Mapping practices and the cartographic imagination
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Mapping practices and the cartographic imagination Simonetta Moro1 Accepted: 2 November 2020 © Springer Nature Limited 2020
Abstract This paper claims that maps and the “act of mapping” have the capacity to disrupt symbolic horizons concerning representations of space constructing aesthetic, political and subjective worldviews. These worldviews constitute modes of subjectivity that challenge the notion of the Cartesian subject, and put forward a “situated” concept of subjectivity. Through an intertextual analysis of Deleuze and Guattari, and Heidegger’s late essay “Building Dwelling Thinking,” Moro pursues a possible redefinition of mapping as assemblage or gathering point of the fourfold. This redefinition in turn indicates the becoming-space of a narration that constitutes particular kinds of world views and subjectivities. The lines between narration, mapping, and mythology are further blurred in recent art projects, where through the ‘cartographic imagination’ artists deliberately deconstruct the rational appearance of the map to expose current political impasse in a globalized world. Keywords Mapping · Cartography · Place · Deleuze and Guattari · Heidegger · Contemporary art · Bouchra Khalili · Emily Kame Kngwarreye
Intro: place and subjectivity This paper intends to highlight the mutual intersections of space and intersubjectivity in various forms, which can be traced back to the ‘spatial turn’ of poststructuralist theory (Warf and Arias 2009; Lévy 2015) combined with a hermeneutic reading of the phenomenon of ‘mapping’ and the cartographic sensibility manifested in recent developments in contemporary art. The aim is to bring to the fore the differing spatial and subjective configurations that constitute modes of subjectivity (and intersubjectivity) that are grounded in the “geographical imagination” (Pile 2008) and more specifically, the cartographical imagination of mapping practices grounded in locality. “These imaginations”—as Pile points out—“are ‘territories and boundaries’, ‘subject positions’, ‘spatial practices’, ‘between me and you’ and ‘outside in/ * Simonetta Moro [email protected] 1
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S. Moro
inside out’. Each of these has something to offer any analysis of subjectivity” (2008, p. 206). To this list, I would add the following key terms, which will be addressed in the course of this paper: dwelling/thinking, sparing, safeguarding (Heidegger 2008), de/reterritorialization, becoming, and nomadic existence (Deleuze and Guattari 2011). As I do so, I will try to answer the question, still current today as it was in the time of its publication, “What kind of practices do we create when we use the concept of subjectivity? Where do we locate ourselves when we use the concept of subjectivity as a critical tool for analyzing the contemporary social and political situation?” (Blackman et al. 2008, p. 14; my emphasis). The “situatedness of subjectivity,” as the editors of Subjectivity rec
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