Abstract
In opposition to the classical assumption that would see maps as neutral and objective products, deconstructionist critique has long explained their ideological and instrumental nature. This decisive intellectual reorientation of the conception of the map has clearly shown that maps conceal within a power of persuasion and that they have served discourses of power. But the deepening of the relationship between maps, authority and scholars via this approach has granted prominence to the first two elements, leaving the third in a distinctly subordinate position. Reassessing the figure of scholars and their cartographic practices, this chapter addresses the issue from a still largely unexplored angle, looking into graphical solutions chosen to depict power, in the belief that these solutions have helped to shape the interpretation of the spatiality of power , and influence the very exercising of it. Thus reversing the perspective, and that is investigating the maps of power rather than the power of maps, or the power over maps, it is reconstructed here by means of many empirical examples: those scholars and cartographic genres that have told the history of the spatial representation of power. In this way it also intends to favour an approach to the history of cartography that can organically place it within the more general framework of the history of visual culture and visual arts .
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Notes
- 1.
Normally referred to as the ‘multiple static map’ in English (Monmonier 1990: 30–45), this method dates back to the beginning of the twentieth century and was probably inspired by motion pictures, an innovation at that time. Numerous important studies in the field of graphic display have devoted attention to this method (Bertin 1967: 354–355; Tufte 1983: 34–36, 170–175) since its full introduction into information science (Neurath 1939).
- 2.
- 3.
Inspired by the ‘threshold principle’—the need for a sufficiently large territory postulated by the liberal interpretation of the concept of nation—Giuseppe Mazzini’s 1857 map of Europe replaced nation states with a dozen large states or Multinational Federations, plus Italy (Hobsbawm 1990: 30–31).
- 4.
The map opening his most famous book, Pan-Europa (1923), laying the foundations of his movement for the unification of Europe, shows a united continent, from which only Great Britain is excluded.
- 5.
In The Breakdown of Nations (1957) by Leopold Kohr, a pacifist anarchist, a map is included in the appendix, where Europe is divided into many equally small states. This, he believed, was the only solution able to guarantee a more stable and reconciled world.
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Boria, E. (2017). Mapping Power. In: Brunn, S., Dodge, M. (eds) Mapping Across Academia. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1011-2_12
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