15
ABSTRACT
Over the past decade there has been a move amongst critical cartographers to rethink maps from a post-representational perspective – that is, a vantage point that does not privilege representational modes of thinking (wherein maps are assumed to be mirrors of the world) and automatically presumes the ontological security of a map as a map, but rather rethinks and destabilises such notions. This new theorisation extends beyond the earlier critiques of Brian Harley (1989) that argued maps were social constructions. For Harley a map still conveyed the truth of a landscape, albeit its message was bound within the ideological frame of its creator. He thus advocated a strategy of identifying the politics of representation within maps in order to circumnavigate them (to reveal the truth lurking underneath), with the ontology of cartographic practice remaining unquestioned.
