Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
geographic representations have been commonly accepted as realistic, although constructed
according to the conventions of artificial perspective [3]. Geographic faith in maps has been
made possible largely by the development of techniques of scientific cartography and the
maps “conquered the world of representation under the banner of reason, science and
objectivity” [1]. However, geographic “reality” is not a nonimage, as argued by Phillips [2].
“Reality” is humanly constructed and merely conventional, and the “truth” is constructed,
theoretically and politically committed. At this point we start to question the
“unquestionable scientific objectivity” of the cartographic representation of the world and to
question the map as a “mirror of reality”. Recent researches witness these developments as
“epistemic break between a model of cartography as a communication system, and one in
which it is seen in a field of power relations, between maps as presentation of stable, known
information and mapping… in which knowledge is constructed” [4,5].
On the other hand, since the 70s, the subjectivity and “ naïveté ” of images have been
questioned by iconographers and iconologists as well [2]. They have shown that images can
be read as explicitly social and political texts and not just as mental representations.
Iconography defines images as a sign system and locates them at the social level [6].
2.2. Deconstruction as a methodological strategy
Eventually the two concepts begun to merge particularly in Harley's understanding of maps
as socially constructed images. Although some scholars anticipated main ideas earlier, for
instance in well known Korzybski's statement that “the map is not the territory it
represents” [4] or that “every map is… a reflection partly of objective realities and partly of
subjective elements” [7]. Harley formulated a broad strategy for understanding how maps
redescribe the world, like any other document, in terms of relations of power and of cultural
practices, preferences and priorities [8]. “…Maps are at least as much an image of the social
order as they are measurements of a phenomenal world of objects” [9]. He derived basic
ideas from writings of Michel Foucault about the “omnipresence of power in all knowledge
even it is invisible or implied”, including the particular knowledge encoded in maps, as well
as Jacques Derrida's work on the rhetoricity of all texts. The concept of “text” does not imply
the presence of linguistic elements, but the act of construction, so that maps, as “construction
employing a conventional sign system become texts. By accepting the textuality of maps we
are able to embrace a number of different interpretative possibilities [9].
In his seminal work on deconstructing the map Harley [9] argues that deconstruction as
discourse analysis, demands a closer and deeper reading of the cartographic text and may
be regarded as a search for alternative meaning. It means reading between the lines of the
map - “in the margins of the text” and a search for metaphor and rhetoric in the textuality of
the map [9]. Deconstruction is, as Harley sees it, a broad strategy, more than a precise
method or set of techniques.
However, there are some important presumptions, or contexts in the research agenda of
map deconstruction. Harley articulated the importance of context around three issues [8].
The first one is the context of the cartographer, including the appreciation of personal views,
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