A Hermeneutic Introduction to Maps (original) (raw)
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Études Ricœuriennes / Ricœur Studies
2021
The aim of this article is to show how a Ricœurian approach to space and place is likely to raise issues about geography and even cartography, rather than just ontological topology in a Heideggerian fashion. Two steps will lead towards that conclusion: the first concerns the role of Ricœur’s long détour in the transition from a transcendental—therefore empty—notion of place to the concrete plurality of places, which turns them into matters for interpretation; the second shows how the task of interpreting of places implies distanciation and even objectification, through which they are constituted as objects of scientific and critical investigation. Maps will be introduced at that point as specific interpretations of places, halfway between text and images, between the subject and the object, and between science and art.
Understanding and explanation. Paul Ricœur and human geography
Continental Philosophy Review
The aim of my paper is to put Ricœur’s philosophy in dialogue with human geography. There are at least two good reasons to do so. The first concerns the epistemological foundation of geography: Whereas humanistic or phenomenological geographers inspired by Heidegger or, to a lesser extent, by Merleau-Ponty have sometimes taken on an anti-scientific approach, the Ricœurian articulation of understanding and explanation may contribute to building a bridge between the experiential side of place-meanings and the scientific explanations of spatial elements and their relationships. The second reason has to do with the application of the Ricœurian “model of the text” to landscape: It is a direction that Ricœur never explicitly took, but it is worth exploring, especially considering that “landscape as a text” was quite a popular metaphor among human geographers in the 1980s and 1990s. In this paper I will discuss both issues in order to outline a “Ricœurian path to geography,” which, while n...
"The Art of Mapping Between Land and Mind" - JoLMa 5 | 1 , 2024
In the creation of maps, scientific knowledge related to mathematics and physics combines with knowledge specific to graphic or artistic disciplines. Since all maps are artifacts whose aesthetic qualities convey information that simultaneously engages the fields of ontology, epistemology, and politics, they are objects of undeniable interest for philosophical inquiry. Following what has been termed “the cartographic turn in social sciences”, 'The Art of Mapping Between Land and Mind' delves into two intertwining issues. On one side, it examines how the aesthetic properties of maps convey cognitive, cultural, and political meanings. On the other, it explores the role of visual arts in reflecting on cartographic thought, shaping both its methods and motivations. The volume is divided into four sections. Embracing the point of view of both the philosopher and the geographer, the first one sheds light on the relationship between epistemology and cartography (Kukla; Costantini; Tanney). The second addresses mapmaking as an art form (Tanca; Haugdal) or, conversely, considers maps from the perspective of their aesthetic properties (Török; Ogundiwin; Elhaik). The third focuses on the digital condition of today’s cartography (Tschochohei; Quaranta; Keller). Finally, the last section includes two contributions that represent attempts to guide cartography toward its future (Bosca; Ianniello). Opening this issue, a special essay by Elizabeth Povinelli offers a generous précis of her upcoming book.
Memories of Undervelopment: Art and the Decolonial Turn in Latin America, 1960-1985, 2018
Artists have turned toward maps to criticize established world orders, to question national identities and the histories that uphold them. Driven by commerce and conquest, cartography was developed as an instrument of power and domination. Early geographic representations portrayed the known world but they also depicted what lay beyond, the limits where imagination was given free reign, making maps closer to poetic and literary interpretations of reality. It was during the Renaissance and with the rise of scientific thought and encyclopedism in the eighteenth century that they increasingly became instruments of control and colonial expansion. Their growing precision and functionality can hardly be separated from their role in military and economic strategies. This explains why art, by intervening and redrawing their lines, has found a way of appropriating space, building bridges across closed borders to imagine alternative worlds. Maps are central to the power relations that dictate what is visible or invisible , what is present or absent. In the Western tradition, they are drawn from above, with universal detachment and using instruments extraneous to the body. As a result, the map itself, independent of its uses, imposes a distance , a certain gaze with which to read territories though it obliterates the people that inhabit them. What is left outside this way of measuring and recording our surroundings-by definition a geometric, gridded understanding -"is not just other ways of conceiving the world, more authentic or more original; what is left out is the world itself." What is excluded from maps is the notion of "place," of a specific space experienced by the body, informed by daily life but also by local and historical narratives.