If you’re going to respond to one of my blog posts, please don’t let it be this one thanks. This one is a mess.
I’ve been thinking about the idea of maps as ideological frameworks, and of the interplay between reality and representation.
“Thus, a sign contains two ideas – one of the thing represented, and the other, of the thing doing the representing.” (Rama, 1996, p. 7)
In an intro to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) class I took last term, we learned that all maps are projections. There is physically no way to display a sphere on a flat surface without distorting it. You are forced to make choices between what you believe is most important to accurately represent. For example, as you may already know, the most common Mercator projection severely distorts the size of countries so that those in the north are disproportionately large. However, the Mercator is one of (if not the best) projection for correctly displaying country shapes and, by extension, directions (this is why Google Maps uses the Mercator projection). Indeed, it was initially developed specifically for sea navigation. Maps are interpretations and, therefore, they can tell you a lot about who made the map.
As Rama states, maps are often idealized representations – how a certain person wants the world to look. They are something to strive for and thus, they can be an assertion of power. I’m thinking specifically about that map that the Chinese government released a few months (?) ago showing what they consider the South China Sea, AKA their exclusive territorial fishing waters. If I remember correctly, the boundary looked arbitrarily drawn and infringed on many other countries’ territorial waters. In the real world, China has indeed been more aggressively asserting its presence in that area by bullying fishermen from other countries. Sorry, this isn’t a great summary, I recommend looking it up.
When Rama calls these written accounts “signs”, it confused me at first. What is the definition of a sign? From my interpretation, it seems to be any recorded interpretation of the world. I thought immediately of street signs, then protest signs. Though signs have been used to impose a colonial idea of hierarchy onto the planned cities, I think they can then be used to resist and dismantle that worldview. Art, and other forms of signs, are important to resistance movements because they are a medium to imagine alternative futures, which can then be made a reality. I think signs can be a tool of collective worldbuilding.
Also, I’m simply astounded that the city of Concepcion in the south of Chile was founded only 30 years after the founding of Panama City. By being bases for conquering forces and relay stations for information, these cities were very literally and physically contributing to colonization beyond their role as disseminators of colonial ideas and ideals. I think even the development of agriculture around the cities was meant to both provide the physical means to sustain the colonizing effort, and to impose European agrarian ideals on the land and the peoples of the land.
I don’t have a good question for this post. Did you see any maps of Lima before you arrived and how did that impact your expectations for the city?
2 replies on “Friday, May 24”
Surely Rama is thinking of a very specific definition of a sign, that of Saussure in modern linguistics. But it is true that it is not the only one, and different disciplines produce what best suits them. I must say that maps are a great example of a system that seeks to organize a territory. When we carefully read Huamán Poma or even Inca Garcilaso we will see that there are even hybrid systems between the European and Native American visions. It is that intersection that is most interesting.
I will be taking the GIS course next semester, so It was cool to see how you were able to apply some of what you learned in a very different type of context. When it comes to map making, it seems like, as in many other disciplines, we are always going to bring our own epistemology into the work that we produce, and no matter how much a person tries to leave their own bias behind, it always seeps into what they do.