Critical Cartography 1AC – Draft
1acs in this file are drafts, will be completed by teams reading this argument and
released as soon as completed. There will definitely be a neg supplement and
probably and aff one as well.
Contention One
SQ exploration begins from landed geographic spaces locking in marginalization of the
Earth’s oceans
Anderson, Senior Lecturer Human Geography, University of Cardiff and Peters,
Lecturer Human Geography, Aberystwyth University, 2014
[Dr. Jon, Dr. Kimberley, February 2014, Ashgate, “Water Worlds: Human Geographies of the
Ocean,”
http://www.ashgate.com/pdf/SamplePages/Water-Worlds-Human-Geographies-of-the-Ocean-Intro.pdf, accessed 6-27-14, J.J.]
Accordingly, within human geography, greater interest has been paid to the land: to cities, towns,
streets, homes, work places, leisure centres, schools – the places which are seen to be crucial to our everyday existence (Peters 2010: 1263). Furthermore, according to Steinberg, the marginalization of the maritime world is further compounded due to difficulties researchers face in accessing areas of the sea which are inhospitable, detached from the shore, physically unstable and immensely deep
(1999a: 372). This inaccessibility has resulted in a vision of water worlds, projected by scholars, artists
and writers, which is abstracted and distanced from reality. As Steinberg puts it, ‘the partial nature of our encounters with the ocean necessarily creates gaps’ in how the ocean is understood (2013: 157). Consequently, the physical liveliness of oceans and seas are often reduced to romantic metaphors in paintings, novels and other literary and art sources. Together, these reasons have resulted in a largely ‘landlocked’ discipline (Lambert et al. 2006: 480). However, over the past decade, geographical
research has cast off its terrestrial focus and has begun to voyage towards new, watery horizons. This
book brings together scholars concerned with the manifold human geographies of the sea, acting as a first ‘port of call’ for those interested in taking research offshore, as well as offering exciting new theoretical and empirical interventions in thinking about our water world. This book contends, along with Lambert el al (2006), that water worlds must move from the margins of geographical
consciousness and inquiry (see also Peters 2010, Steinberg 1999a, 1999b, 2001). This means, to echo
Steinberg in the Foreword to this volume that we must not simply study the seas and oceans as ‘other’
or ‘different’ spaces; but instead start thinking from the water. With this in mind, this book aims to chart new representations, understandings and experiences of the sea, plotting water worlds that are more than a ‘perfect and absolute blank’.
Status quo geographical processes focus on the empirics of ocean and exploit it for
human use
Steinberg, Florida State University Political Geography Professor, 2001
Most recently, the International Geographical Union launched its OCEANS program, dedicated to
holistic study of the ocean as an integrated system (Vallega 1999; Vallega el nl. 1998), The Geographical
Review (1999) devoted an issue to the Oceans Connect program which is built around the idea that
oceans define world regions rather than divide them, and The Professional Geographer (1999) devoted a focus section to the geography of ocean-space wherein it is urged that the social and physical
aspects of the sea be analyzed with reference to each other and to the land-based processes that interact with marine phenomena.
Nonetheless, despite the past and present significance of the world-ocean to modern society, and despite these calls for a holistic geographical accounting of human interactions with the sea, relatively little research has been conducted on the historical geography of the ocean as a space that, like land, shapes and is shaped by social and physical processes. Within the discipline of geography per se, most marine research has been of an empirical and applied nature (for reviews, see Psuty et nl. 2002;
Steinberg 1999d; West 1989). Within the social sciences more generally, the bulk of research has
focused on one or another use of the marine environment, but not on the ocean as an integrated space that is a product of - as well as a resource for - a variety of human uses. Following a review of
traditional perspectives on the ocean, this chapter presents a territorial political economy approach for analyzing the geography of ocean-space.
Our social constructions of the ocean – implications include viewing the ocean as
something to be exploited rather than explored
McAteer, web editor intern with international human rights NGO, Front Line
Defenders 13
(Christopher, 3/8/13, “Social Constructions of the Artic Ocean-Space”,
http://www.christophermcateer.com/2013/03/08/the-social-constructions-of-arctic-ocean-space/, accessed 6/29/14) NM
In The Social Construction of the Ocean, Steinberg considers there to be three major social
constructions of ocean-space throughout history: A great void; Land-like; and a placeless force-field. These are social constructions in that they arise from the manner in which the ocean is actually used by societal units. These social constructions are derived from three discursive constructions:
Development; Geopolitical; and Legal. The development construction considers, “the sea as a space devoid of potential for growth and civilization” (Steinberg 2001, 35). The geopolitical construction sees the sea as an area that is external to the territory of political society, which is complimented by the legal construction, which considers, “the sea as immune to social control and order” (Steinberg 2001,
36). Steinberg states that the great void construction of the ocean considers the ocean to be a
separating space which is immune from state power and is to be traversed. He makes an allusion to
the Indian Ocean circa 500B.C.-C.E 1500: “Societies of the Indian Ocean viewed the sea as a source of imported goods, but the sea itself was perceived as a space apart from society, an untameable
mystery” (Steinberg 2001, 45). He asserts that, in the great void construction, territory ends at the shore and that the sea cannot be bounded or possessed, it can merely be conceived as a vast and
dangerous expanse that may be used for transport: “The sea was perceived as distance, not territory”
(Steinberg 2001, 52). The land-like social construction views the ocean as a resource which can be used
in everyday life. It is a resource of food and connection and, being an integral part of everyday life, is suitable for territorial claims and exertions of power. Steinberg believes this model to fit with the
interaction of society and ocean-space seen in Micronesia up until recent times. He claims that, “For the Micronesias, the ocean is seen primarily as a resource provider, divided into distinct places, much as
continental residents view their land-space” (Steinberg 2001, 52-3). In this construction the ocean is
viewed as one may view a highway: it did not divide societies within Micronesia, but rather connect them and was a fundamental part of common heritage and daily experience. Steinberg’s third social
construction of space is that of a placeless force-field. This is a construction that holds ocean-space as an arena of competition and potential militarism. Societal units vie for power on land, using the ocean as a buffer against potential threat, separating potentially rebellious colonized areas from the hegemonic base of a single, strong empire. What is sought is not control of the ocean, which is not
viewed as land-like, but rather stewardship. The historical ocean-space that Steinberg draws on here is
the Mediterranean Sea, particularly during the Roman period (c. 300 B.C.-C.E.500). The ocean-space construction in this model sits somewhere between a freedom/enclosure dichotomy: “Rome constructed the Mediterranean as a “force-field,” a placeless surface that belonged to no one but upon which powerful states could intervene do as to steward its resources for the national interest.
The placeless force-field construction is perhaps the closest of the three to the manner in which UNCLOS seems to consider ocean-space, particularly with regards to EEZs: “Within an EEZ… a coastal state may
claim policing rights, but not full sovereign authority, in the interest of stewarding the zone’s living and non-living resources” (Steinberg 1999, 261). It is also similar to the position the US has taken with regards to the world’s oceans since the Second World War. On the other hand, the great void
construction also seems to exist to a degree today, particularly within the mechanisms of postmodern capitalism. Steinberg states that, “With the *postmodern capitalist+ era’s emphasis on movement and speed, the dominant element of postmodern capitalism’s ocean-space construction is a continuation of the great void ideal that characterized the industrial capitalist era” (Steinberg 2001, 164).
Status quo geographers view the ocean as ontologically distinct from human society
Steinberg, Florida State University Political Geography Professor, 2009
*Philip E., “Oceans,” International Encyclopedia of Human Geography,
http://philsteinberg.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/iehg.pdf, accessed 6/27/14 JO]
The ocean has failed to attract attention from more than a handful of human geographers for three
likely reasons: first, despite the fact that geographers have long critiqued the idealization of the state
as a naturally occurring, organic entity, geographers (and, more generally, social scientists) still have tended to conceive of the world as a universe of state territories. As a space that lies primarily external to the territory or sovereign authority of individual states, the ocean thus has appeared as a space that is external to the space-creating processes of society.
Second, human geographers (and, again, social scientists more generally) have tended to view societies
as occurring in place. Key social activities, such as production, reproduction, and consumption, as well as the cultural forms that support these activities, traditionally, have been associated with discrete places or territories. Movement typically has been viewed as a derivative activity that occurs simply because an individual or a commodity requires relocation from one society-place to another, and little attention, therefore, has been directed toward the spaces across which this movement occurs. Thus,
notwithstanding the ocean's substantial economic value as the space across which the bulk of the world's commerce flows, it has received little attention from human geographers.
Third, human geographers traditionally have viewed nature as ontologically distinct from society.
Although geographers have long focused on the intersection between nature and society (examining,
for instance, the way in which a places nature and its society impact each other), this emphasis on the
intersection between nature and society has tended to direct human geographers’ attention away from spaces of nature that fail to display a clear human presence. Thus, as a space that is without permanent human habitation and that long was thought to be immune to human impact, the ocean typically has escaped the attention of human geographers who study nature-society relations.
Understanding the politics behind mapping is necessary to avoid the environmental
neglect of “un-mappable” areas—The ocean is disproportionately affected
Harris, University of Wisconsin Geography department professor, and Hazen,
University of Minnesota Geography professor, 2006
*Leila M. and Helen D., “Power of Maps: (Counter) Mapping for Conservation,” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, Volume: 4, Issue: 1, page 99-129, JO]
Which areas are preferentially selected for protection is not only a function of cultural or economic imperatives, but may also be influenced by the relative ‘mappability’ of different areas. For instance, grasslands are not only considered less ‘majestic’ than other landscapes (see discussion in Cronon,
1995), but are also less definable in carto-geographic terms than, for example, a lake or an island, and
may therefore be neglected by conservation designations. The preference for the protection of forest over dry land and grassland ecosystems that can be seen at the global scale (Hazen and Anthamatten,
2004) may also be, in part, a reflection of the fact that forests are often a ‘mapped’ feature, whereas
grasslands and dry lands are invisible on all but the most specialized of maps.8 As yet another example
of the importance of ‘mappability,’ consider the frequency with which jurisdictional boundaries define
at least one edge of a protected area. In such cases, the already mapped boundaries of contemporary states act to delimit protected area boundaries, discouraging planners from using less easily
"mappable" boundaries in making their decisions. As a result, most protected areas remain limited to
the confines of just one political state, although the number of ‘transboundary protected areas’ is on
the rise (Zimmerer et al., 2004). Finally, the case of marine ecosystems is also notable in this respect,
with data limitations, mobile features, and other considerations contributing to the difficulty of mapping and managing oceans (see Steinberg, 2001). This perhaps helps to explain why marine ecosystems have not seen the same proliferation of protected areas over the past twenty years that
has occurred in terrestrial areas. While nearly seventy percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by ocean, in 1997 less than 20% of global protected areas included marine ecosystems (UNEP 2005).
Ecological crisis
Darder, Professor of Education, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign 10
(Antonia Darder, “Preface” in Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy, & Planetary Crisis: The Ecopedagogy Movement by Richard V. Kahn, 2010, pp. x-xiii)It is fitting to begin my words about Richard Kahn’s Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy, and Planetary Crisis: The Ecopedagogy Movement with a poem. The direct and succinct message of The Great Mother Wails cuts through our theorizing and opens us up to the very heart of the book’s message—to ignite a fire that speaks to the ecological crisisat hand; a crisis orchestrated by the inhumane greed and economic
brutality of the wealthy. Nevertheless, as is clearly apparent, none of us is absolved from complicity with the devastating destruction of the earth. As members of the global community, we are all implicated in this destruction by the very manner in which we define ourselves, each other, and all living beings with whom we reside on the earth.
Everywhere we look there are glaring signs of political systems and social structures that propel us toward unsustainability and extinction. In this historical moment, the planet faces some of the most
horrendous forms of “man-made” devastation ever known to humankind. Cataclysmic “natural disasters” in the last decade have sung the environmental hymns of planetary imbalance and reckless environmental disregard. A striking feature of this ecological crisis, both locally and globally, is the
overwhelming concentration of wealthheld by the ruling elite and their agents of capital. This environmental malaise is characterized by the staggering loss of livelihood among working people everywhere; gross inequalities in educational opportunities; an absence of health care for millions; an unprecedented number of people living behind bars; and trillions spent on fabricated wars
fundamentally tied to the control and domination of the planet’s resources.
The Western ethos of mastery and supremacy over nature has accompanied, to our detriment, the unrelenting expansion of capitalism and its unparalleled domination over all aspects of human life. This hegemonic worldview has been unmercifully imparted through a host of public policies and practices that conveniently gloss over gross inequalities as commonsensical necessities for democracy
to bloom. As a consequence, the liberal democratic rhetoric of “we are all created equal” hardly begins to touch the international pervasiveness of racism, patriarchy, technocracy, and economic piracy by the West, all which have fostered the erosion of civil rights and the unprecedented ecological exploitation of societies, creating conditions that now threaten our peril, if we do not reverse directions.
Cataclysmic disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, are unfortunate testimonies to the danger of ignoring the warnings of the natural world, especially when coupled with egregious governmental neglect of impoverished people. Equally disturbing, is the manner in which ecological crisis is vulgarly exploited by unscrupulous and ruthless capitalists who see no problem with turning a profit off the backs of ailing and mourning oppressed populations of every species—whether they be victims of weather disasters, catastrophic illnesses, industrial pollution, or inhumane practices of incarceration. Ultimately, these
constitute ecological calamities that speak to the inhumanity and tyranny of material profiteering, at the expense of precious life.
The arrogance and exploitation of neoliberal values of consumption dishonor the contemporary
suffering of poor and marginalized populations around the globe. Neoliberalism denies or simply mocks (“Drill baby drill!”) the interrelationship and delicate balance that exists between all living beings, including the body earth. In its stead, values of individualism, competition, privatization, and the “free market” systematically debase the ancient ecological knowledge of indigenous populations, who have, implicitly or explicitly, rejected the fabricated ethos of “progress and democracy” propagated by the West. In its consuming frenzy to gobble up the natural resources of the planet for its own hyperbolic
quest for material domination, the exploitative nature of capitalism and its burgeoning technocracy has dangerously deepened the structures of social exclusion, through the destruction of the very biodiversity that has been key to our global survival for millennia.
Kahn insists that this devastation of all species and the planet must be fully recognized and soberly
critiqued. But he does not stop there. Alongside, he rightly argues for political principles of engagement
for the construction of a critical ecopedagogy and ecoliteracy that is founded on economic
redistribution, cultural and linguistic democracy, indigenous sovereignty, universal human rights, and a fundamental respect for all life. As such, Kahn seeks to bring us all back to a formidable relationship with the earth, one that is unquestionably rooted in an integral order of knowledge, imbued with physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual wisdom. Within the context of such an ecologically grounded epistemology, Kahn uncompromisingly argues that our organic relationship with the earth is also intimately tied to our struggles for cultural self-determination, environmental sustainability, social and material justice, and global peace.
Through a carefully framed analysis of past disasters and current ecological crisis, Kahn issues an urgent call for a critical ecopedagogy that makes central explicit articulations of the ways in which societies
construct ideological, political, and cultural systems, based on social structures and practices that can serve to promote ecological sustainability and biodiversity or, conversely, lead us down a disastrous path of unsustainability and extinction. In making his case, Kahn provides a grounded examination of
the manner in which consuming capitalism manifests its repressive force throughout the globe, disrupting the very ecological order of knowledge essential to the planet’s sustainability. He offers an understanding of critical ecopedagogy and ecoliteracy that inherently critiques the history of Western civilization and the anthropomorphic assumptions that sustain patriarchy and the subjugation of all subordinated living beings—assumptions that continue to inform traditional education discourses around the world. Kahn incisively demonstrates how a theory of multiple technoliteracies can be used to effectively critique the ecological corruption and destruction behind mainstream uses of technology and the media in the interest of the neoliberal marketplace. As such, his work points to the manner in which
the sustainability rhetoric of mainstream environmentalism actually camouflages wretched neoliberal policies and practices that left unchecked hasten the annihilation of the globe’s ecosystem.
True to its promise, the book cautions that any anti-hegemonic resistance movement that claims social
justice, universal human rights, or global peace must contend forthrightly with the deteriorating ecological crisis at hand, as well as consider possible strategies and relationships that rupture the status quo and transform environmental conditions that threaten disaster. A failure to integrate ecological sustainability at the core of our political and pedagogical struggles for liberation, Kahn
argues, is to blindly and misguidedly adhere to an anthropocentric worldview in which emancipatory
dreams are deemed solely about human interests, without attention either to the health of the planet or to the well-being of all species with whom we walk the earth.
Plans
The United States federal government should substantially increase its critical
cartographic exploration of the Earth’s oceans.
Affirm a substantial increase in critical cartographic exploration of the Earth’s oceans.
Critical cartographic exploration of Earth’s oceans should be substantially increased.
Contention Two
Counter Cartography is key to see past the objectivity of representational maps
Stallmann Freelance Cartographer and GIS analyst, ‘12
(Timothy, 2012, Alternative Cartographies: Building Collective Power, p. 63-65, Accessed 6/30/14, ESB)
Maps are not, have never intended to be, exact mirrors of the Earth’s surface.Simplification,
generalization and data refinement are key tools in the process of Western scientific cartography. It is at the same time important to understand that traditional cartography still functions very much through a logic of representation. Map icons, forexample, may or may not be designed in order to resemble, but they consistently aredesigned in order to represent. Representational maps work
because they function as part of (material) chains of resemblance which co-constitute the territory which they claim to represent. This logic of representation is whatmakes it possible to point at a map and saysomething like: “this is Raleigh,” “that is theFerry from Hatteras to Ocracoke,” or “thedarker purple areas have a higher medianincome.” These statements depend on institutions, practices,
relationships, bulldozers, annexation lawsuits, and census forms which discipline both spaces and people. Re presentational cartography attempts to make invisible the institutions, practices, relationships, and people who do the work necessary to keep chains of representation smoothly functioning.The institutions, practices, technologies and bodies underlying representational cartography claim, in Donna Haraway’s language, “the power to see and not be seen, to represent
while escaping representation.”12 What escapes representation is oftentimes the object of
counter-cartography – the ways these systems function to maintain and increase a hierarchical distribution of wealth, how they distribute life chances in ways which make it harder for marginalized communities to exercise autonomy, how they violently impose the territorial will of the few on the many , and their “perverse capacity – honed to perfection in the history of science tied to militarism, capitalism,
colonialism, and male supremacy – to distance the knowing subject from everybody and everything in the interests of unfettered power.”13Counter-cartography, growing out of social movements which situate themselves in opposition to the unfettered power of individual states, of multinational corporations, of border regimes, neoliberalism or capitalism, opposes both the material of chains of representation and the “this-is-that-is-there” logic of maps which they make possible.Where representational cartography make s statements about a defined territory,
non-representational 14counter- cartography aims to ask questions and open conversations. A non-representational map is not a map which says nothing, nor is it one which has no connection with any outside. Rather, non-representational mapping uses relations of whatFoucault calls
similitude.15Graphic objects on the map plane have relations of similarity with material objects, but also with other graphic objects, with words and with ideas. Similitude explodes the unidirectional real → representation arrow of the Western map into a multitude of connections both within and outside the map plane.
Aff helps overcomes privileged elite land-based thinking
Anderson, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Cardiff, UK,
Peters, Lecturer in Human Geography at Aberystwyth University, UK., 2014
[Dr. Jon, Dr. Kimberley, February 2014, Ashgate, “Water Worlds: Human Geographies of the
Ocean,”
http://www.ashgate.com/pdf/SamplePages/Water-Worlds-Human-Geographies-of-the-Ocean-Intro.pdf, accessed 6-27-14, J.J.]
In sum, this book re-centres the oceans and seas as spaces relevant to unearthing new understandings
of the world which both move us beyond a terrestrial sphere, but also allow that terrestrial sphere to be examined in novel ways. Studying oceans and seas are essential to understanding our ‘landed’ lives. Water worlds cannot be conceived as ‘out there’ or ‘irrelevant’ because maritime mobilities
permeate our daily existence invisibly, but significantly. That the sea touches our everyday lives alerts
us to the material and tangible reality of water worlds. Often emptied and reduced to metaphor (Mack
2011: 25), it is vital to remember that humans do not just imagine the water world but physically
experience it, and concomitantly, nonhumans are not outside of the seas and oceans; they are enfolded within it in an embodied and enlivened way. Moreover, the seas and oceans are not merely full of people, animals and material things; they are, at the most fundamental level, constituted of matter. If we seek to bring to the fore the various ways the seas and oceans are ‘filled’, we can attempt to write about the world in a different way, from perspectives which do not privilege the land, or land-based thinking. Gaining novel and important insights from the water world enables us to create a new language, a ‘Thalassology’, for conceptualizing watery-human interactions and which may be employed at, but also beyond the oceans and seas.
Critical Cartography allows the people to be free from control by the elites.
Crampton, Associate Professor of Geography, University of Kentucky, 10
[Jeremy W, Mapping: A Critical Introduction to Cartography and GIS, page 40-41, PAC]
In the last few years cartography has been slipping from the control of the powerful¶ elites that have
exercised dominance over it for several hundred years. You have¶ probably already have noticed this
with the emergence of fantastically popular¶ mapping applications such as Google Earth. The elites – the
map experts, the great¶ map houses of the West, national and local governments, the major mapping
and¶ GIS companies, and to a lesser extent academics – have been confronted by two¶ important
developments that threaten to undermine their dominance. First, as Google¶ Earth has shown, the
actual business of mapmaking, of collecting spatial data and¶ mapping it out, is passing out of the hands of the experts. The ability to make a map,¶ even a stunning interactive 3D map, is now available
to anyone with a home computer¶ and a broadband internet connection. Cartography’s latest
“technological¶ transition” (Monmonier 1985; Perkins 2003) is not only a technological question¶ but a
While this trend has been apparent to industry insiders for some time, a second¶ challenge has also
been issued. This is a social theoretic critique that is challenging the way we have thought about mapping in the post-war era. During the last¶ 50 years or so cartography and GIS have very much aspired to push maps as factual¶ scientific documents. Critical cartography and GIS however conceives of mapping¶ as embedded in specific relations of power. That is, mapping is involved in what we¶ choose to represent, how we choose to represent objects such as people and things,¶ and what decisions are made with those representations. In other words, mapping¶ is in and of itself a political process. And it is a political process in which increasing¶ numbers of people are participating. If the map is a specific set of power/knowledge¶ claims, then not only the state and the elites but the rest of us too could make¶ competing and equally powerful claims (Wood 1992).¶ This one–two punch
– a pervasive set of imaginative mapping practices and¶ a critique highlighting the politics of mapping – has “undisciplined” cartography.¶ That is, these two trends challenge the established cartographic
disciplinary methods¶ and practices. It has certainly not occurred without opposition or resistance –
which¶ all new ideas encounter. For example, there is quite a strong trend in the USA and¶ other
countries right now to make people “qualify” as GIS experts through a licensing¶ or certification
process. Indeed an organization known as Management Association¶ of Private Photogrammetric
Surveyors (MAPPS) which represents licensed surveyors¶ recently sued the US government in order to
force it to hire only licensed users of¶ geospatial information. This would have had large repercussions
on federal contractors¶ and further encouraged the development of “bodies of knowledge” that¶ people must qualify in before they can use maps or GIS (such as this one: DiBiase¶ et al. 2006). While
MAPPS lost their lawsuit they issued a statement saying “the¶ game is not over” (MAPPS 2007).¶ Critical
mapping operates from the ground up in a diffuse manner without¶ top-down control and doesn’t need the approval of experts in order to flourish. It¶ is a movement that is ongoing whether or not the academic discipline of cartography¶ is involved (D. Wood 2003). It is in this sense that cartography is being freed from¶ the confines of the academy and opened up to the people.
Kitchin, National University of Ireland, Department of Geography and Dodge,
University of Manchester, Department of Geography, 7
*Rob, Martin, “Rethinking maps,” Progress in Human Geography, Volume: 31 Number: 3, page
5-7, http://eprints.nuim.ie/2755/1/RK_Rethinkingmaps.pdf, PAC]
The argument we forward is not being¶ made to demonstrate clever word play or to¶ partake in aimless
philosophizing.1 In contrast,¶ we are outlining what we believe is a significant conceptual shift in how
to think about¶ maps and cartography (and, by implication,¶ what are commonly understood as other¶ representational outputs and endeavours); that¶ is a shift from ontology (how things are) to¶ ontogenesis (how things become) – from¶ (secure) representation to (unfolding) practice.¶ This is not
minor argument with little theoretical or practical implications. Rather it involves¶ adopting a radically different view of maps and¶ cartography. In particular, we feel that the¶ ontological move we detail has value for five¶ reasons. First, we think it is a productive¶ way to think about the world,
including cartography. It acknowledges how life unfolds in multifarious, contingent and relational
cartography – how mapping and cartographic¶ research is undertaken. Third, it ‘denaturalizes¶ and
deprofessionalizes cartography’ (Pickles,¶ 2004: 17) by recasting cartography as a broad¶ set of spatial
practices, including gestural and¶ performative mappings such as Aboriginal¶ songlines, along with sketch
maps, countermaps, and participatory mapping, moving it¶ beyond a narrowly defined conception of
mapmaking. (This is not to denigrate the work of¶ professional cartographers, but to recognize¶ that they
work with a narrowly defined set of¶ practices that are simply a subset of all potential mappings.) As
such, it provides a way to¶ think critically about the practices of cartography and not simply the end
product (the¶ socalled map). Fourth, it provides a means to¶ examine the effects of mapping without
reducing such analysis to theories of power, instead¶ positioning maps as practices that have diverse¶
effects within multiple and shifting contexts.¶ Fifth, it provides a theoretical space in which¶ ‘those who research mapping as a practical¶ form of applied knowledge, and those that seek¶ to critique the map and mapping process’ can¶ meet, something that Perkins (2003: 341) feels¶ is unlikely to happen
as things stand. Perkins¶ (2003: 342) makes this claim because he feels¶ ‘addressing how maps work . . .
involves asking different questions to those that relate to¶ power of the medium’ – one set of questions¶
being technical, the other ideological. We do¶ not think that this is the case – both are questions
Inherency Extensions
Ocean represented as void between terrestrial civilization
Steinberg, Florida State University Political Geography Professor, 2001
[Philip E., The Social Construction of the Ocean, 114-117, Google books JO]
The idealization of the deep sea as a great void between developable, terrestrial places of civilization was aided and reflected by representations in maps, art, and literature of the industrial capitalist era. In cartography, the sea slipped into the background. The sea, once represented on maps by colorful fish, terrifying monsters, dramatic swells, and valiant ships engaged in battle, now was drawn as a blue, form- less expanse (Whitfield 1996). Taking this representation to its extreme absurdity, Lewis
Carroll penned the following verses to accompany the "Ocean-Chart" (Figure 10) in his 1876 poem The Hunting of the Snark:
He had bought a large map representing the sea, without the least vestige of land: And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be A map they could all understand. "What's the good of
Mercator's North Poles and Equators, Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?" So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply 'They are merely conventional signs! Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes! But we've got our brave Captain to thank" (So the crew would protest) "that he's bought us the best - A perfect and absolute blank!"
Rationalists of the era saw the ocean as a space resistant to social progress, modernization, and development, and that therefore must be conquered or annihilated (or, short of annihilation, reserved
for outcast sailors and non-Western harpoonists). This attitude is aptly demonstrated in James Barry's Progress of Hitman Culture (1777-1783), a mural that adorns the great hall of London's Royal Society of Arts and Manufactures. Throughout the mural's six panels, Barry utilizes classical techniques (one critic calls the mural "ultra-Michelangelesque") to create a "Sistine Chapel of the Enlightenment...
[celebrating] the missionary cult of genius, the glorification of the human faculties, the ameliorist confidence, the encyclopedic approach to both history and knowledge, the patriotic pride alongside the assertion of the brother- hood of nations" (Burke 1976:250). The first panel, "Orpheus Reclaiming Mankind from a Savage State," is a pointed attack on the romantic glorification of the noble savage. Contrasting this notion, the mural, according to its artist, seeks to demonstrate that "the obtaining of happiness as well individual or public, depends upon cultivating the human faculties" (cited in Burke 1976: 248-249). The fourth panel, "Navigation, or the Triumph of the Thames" (Figure 11, later titled "Commerce, or the Triumph of the Thames"), is notable in that there is almost no water in the
foreground. This seems at first an odd way to represent navigation, unless one defines navigation as the process whereby science is used not to tame or interpret but to annihilate ocean-space; in that
case the sight of gods, goddesses, statesmen, scientists, and philosophers literally crowding out the
vast expanses of the ocean is an appropriate celebration of the Age of Reason.
Although writing in 1989, William Golding captures the spirit of the times in Fire Down Below, the third volume of his sea trilogy set in the early nineteenth century. After completing harrowing journeys from
England to Australia, two British aristocrats carry on the following conversation while courting each other:
"I did not know there was so much [sea], Mr Talbot, that is the fact of the matter. One sees maps and globes but it is different." "It is indeed different!" "Most of it you know, sir, is quite unnecessary."
Resource Exploitation Focus SQ
SQ focus on resources limits our understandings of the oceans
Steinberg, Florida State University Political Geography Professor, 2001
[Philip E., The Social Construction of the Ocean, page 11-12, Google books, PAC]
The perspective most often applied in academic studies of marine issues is that of the ocean as a space of resources. The ocean is perceived as akin to other resource-rich spaces, and its management is characterized by similar dilemmas: How can the maximum sustainable yield be calculated and how should portions of that yield be allocated to competing users? How can traditional tenure systems and
production practices be integrated with emerging resource needs, political power differentials, and technological advances? How can one adjudicate between the needs of users of one ocean-space
resource and those who wish to use the same area for a different, incompatible resource use? How can one implement comprehensive, binding management of a space expressly defined as outside state
territory when the key actors in building institutions of global govemance are territorially bounded states?3
Students of resource management regimes note that in recent decades there have been dramatic
increases in the rates of extraction of both nonliving and living resources from marine environments.
While petroleum is the best known and, to date, most important non-living resource extracted from the ocean floor, significant quantities of sand and gravel also are taken from marine space, and since the 1960s there has been strong interest in other marine minerals, including coal, polymetallic sulphides,
metalliferous sediments, phosphorite nodules, and, most notably, polymetallic manganese nodules
(Earney 1990). Since World War ll, the quantity of fish harvested from marine areas has risen at an
average growth rate of 3.6 percent per annum, increasing from 17.3 million metric tons (t) in 1948 to
61.7 million t in 1970 to 91.9 million t in 1995(FAO. various years). Most recently; the ocean has
attracted attention as an alternative source for renewable energy (Tsamenyi and Herriman 1998),
while deep sea habitats have amused the interest of biologists seeking previously unexploited genetic material (Norse 1993).
Diminishing stocks of ocean resources (especially certain fish species) have led many scholars to advocate a stronger regime for managing marine resource extraction. Some have suggested that a stronger system of ocean governance be built around enhanced international regulatory organizations
(Bautista Payoyo 1994; Borgese 1986, 1998; Prager 1993). Others argue that this "tragedy of the commons" situation requires a regime based on enclosure of ocean resources, so that each producer will become a "stakeholder" with an incentive to restrict production to the ocean's maximum
sustainable yield (Denman 1984; Eckert 1979). Others suggest that models for sustainable ocean
governance maybe found in the "traditional" tenure systems of non-Westem societies (Cordell 1989;
McCay and Acheson 1987; jackson 1995; Ostrom 1990; Van Dyke et nl. 1993), while still others promote
a civil society-based partnership wherein fishers, processors. consumers, retailers, and nongovernmental organizations work together to implement a sustainable extraction system
Whichever policy proscription one adopts, the resource centered perspective offers a limited account of the history of human interactions with the sea. Through the early twentieth century:
The only [extractive] resource exploitation was fishing, and with some infrequent exceptions of inshore fisheries there were no serious problems of stock depletion until the technical modernization of fishing vessels in the twentieth century The oceans |i.e., non-coastal areas] were used mainly as avenues of commerce and for waging war and in the latter case military endeavors involved for the most part colonization or naval encounters. Large invasions across ocean spaces were difficult and infrequent. Therefore the major use of the oceans was essentially for the transportation of goods. (Zacher and McConnell 1990: 78)
Oceans as Blank Resource Reserve
In an industrial capitalist period, the ocean is described as a blank backdrop,
wilderness, and filler—this allows elitist control and capitalist gain
Anderson, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography University of Cardiff, & Peters,
Lecturer in Human Geography at Aberystwyth University, UK., 2014
[Dr. Jon, Dr. Kimberley, February 2014, Ashgate, “Water Worlds: Human Geographies of the
Ocean,”
http://www.ashgate.com/pdf/SamplePages/Water-Worlds-Human-Geographies-of-the-Ocean-Intro.pdf, accessed 6-27-14, J.J.]
Our world is a water world. The oceans and seas are entwined, often invisibly but nonetheless
importantly, with our everyday lives. Trade, tourism, migration, terrorism, and resource exploitation all happen in, at, and across the oceans. The globalized world of the twenty-first century is thus
thoroughly dependent upon water worlds. Despite this, geography, as ‘earth writing’ (Barnes and
Duncan 1992: 1), has largely taken its etymological roots seriously (Steinberg 1999a, Peters 2010). The discipline has been a de facto terrestrial study; the sea not accorded the status of a ‘place’ worthy of scholarly study (Hill and Abbott 2009: 276). In the words of Lewis Carroll’s crew in The Hunting of the Snark (see Foreword), until very recently, geography has reduced the sea to ‘a perfect and absolute
blank’. Such status has been most marked within human geography, where focus on sociocultural and
political life rarely strays beyond the shore (Steinberg 1999a: 367). As Mack identifies, water worlds
have generally been relegated to, either the backdrop to the stage on which the real action is seen to take place – that is, the land – or they are portrayed simply as the means of connection between activities taking place at coasts and in their interiors. (2011: 19) As a consequence, the predominant view of the sea has come to be characterized as, a quintessential wilderness, a void without
community other than that temporarily established on boats crewed by those with the shared experience of being tossed about on its surface. (Mack 2011: 17) Such a conceptualization is
commonly attributed to ‘modern’ framings in the industrial capitalist era that have endured until the
twenty-first century (Steinberg 2001: 113). Oceans and seas have been dismissed as spatial fillers to be
traversed for the capital gain of those on land (Steinberg 2001) or conquered for means of long distance imperial control (Law 1986, Ogborn 2002). Moreover, because so few moderns live their lives
at sea – it is not a place of ‘permanent, sedentary habitation’ (Steinberg 1999a: 369) – water worlds
often remain at the edge of everyday consciousness. As Langewiesche states, since we live on land, and are usually beyond the sight of the sea, it is easy to forget that our world is an ocean world. (2004:
Solves Gulf of Mexico Scenarios
Anderson, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography University of Cardiff, & Peters,
Lecturer in Human Geography at Aberystwyth University, UK, 2014
[Dr. Jon, Dr. Kimberley, February 2014, Ashgate, “Water Worlds: Human Geographies of the
Ocean,”
http://www.ashgate.com/pdf/SamplePages/Water-Worlds-Human-Geographies-of-the-Ocean-Intro.pdf, accessed 6-30-14, J.J.]
While each of these Gulf/Caribbean images is certainly maritime, none of them suggests an underlying historical, or ongoing, space of maritime unity - a Mediterranean space of crossings. Mexico, which might logically be perceived as lying on the 'other' side of the region (the equivalent of North Africa
and the Levant, in the Mediterranean context), is instead seen as an extension of the arid western
United States, not a space that is joined to the United States through maritime connectivity. This geographic erasure in U.S. thought, in which the southern maritime frontier is subsumed by the western land frontier, is reproduced in the Hollywood Western, where Mexico is almost universally depicted as an extension of the southwestern U.S. desert, not the land that lies across from the Gulf coast of the southeastern United States. The resulting conception of the Gulf region as a series of local destinations, as opposed to being an integrated maritime space unified by a body of water, is so pervasive that when Mississippi state legislator Steve Holland proposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America in an effort to spoof his anti-immigration colleagues the joke was lost on the national media (Wilkinson 2012)."
Thinking of the ocean space as a homogenous, whole region perpetuates colonial
relations to resources
Anderson, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography University of Cardiff, & Peters,
Lecturer in Human Geography at Aberystwyth University, UK, 2014
[Dr. Jon, Dr. Kimberley, February 2014, Ashgate, “Water Worlds: Human Geographies of the
Ocean,”
http://www.ashgate.com/pdf/SamplePages/Water-Worlds-Human-Geographies-of-the-Ocean-Intro.pdf, accessed 6-30-14, J.J.]
Giaccaria and Minca (2011) advance this critique by identifying ocean basin-based regions as
exemplarily postcolonial spaces that reproduce and naturalize ideals of unity in difference. On the one
hand, the ocean in the middle of a maritime region links spaces and societies that are purported to be
'naturally' different. The different societies exist on opposite sides of a seemingly natural divide, a purportedly empty and separating ocean. On the other hand, because the ocean connects, even if it does not homogenize, the societies in an ocean region appear to exist in a permanent and natural universe of exchange and interaction that reproduces difference. Existing within an idealized arena of
connectivity amidst difference, the various societies within an ocean region are linked together in an
arena of mobility in which all entities - those with relatively more power and those with relatively less - are transformed even as they resist the 'other'. While all ocean regions are, in this sense,
prefiguratively postcolonial, arguably the paradigmatic case is the Mediterranean (Chambers 2008). In
part, this is because of the Mediterranean's physical geography (relatively small and enclosed), in art it is because of its location at the intersection of Europe an one of its longest standing 'others' (the Arab 'orient'), and in part it is because of the ion history in the humanities of treating the Mediterranean as a singularly unified, but also resolutely divided, region (Giaccaria and Minca 2011). For all these reasons, [amidst] a paradoxical interplay between different (and potentially conflictual) representations of this sea that alternate narratives of homogeneity and continuity with those of heterogeneity and
discontinuity, [the rhetoric of mediterraneanism sustains] the belief in the existence of a geographical object called the Mediterranean, where different forms of proximity (morphological. climatic. cultural. religious. etc.) justify a specific rhetorical apparatus through the production of a simplified field of inquiry, otherwise irreducible to a single image. (Giaccaria and Minca 2011: 348, emphasis in original) The Mediterranean thus comes to be seen as something that, although permanently divided, is also permanent in its wholeness: 'The mediterraneisme de la fracture [is understood as] something
substantially immutable - a vision that resembles, in many ways, the cultural "containers" imagined and celebrated in Orientalist colonial rhetoric and Romantic literature' (Giaccaria and Minca 2011: 353).
Anderson, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography University of Cardiff, & Peters,
Lecturer in Human Geography at Aberystwyth University, 2014
[Dr. Jon, Dr. Kimberley, February 2014, Ashgate, “Water Worlds: Human Geographies of the
Ocean,”
http://www.ashgate.com/pdf/SamplePages/Water-Worlds-Human-Geographies-of-the-Ocean-Intro.pdf, accessed 6-30-14, J.J.]
Like any antithetical categorization, the ocean region can either challenge or reproduce the
fundamental assumptions of the dominant construction to which it is posed as an alternative. On the
one hand, when one designates an ocean as the element that unites a region, fluidity and connections
replace embeddedness in static points and bounded territories as the fundamental nexus of society and space. 'Roots' are replaced by 'routes', and this suggests a radical ontology of deterritorialization and reterritorialization (cf. Deleuze and Guattari 1987). On the other hand, by reaffirming the concept of the region as a unit of analysis - a unit that is stable in space and time and, therefore, potentially explanatory - the ocean region perspective can inadvertently reproduce the static and essentialist spatial ontology that it attempts to subvert.'
Solves Overfishing/Whaling
Understanding ocean cartography opens the door for the understanding of oceanic
cultures relationship to fishing, whaling, etc.
Steinberg, Florida State University Political Geography Professor, 2009
*Philip E., “Oceans,” International Encyclopedia of Human Geography,
http://philsteinberg.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/iehg.pdf, accessed 6/27/14 JO]
While contemporary studies of the political geography of the sea can draw upon a long history of political geographers studying maritime conflict, the study of marine issues is quite new in cultural geography. Of course,there always have been marine cultural geographies; seafaring and fishing
communities invariably display distinct cultural formations that reflect and impact the surrounding marine environment. Historically, however, few geographers have devoted their attention to the cultures of fishing communities and even fewer have studied the cultures of societies engaged in uses of the deep sea (e.g, whalers, naval personnel, merchant mariners, oceanographic and fisheries
researchers, or long-distance fishers). As has occurred throughout cultural geography since the 1980s,
much of the impetus for new cultural geographic studies of the sea has come from outside the discipline, especially from anthropology, history, literature, and cultural studies. This turn to the sea — and to understanding the sea as a space of culture — perhaps emerged first in the discipline of history.Fernand Braudel’s The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II demonstrated thatthe ocean, far from being an empty space between cultures, was in fact a space of interaction in which cultures (and natures) were formed and transformed. This perspective, which directly challenged prevailing ideas in cultural ecology (as well as in history and anthropology) about cultures being rooted in place, was soon taken up by other historians who started new ocean-basin-based organizations of history (most notably Atlantic history). In the 1990s, this work on the history of
ocean regions began to be joined with work emerging from cultural studies (and, increasingly, cultural geography) on diasporas, hybrid identities, and transnationalism. Broadly, scholars associated with this school of thought stress the ways in which cultures are continually reproduced through movement and connection rather than through stasis in place.A key motivational book for integrating the ocean within this line of thinking was Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic Although Gilroy only indirectly considers the ocean as a material space of society, the book, which has been highly influential in cultural studies, suggests the power of oceanic metaphors, and, by association, oceanic spaces, in interpreting cultural formations.
Extinction
That exacerbates structural violence and makes extinction inevitable
Byrne, Head of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy and Toley, Directs the
Urban Studies and Wheaton in Chicago programs 6
(John – Head of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy – It’s a leading institution for interdisciplinary graduate education, research, and advocacy in energy and environmental policy – John is also a Distinguished Professor of Energy & Climate Policy at the University of Delaware – 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Toley – Directs the Urban Studies and Wheaton in Chicago programs - Selected to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Emerging Leaders Program for 2011-2013 - expertise includes issues related to urban and environmental politics, global cities, and public policy, Transforming Power, Energy, Environment, and Society in Conflict, “Energy as a Social Project: Recovering a Discourse,” p. 1-32
http://ceepolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/2006_es_energy_as_a_social_project2.pdf Accessed 7/1/14) NM
From climate change to acid rain, contaminated landscapes, mercury pollution, and biodiversity loss,2 the origins of many of our least tractable environmental problems can be traced to the operations of the modern energy system. A scan of nightfall across the planet reveals a social dilemma that also
accompanies this system’s operations: invented over a century ago, electric light remains an experience only for the socially privileged. Two billion human beings—almost one-third of the planet’s population— experience evening light by candle, oil lamp, or open fire, reminding us that energy modernization has
left intact—and sometimes exacerbated—social inequalities that its architects promised would be banished (Smil, 2003: 370 - 373). And there is the disturbing link between modern energy and war.3
Whether as a mineral whose control is fought over by the powerful (for a recent history of conflict over oil, see Klare, 2002b, 2004, 2006), or as the enablement of an atomic war of extinction, modern energy
makes modern life possible and threatens its future. With environmental crisis, social inequality, and military conflict among the significant problems of contemporary energy-society relations, the importance of a social analysis of the modern energy system appears easy to establish. One might,
therefore, expect a lively and fulsome debate of the sector’s performance, including critical inquiries into the politics, sociology, and political economy of modern energy. Yet, contemporary discourse on
the subject is disappointing: instead of a social analysis of energy regimes, the field seems to be a captive of euphoric technological visions and associated studies of “energy futures” that imagine the pleasing consequences of new energy sources and devices.4 One stream of euphoria has sprung from
advocates of conventional energy, perhaps best represented by the unflappable optimists of nuclear power 1 2 Transforming Power who, early on, promised to invent a “magical fire” (Weinberg, 1972) capable of meeting any level of energy demand inexhaustibly in a manner “too cheap to meter” (Lewis Strauss, cited in the New York Times 1954, 1955). In reply to those who fear catastrophic accidents from the “magical fire” or the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a new promise is made to realize “inherently safe reactors” (Weinberg, 1985) that risk neither serious accident nor intentionally harmful use of high-energy physics. Less grandiose, but no less optimistic, forecasts can be heard from fossil fuel
enthusiasts who, likewise, project more energy, at lower cost, and with little ecological harm (see, e.g., Yergin and Stoppard, 2003). Skeptics of conventional energy, eschewing involvement with dangerously scaled technologies and their ecological consequences, find solace in “sustainable energy alternatives” that constitute a second euphoric stream. Preferring to redirect attention to smaller, and
supposedly more democratic, options, “green” energy advocates conceive devices and systems that
ecological balance. Among supporters are those who believe that greening the energy system embodies
universal social ideals and, as a result, can overcome current conflicts between energy “haves” and “havenots.” 5 In a recent contribution to this perspective, Vaitheeswaran suggests (2003: 327, 291), “today’s nascent energy revolution will truly deliver power to the people” as “micropower meets village power.” Hermann Scheer echoes the idea of an alternative energy-led social transformation: the shift to a “solar global economy... can satisfy the material needs of all mankind and grant us the freedom to guarantee truly universal and equal human rights and to safeguard the world’s cultural diversity” (Scheer, 2002: 34).6 The euphoria of contemporary energy studies is noteworthy for its historical consistency with a nearly unbroken social narrative of wonderment extending from the advent of steam power through the spread of electricity (Nye, 1999). The modern energy regime that now powers
nuclear weaponry and risks disruption of the planet’s climate is a product of promises pursued without sustained public examination of the political, social, economic, and ecological record of the regime’s operations. However, the discursive landscape has occasionally included thoughtful
exploration of the broader contours of energy-environment-society relations. As early as 1934, Lewis Mumford (see also his two-volume Myth of the Machine , 1966; 1970) critiqued the industrial energy system for being a key source of social and ecological alienation (1934: 196): The changes that were manifested in every department of Technics rested for the most part on one central fact: the increase of energy. Size, speed, quantity, the multiplication of machines, were all reflections of the new means of utilizing fuel and the enlargement of the available stock of fuel itself. Power was dissociated from its natural human and geographic limitations: from the caprices of the weather, from the irregularities that definitely restrict the output of men and animals. By 1961, Mumford despaired that modernity had
retrogressed into a life harming dead end (1961: 263, 248): ...an orgy of uncontrolled production and equally uncontrolled reproduction: machine fodder and cannon fodder: surplus values and surplus populations... The dirty crowded houses, the dank airless courts and alleys, the bleak pavements, the
sulphurous atmosphere, the over-routinized and dehumanized factory, the drill schools, the second-hand experiences, the starvation of the senses, the remoteness from nature and animal activity—here are the enemies. The living organism demands a life-sustaining environment. Modernity’s formula for
two centuries had been to increase energy in order to produce overwhelming economic growth. While diagnosing the inevitable failures of this logic, Mumford nevertheless warned that modernity’s
supporters would seek to derail present-tense7 evaluations of the era’s social and ecological performance with forecasts of a bountiful future in which, finally, the perennial social conflicts over resources would end. Contrary to traditional notions of democratic governance, Mumford observed
that the modern ideal actually issues from a pseudomorph that he named the “democratic-
authoritarian bargain” (1964: 6) in which the modern energy regime and capitalist political economy join in a promise to produce “every material advantage, every intellectual and emotional stimulus [one] may desire, in quantities hardly available hitherto even for a restricted minority” on the condition that society demands only what the regime is capable and willing to offer. An authoritarian energy order
thereby constructs an aspirational democracy while facilitating the abstraction of production and consumption from non-economic social values.
Deconstruction
Accepting maps as cultural texts is critical to deconstruct cartography and redefine its
social relationships
-objective evaluations always fail
Harley, Director of the Office of Map History in the American Geographical Society
Collection, 89
*JB, Summer 1989, “Deconstructing the Map,” CARTOGRAPHICA VOL 26 No 2 , page 7-9,
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/passages/4761530.0003.008/--deconstructing-the-map?rgn=main;view=fulltext, PAC]
To move inward from the question of cartographic rules — the social context within which map knowledge is fashioned — we have to turn to the cartographic text itself. The word 'text' is
deliberately chosen. It is now generally accepted thatthe model of text can have a much wider application than to literary texts alone.To non-book texts such as musical compositions and
architectural structures we can confidently add the graphic texts we call maps.42 It has been said that
"what constitutes a text is not the presence of linguistic elements but the act of construction" so that maps, as "constructions employing a conventional sign system,"43 become texts. With Barthes we could say they "presuppose a signifying consciousness" that it is our business to uncover.44¶ 'Text' is certainly a better metaphor for maps than the mirror of nature. Maps are a cultural text. By accepting their textuality we are able to embrace a number of different interpretative possibilities.¶ Instead of
just the transparency of clarity we can discover the pregnancy of the¶ opaque. To fact we can add
myth, and instead of innocence we may expect¶ duplicity. Rather than working with a formal science of communication, or even a¶ sequence of loosely related technical processes, our concern is
redirected to a¶ history and anthropology of the image, and we learn to recognize the narrative¶ qualities of cartographic representation45¶ as well as its claim to provide a synchronous picture of the
world. All this, moreover, is likely to lead to a rejection of the¶ neutrality of maps, as we come to define their intentions rather than the literal face¶ of representation, and as we begin to accept the social consequences of cartographic practices. I am not suggesting that the direction of textual enquiry
offers a¶ simple set of techniques for reading either contemporary or historical maps. In¶ some cases we
will have to conclude that there are many aspects of their meaning¶ that are undecidable.46¶
Deconstruction, as discourse analysis in general, demands a closer and deeper reading of the cartographic text than has been the general practice in either¶ cartography or the history of cartography. It may be regarded as a search for¶ alternative meanings. "To deconstruct," it is
argued,¶ is to reinscribe and resituate meanings, events and objects within broader movements and¶ structures; it is, so to speak, to reverse the imposing tapestry in order to expose in all its¶
unglamorously dishevelled tangle the threads constituting the well-heeled image it presents to the
world.47¶ The published map also has a 'well-heeled image' and our reading has to go¶ beyond the
assessment of geometric accuracy, beyond the fixing of location, and¶ beyond the recognition of topographical patterns and geographies. Such interpretation begins from the premise that the map text may contain "unperceived¶ contradictions or duplicitous tensions"48¶ that undermine the surface layer of¶ standard objectivity. Maps are slippery customers. In the words of W.J.T. Mitchell,
writing of languages and images in general, we may need to regard them more¶ as "enigmas, problems
to be explained, prison-houses which lock the understanding away from the world." We should regard them "as the sort of sign that presents¶ a deceptive appearance of naturalness and transparence
concealing an opaque,¶ distorting, arbitrary mechanism of representation."49¶ Throughout the history
of¶ modern cartography in the West, for example, there have been numerous instances of where maps
have been falsified, of where they have been censored or kept¶ secret, or of where they have
surreptitiously contradicted the rules of their¶ proclaimed scientific status.50¶ As in the case of these
practices, map deconstruction would focus on aspects¶ of maps that many interpreters have glossed
over. Writing of "Derrida's most¶ typical deconstructive moves," Christopher Norris notes that¶
deconstruction is the vigilant seeking-out of those 'aporias,' blindspots or moments of¶ self-contradiction where a text involuntarily betrays the tension between rhetoric and logic,¶ between what it manifestly means to say and what it is nonetheless constrained to mean. To 'deconstruct' a piece of writing is therefore to operate a kind of strategic reversal, seizing on¶ precisely those unregarded details (casual metaphors, footnotes, incidental turns of argument) which are always, and
necessarily, passed over by interpreters of a more orthodox¶ persuasion. For it is here, in the margins of
the text - the 'margins,' that is, as defined by a¶ powerful normative consensus — that deconstruction
