Postmodern Cartographies

[Dave Monroe]

>From Brian Jarvis, Postmodern Cartographies: The
Geographical Imagination in Contemporary American
Culture (New York: St. Martin's, 1998), Ch. 6, "Notes
from Underground: Thomas Pynchon," pp. 51-79 ...

   "Traditionally, maps, like the spaces they
represent, have been assumed to be fairly neutral
affairs--objective and impartial accounts of the
external world.  This notion needs to be challenged at
the outset of any attempt to map the landscapes of
postmodernity in recent fiction.  Between 1650 and
1750 a 'reformation in cartography' took place in
Europe.  This necesitated

measurements of arcs of teh meridian, to ascertain the
size and figure of the earth; astronomical
observations to determine accurately the position of a
great number of places on the earth's surface, in
latitude and longitude; and survey of large areas, by
triangulation from precisely measured bases and with
improved instruments. [...] (Skelton 1972, p. 18)

"This reformation is partially attrributable to
advances in the technologies of measurement and
graphic reproduction, but it is also intimately
connected to developments in the needs of mercahnts
and monarchs, the Church and the State.  During the
Renaissance geogrpahical knowledge became a valued
commodity and mapos evolved accordingly as
instrumental tools, rather than purely objective
guides.  The rational representation of space must be
related to the rise of a bourgeois-capitalist order. 
The mapping of the globe enabled space to be
interpreted as available for appropriation by private
ownership and established part of the material basis
for the imperialist expansion of capitalistic economic
systems and social relations.  Maps were not a
cpitalist invention, but the ones designed since the
Renaissance were of a markedly different order:
stripped of elements of fantasy and religious
significance (previously their primary function),
devoid of any sense of the experiences involved in
their production.  Maps became strictly abstract and
functional systems for the factual ordering of
phenomena in space, defining territorial boundaries,
property rights, trade and communication routes,
domains of administration and social control.
   "The central objective of any strategy of plotting
postmodern landscpaes in and through the landscapes of
postmodern fiction, must be to assert, against the
apparent neutrality of the map, the fundamental
politicality of space.  Space needs to be made visible
by foregrounding its ideological content, to
illustrate how it can be made to hide consequences,
how relations of power and discipline are inscribed
into the apparent spatiality of our environment." (pp.
51-2)

Citing ...

Skelton, R.A.  Maps.  Chicago: U of C P, 1972.

And just about to cite ...

Lefebvre, Henri.  The Production of Space.
   Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith.  Cambridge, MA:
   Blackwell, 1991.

As cited in ...

Soja, Edward.  Postmodern Geographies:
   The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social
   Theory.  New York: Verso, 1989.

And, what the heck, see also ...

Harvey, David.  The Condition of Postmodernity:
   An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change.
   Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1989.

Astoundingly, Jarvis is NOT discussing Mason & Dixon,
nor does he; presumably, his book was already in press
as M&D was hitting the shelves.  What is the sound of
one man kicking himself?  But back to Jarvis ...


   

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