Abstract
This essay provides a geo-cartographic reading of maps of places of origin. Taking inspiration from the etymology of word map – that is to say “an object used to carry things” – it proposes some analogies between a group of drawings that have been collected during this project and some forms of cartographic representation. Models and references taken from the History of Cartography will be used to compare the most significant of these maps with specific historical cartographic genres; particular attention will be given to the point of view and the shift from figurative to abstract drawing occurring in the process of narrating space.
This essay shows that, regardless of forms of representation that necessarily provide the starting point of our discussion, maps of places of origin provide a perspective that recalls Edward Soja’s concept of Thirdspace. That is to say, these representations are simultaneously real and imagined, concrete and abstract, material and metaphorical models of representation, which are physical, mental and social at the same time. The aim of this analysis is to provide a wider geographical perspective on the meaning of place that goes beyond the reductive logic of Euclidian space.
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Notes
- 1.
For semiotic genre and classification, see chapter “Intermedial Editing in the Representations of Places of Origin”, in this volume.
- 2.
We asked those who took part in the project to draw “something resembling a map” specifying that this drawing had to include their own house (see chapter “Introduction”, in this volume).
- 3.
Harley and Woodward have noted that ever since antiquity the meaning associated with the word “map” has changed with time according to the culture in which this was used (Harley and Woodward 1987, xvi), (see Harvey 1980). Their definition of this term in the preface of the first volume of History of Cartography is wide and all inclusive: “maps are graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or event in the human world” (ibidem).
- 4.
- 5.
For an illustration of part of this development, see Torresani, Lodovisi (2005, pp. 415–421).
- 6.
Delano Smith’s criteria represent a “new beginning” as far as prehistoric cartography is concerned. These are also relevant studies of heterogeneous material and for the creation of a new theoretical approach: “a new theoretical framework may have to be created for what is in effect a new subject” (Delano Smith 1987, p. 55).
- 7.
Tuan stressed that “mental phenomena are made more ‘tangible’ by relating them to real life situations (Tuan 1975, p. 206).
- 8.
On this, see Nausicaa Pezzoni’s (2013) recent study on maps of the city of Milan made by migrants.
- 9.
See Bonazzi’s and Nardelli’s chapters “Geographical Imagination and Memory: Maps, Places, Itineraries” and “The Role of Perception in the Representation of Places of Origin: Some Remarks on Movement”, in this volume.
- 10.
The word insider “according to our terminology means somebody who lives in a place; what he/she sees corresponds to his/her environment and for this reason he/she does not need to single out something in particular. The topographer’s job can be described as an attempt to transform what he sees for the first time into something that he knows well” (Farinelli 2003, p. 40).
- 11.
I am referring to the story of Mount Somía. This tells the story of a topographer sent to the bergamasco area; he asks a peasant the name of the mountain. The peasant answers: “so mia” which in the bergamasco dialect means “I don’t know” (Bonapace 1990, p. 14) (see Farinelli 2003, p. 38). Farinelli notes that “the peasant who lives at the foot of the mountain does not know its name because that mountain is part of his place … for him there was no other mountain, and for this reason he does not need to distinguish between one mountain and another, for him Somía is not just a mountain, rather the mountain, the only possible one” (Farinelli 2003, p. 40).
- 12.
According to Brian Harley in all cartographic representations there is an inner voice of the mapmaker and an outer voice of the mapmaker patron. The relationship between these two voices can mobilize ideological and power related issues. The relationship between these two voices in the process of producing the map has been discussed by Denis Wood who writes that the mapmaker is not autonomous, that the history of maps cannot be written as a hero saga from the mapmaker’s perspective, that the interests of the patron are always a part of the story – an essential part of the story – where no doubt interests has some of the sense of curiosity, but far more that of self-interest, of personal advantage, of things in which rights, claims or shares are held, as in commercial interests, military interests, political interests” (Wood 2002, p. 146) (see Ferretti 2014, pp. 167–172).
- 13.
Hodological space is a lived space and contrasts with “objective” space also called Euclidean space (Janni 1984, 94). See Bonazzi’s chapter “Geographical Imagination and Memory: Maps, Places, Itineraries”, in this volume.
- 14.
The author told us that she did not “draw all the village as she mainly lived in those areas”.
- 15.
See Nuti (1996).
- 16.
It is important to bear in mind that in these kinds of representations the point of view is always made explicit by some graphic device that provides instructions concerning the vantage point and hence functions as simulacra of the enunciator.
- 17.
On the mode of representation in a picturesque work of art, see Luis Marin (2001).
- 18.
On this see “Cartografare il presente”, a research and documentation centre about transformations in the contemporary world that uses cartography and multimedia technologies. This centre was founded in 2006 and it is an initiative of the Comitato internazionale di Bologna per la Cartografia e l’Analisi del Mondo Contemporaneo (Dipartimento di Discipline Storiche dell’Università di Bologna) and the French monthly Le Monde diplomatique
- 19.
The Isolario is a cartographical genre that begins at the end of the Medieval period and continues throughout the eighteenth century. Due to its peculiar chronology, the studies that describe its genesis and dissemination are included in both the first and third volume of the History of Cartography. According to Harley “the isolario is essentially a collection of Island materials, each Island usually having his own map and associated text” (Harvey 1987, p. 482). In the first volume that focuses on European cartography during the Renaissance, Tolias expands on the definition of isolario as follows: “the conventional term isolario is used to denote manuscripts or printed atlases that – regardless of title, format, or structure, and of whether a work contained text – consist of maps, mostly of islands but also of coastal areas of mainland, arranged in the form of a thematic encyclopedia. Their authors, in the early period, called their works ‘books of islands’, ‘island chorographies’, or ‘island navigations’” (Tolias 2007, p. 264).
- 20.
Tolias’ comment specifically refers to Chios map but it can be applied to all other maps included in the same volume.
- 21.
For an exhaustive analysis of this case study as a discourse about co-belonging to two places of origin, see the essay by Pozzato in this book.
- 22.
According to John Pickles this shift is characterized by “the emergence of a new map consciousness” (2004, pp. 96–106).
- 23.
See Bonazzi’s chapter “Geographical Imagination and Memory: Maps, Places, Itineraries”, in this volume.
- 24.
This map is part of a kaartboek, a map book made up of a set of pre-cadastral manuscript maps bound together. Kaartboeken became popular during the seventeenth century in the Netherlands and “were largely related to the administration of institutional landownership” (ibidem).
- 25.
It is precisely in this period that great geographic explorations begin and cartography becomes a powerful tool at the service of the Nations.
- 26.
Initially, we thought of making a preliminary catalogue of maps by way of variables, characters and recurrences; considerations about the scale (large or medium) would have provided the starting point, we would have then proceeded with an ordering of material according to the organizing element, the level of abstraction of the signs used, geographical precision, personal references, degree of idiosyncrasies and the identification of places and buildings. Data obtained would then have been compared with some guiding principles for representation, such as localization and movement. In the end we have opted for a completely different method that is qualitative and hence provides a geographic discourse on ideas of space emerging from our maps.
- 27.
- 28.
These authors use the term paramap (see Wood and Fels 2008, pp. 8–12).
- 29.
The philosophic idea of topos is borrowed from Agustine Berque (2000, pp. 19–30), this “endows value to sensible aspects of geographic phenomena through their dimension and position, but erases the social […] topos is a self-legitimizing abstract spatial idea that excludes the subject” (Casti 2013, p. 45).
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Frixa, E. (2018). The Representation of the Places of Origin: A Geographical Perspective. In: Visual and Linguistic Representations of Places of Origin. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68858-9_3
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