THE RHETORICITY OF THE MAP
By
Simone West

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Critical Studies in Literacy and Pedagogy – Master of Arts
2013

ABSTRACT
THE RHETORICITY OF THE MAP
By
Simone West
Working from an understanding of the conventional map’s history and uses, this work
explores how the map functions rhetorically as a tool for creating a common position that
presupposes a distinction between spatiality, everyday experience, and bodily articulation. From
this position this work examines how recent developments in creative and digital cartography
offer alternative approaches to mapping that suggest new possibilities for re-framing the map as
a dynamic medium expressing multiple experiences, perspectives, and orientations.

Copyright by
SIMONE WEST
2013

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge the assistance and support of my committee members, Dr.
Trixie Smith, Dr. Dean Rehberger, and Dr. Malea Powell. Thank you.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1
The Rhetoricity of the Map ............................................................................................................. 3
A Brief History of the Modern Map ............................................................................................... 5
Re-imagining the Map .................................................................................................................. 12
The Map as Art ............................................................................................................................. 13
Digital Possibilities ....................................................................................................................... 21
Digital Limitations ........................................................................................................................ 23
Middle Road: An Exercise ............................................................................................................ 26
WORKS CITED ........................................................................................................................... 31

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Introduction

“The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the
map that precedes the territory.” – Jean Baudrillard, Simulations
Nine-year-old Azura Beebeejaun was playing with a friend in her quiet residential
neighborhood when she slipped and fell onto the pavement. Once on the ground, Azura thought
it would be funny to prank her friend by “playing dead,” so she splayed her arms and legs
accordingly and waited to be found. At that moment, a Google Street View car turned down her
road, its cameras snapping 360-degree street-level photos for Google’s mapping applications.
The camera caught Azura’s act, and it was eventually published on the web, much to the horror
of area residents who feared that a young girl had actually been killed in their neighborhood.
This was not the only time that Google’s mapping applications have captured images that
jar viewers’ expectations. Unlike traditional maps whose representations take place in the
abstract, the images Google collects for its applications are taken from the actual lived spaces of
city streets and front yards. Not surprisingly, websites dedicated to prowling Google Maps for
odd or surprising imagery (such as streetviewfun.com) have sprung up on the web, using Google
Maps as a real world “Where’s Waldo.” These websites aim to discover the unpredictable and
often feature people in private moments made public, or objects within the environment that
seem out of place.
The lure of these websites is understandable. The representations they point to are
supposedly raw—these are real people, in real environments, doing the arguably weird things
that real people do in real environments. As “weird” as these images may seem in the context of
the map, however, they often depict innocuous or generally looked-over scenes from life. One

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site features an image of a boy through a window in boxer shorts staring blankly at a screen, a
game controller held loosely in his lap. Another features a homeless man under a bridge, staring
at the cars that drive by. As mundane as such scenes are to daily life, however, they are often
considered odd or out of place within the context of the map. But if we believe the map to be
representative of how we understand our spatial experiences, then why do scenes from our
everyday life jar us when they are represented in the medium of the map?
The first thing that Google Maps users see when looking up an address is a traditional
two-dimensional road map. The map features clean, discernible lines and place names, and is
easy to read. The exact address of the location looked up is indicated by an arrow on the map,
and by clicking this arrow, users zoom in on the map, prompting the option to view the address
at “street view” by clicking on the location’s tag, or dragging a “pegman” icon directly to the
location the user wishes to see at street level. Once at street level the map changes to an actual
photo of the street, which is radically different.
The space of the map is now that of the photograph, and its clean, discernible lines are
disrupted by the landscape of lived-in space. One can alter the dimensions of that space by
zooming into the map and seeing stories of the life that happens and is expected to happen in that
street. As in the images of Azura Beebeejaun’s prank mentioned previously.
The everydayness of these images as they progress from the linear map to the images of
the street distorts our sense of what a map is and can do. This dissonance demands that users
acknowledge that space is inhabited and that this space, and in turn the map, is shaped by the
bodies that inhabit it. But the buck stops at this acknowledgement, and a keen awareness of the
interconnectedness of the two remains vague for many map users.

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This paper is an exploration of that interconnectedness, and the ways in which the map
has conventionally been used as an insidious technology for promoting a common, universal
perspective that silences orientations that might conflict with its narrative. This is explored in
greater detail in the first two sections of this paper, “The Rhetoricity of the Map,” and “A Brief
History of the Modern Map.” Following these sections, discussions on “Re-imagining the Map”
and “The Map as Art” challenge us to consider the ways in which we might imagine maps
differently, and how they might serve us as a series of layered, spatial stories that privilege
multiple perspectives. In the last three sections, “Digital Possibilities,” “Digital Limitations,” and
“Middle Road: An Exercise,” this project explores the opportunities and obstacles presented by
mapping in the digital age.
The Rhetoricity of the Map
We can begin to see how the conventional promotes a universal perspective by
examining it rhetorically. Despite popular conceptions of maps as objective tools, maps are
rhetorical acts. A map creates a common position, enacting a kind of spatial dictation upon
perception and physical reality. I am here. You are here. Now where can we possibly go? When
1

hailed by the map we come to know ourselves and our identity in relation to lines and names
drawn upon it. To call the narrative of a map into question is to question the validity of the
identities bound up in that map’s narrative, to question the “I am here” of an individual’s or
group’s relationship to the map. We are easily drawn into the map’s story when it speaks to our
desires to know ourselves and our place in the world. The map tells us where to go and what it
thinks is important for us to know about a particular area. The issue, of course, is that our

1

I am thinking here of Althusser and the “you” that is “here” as being hailed by the ideology of
the map.
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individual sense of “where we are” is complex, making blanket representations of each
individual’s evolving and intersecting relationships to space virtually impossible.
Space supposedly precedes everyday life, and the “everyday” is often thought of as a
thing that happens within space. This kind of thinking poses a problem, however, in that it
isolates space as an entity separate from the bodily articulations that enact our experience of
everyday life, when in fact both are deeply enmeshed in the production, circulation, and
redistribution of the other. As we go about our daily business our bodies press upon the spaces
they inhabit and move through, and those spaces press back upon our bodies. Each is shaped by
the other’s impressions and the impressions made by their shared relationships.
The dynamic relationship between the self and space has been explored by many, but
theorist Michel de Certeau’s work in this area is particularly useful in our discussion of the
rhetoricity of the map. De Certeau‘s use of space and place deviates from other geographical
approaches where space is conceptualized as more or less abstract and place is considered to be
the arena of lived experiences. Conversely, de Certeau views place as the design of hegemonic
power structures that are to be “undone” by practices that transform place into unruly spaces.
That said, practices do the work of spatializing place. Essentially, these practices are be
understood by how they are described in spatial stories. The map tells a particular type of spatial
story, strategically narrativizing, ordering, and structuring certain elements of spatial experience.
This strategic narrative is disrupted by the tactics and practices of the unruly body that occupies
and transforms place into space by forming new and unforeseen relationships as it interacts with
the environment.
A map tells a story, but unlike other forms of narrative, people do not generally live and
die within the space of the map’s story. Maps of the dead or dying are typically devoid of the

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bodies they are said to represent. For example, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention has created maps that illustrate health-related factors, such as a map that displays the
death rates of individuals over the age of 35 in the country who suffered from heart disease,
organized by county (http://www.cdc.gov/dhdsp/maps/national_maps/hd_all.htm). But what do
these types of maps actually tell us about that suffering and its impact? Why is it that the stories
of these individuals are not considered to be a necessary part of this map’s narrative? This is
largely due to the fact that the role of the map was developed to be an impartial, objective, and
neutral representation of the natural world. Next we will explore the history of the modern map
and uncover how the map’s history helped shaped it into a tool for compartmentalization and
commonality, rather than interconnectedness and complexity.
A Brief History of the Modern Map
The original purpose of the map was to avoid complex representations of space in order
to provide map users with a simplistic understanding of a given territory. Geography, as a
discipline, developed around the use of Western maps and atlases which delineated space
according to Cartesian coordinates. For Descartes, “space is essentially mathematicized; spatial
location is fixed by imposing an objective system of coordinates upon the world and assigning a
sequence of numbers to each and every item in it” (Mulhall 53). The Cartesian coordinate system
served as the guiding epistemological framework for enlightenment scientists and geographers
who set themselves to the task of describing, classifying, and cataloging the natural world. As
Mary Louise Pratt explains in Imperial Eyes, “for three centuries European knowledge- making
apparatuses had been construing the planet above all in navigational terms” (29). According to
Pratt, circumnavigation and mapmaking gave rise to a world historical subject she describes as:
“European, male, secular, and lettered; his planetary consciousness is the product of his contact

5

with print culture and infinitely more ‘complete’ than the lived experiences of sailors” (30).
Navigational maps were largely concerned with delineating land masses, water ways, and
coastlines, and the project of natural history applied similar systematic, classificatory practices to
extracting and ordering the contents of the land as separate and distinct entities. This
classificatory project isolated people, plants, and animals as discrete objects to be studied rather
than elements of a dynamic ecological system.
Because the contemporary practice of map-making in geography was borne out of the
enlightenment model of objectivity and rationalism, the map continues to be regarded writ large
as a tool for objective observation rather than as a reflection of subjective experience, even in
maps that offer a reading of space that exists outside of navigational terms. We have inherited a
legacy of classificatory knowledge-making practices that insist upon the separation of experience
and perception, isolating our bodies as distinct and discrete from material reality. Having bodies
in our maps, particularly bodies caught in acts of daily life, jar us into awareness that the canvas
of the map is not a blank slate upon which we can mirror reality, but rather a text woven out of
bodies, lives, and practices that cannot be divorced from space. To be in the world is to be in
space, and our practices, over time—the ways in which we orient ourselves to each other and our
surroundings—are what constitute our experiences of reality. Maps are commonly understood as
non-negotiable representations of this reality, visible spatial descriptions of a shared universal
relationship to the world we inhabit.
Working with spatial data on mortality that favors abstract representations of that data
asks less emotional energy of viewers than those that call attention to subjective and bodily
experiences of death, survival, and mourning. It is much easier to ignore the sticky complexities
of individual experiences when we are presented with visual arguments that seduce us into

6

perceiving space and experience from a singular, holistic, and seemingly universal perspective.
The map is a product of the will to “know” space; from this knowledge the map dictates to us our
orientation to space, and possible ways of moving through (going) and being in the world. The
map tell us where we are, and in doing so, it reassures—even lulls—because it is in that comfort
of being reassured that we are “going the right way,” in our desire to locate “where we stand,”
that we are drawn to the map, which pulls us away from our lived experiences of space and
towards a universal description and representation of those particular experiences.
How each individual comes to know any given space will always be tied to the
intersections of their world-view, the historical context, time period, and the crosshairs of
particularity and circumstance. The Library of Congress has assembled a collection of maps
illustrating the different worldviews of various global cultures throughout history
(http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/world/heavens.html). Consider maps of mid-eighteenth century
Korea, a fifteenth century German map of the heavens and earth, and a nineteenth century
Buddhist cosmological map. Taken together, these maps illustrate how positionality affects the
ways in which space is conceptualized, and ultimately the lines that draw up the map.
These pre-Cartesian maps offer us a glimpse of what maps of experience look like when
illustrated from a different worldview. The cartographer, like the scientist, is not immune to the
mechanisms of positionality, but rarely is the objectivity of our maps subject to critical inquiry.
Reason is not universal; however, representations and descriptions of a given space that assume a
universal orientation to that space argue that in order to locate one’s self, in order to find the
“right” trajectory, you must orient yourself to its purview or risk losing yourself altogether.
The issue of representation is further complicated by the map’s historical relationship to
the book (Mignolo 219). Rectangular map projections of the earth’s surface have been favored

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for their portability, ability to be fitted neatly to the pages of an atlas, hung from a wall, or
projected onto a screen. The most popular version of the rectangular map in the West historically
has been the Mercator projection, which forces the cylindrical globe into a rectangular shape by
enlarging the land masses farthest from the equator in order for the globe to fill a page,
ultimately misrepresenting the comparable size of the countries at both ends of the scale. This
discrepancy in the representational size of the world’s landmasses is often referred to as “the
Greenland problem” because the Mercator projection represents Greenland as proportionate in
size to Africa, when Africa is actually approximately fourteen times larger than Greenland. As a
2

result of this distortion , countries along the equator appear diminutive in comparison to Western
countries.
Contemporary cartographers agree that the Mercator projection is unsuitable for general
reference; however, the majority of Western maps still position Europe at the center of the map
and North America in the upper left-hand corner—a privileged position on the page of a
traditional Western document signaling where to begin reading (Dorling 27). The power of maps
lies in our desire to locate ourselves, to be able to point to the self when pointing to the map and
say, “I am here.” Eurocentric maps certainly privilege particular subjective experiences over
others, the most damaging element of this being that the “I” that is not able to locate themselves
or their experiences on the map is silenced by an unwavering faith in the map as a purely
objective representation of reality.
The rhetoricity of the contemporary world map may not be obvious, but as we have seen
with the Mercator projection, the reach of the lines drawn upon the map extends beyond the

2

In calling these representations distortions I in no way mean to make the argument that there
exists a “true” representation of reality; only that the responsible cartographer must also be
politically aware of the arguments their maps make.
8

delineation of nations and states to shape our experiences of space, political power, and identity.
What then motivates the ways in which we create borders out of the lines of the map, and what
do these borders do for us? We are drawn to the map out of a desire to locate ourselves and
determine the possible ways of moving within the framework it provides, as well as the desire to
colonize, control, and represent power over space.
The lines of the map serve as a tool for orientation, the clear and visible line allowing me
to differentiate where I am from where I am not. In the act of orientating myself through the map,
I align myself not only to the map’s purview, but with a clear understanding of the distinction
between “here” and “there.” This knowing where I am by knowing where I am not implies a
zero-sum relationship to space and place. This is not to suggest that a body is capable of
physically inhabiting two separate locations within space at the same time, but rather that while
inhabiting a single physical location within a particular space we inhabit many places at once.
Though my feet may be squarely planted on the ground, the ways I experience the area—the
ways that I come to “know” it—are multiple, conflicting, temporal, and ever-changing. The lines
of the map, however, suggest a much simpler relationship: you are here and nowhere else. The
“where” of any given location is much more complicated than that, and the lines used to draw up
a particular location within space ultimately reinforces a dualism that favors a single orientation,
while silencing others that may challenge how the borders of the line are drawn up.
This propensity to orient ourselves through differentiation touches all spheres of Western
perception. Not only do we know where we are by where we are not, but we recognize who we
are by who we are not. In the act of orientating ourselves we tend to “find our way” by
differentiating the strange from the familiar. The very act of orientation requires that the
disoriented orients itself by latching onto patterns that resemble past experiences. These familiar

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borders, built from memory, guide our potential routes and destinations, often leading us away
from the strange and unknown, and towards the familiar and predictable. We create maps, draw
up lines and borders, and seek out patterns from past experiences in the hopes of moving away
from unsettling strangeness and towards grounded familiarity, making the point of “there”
comprehensible if not accessible from the point of “here.”
This preoccupation with understanding location by differentiating the here from the there,
however, takes us away from an awareness of the multiplicity of experiences that inform the
perception of any given location within time and space. As it happens, there are in fact many
there’s there—one only has to open themselves to strange, new, and perhaps uncomfortable
(dis)orientations to space in order to see them.
It is this strange and uncomfortable relationship to the unpredictable and unknown that
fuels the investment in objectivity that ultimately inflates the map with legitimacy. Maps appear
very sure of themselves. The lines of the maps tend to be very clear. As anyone who has lived
near a state border, mountain range, or “bad” neighborhood will tell you, however, the border
experience of a place exists more on a continuum than a thin, unwavering line. Though we can
easily assert that the physical land upon which we stand is contiguous in nature, we assume that
this continuity must be compartmentalized into discrete entities if we are to have a firm
3

understanding of where, say, Indiana ends and Kentucky begins.

This is a problem of perception; as geographer Karen Kemp has noted, “we conceive
other entities in the world as discrete objects. In fact, if you ask someone to describe a scene or
landscape, most of their description will involve objects” (35). Kemp’s argument here shows just

3

“Kentuckiana,” a term used to describe the metropolitan area with counties in both Kentucky
and Indiana is one example of how this “border-knowing” can be reframed to better express our
experience of place.
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how the rhetoricity of the modern map operates to dissect and delineate our experiences so that
they conform to boundaries. These boundaries shape our reality by informing us of what does
and does not exist. Kemp uses mountains, or more to the point, the absence of “mountainess” in
our lexicon, to illustrate the problem of boundaries in the modern map. When does mountain
become mountain, and not a collection of dirt and rock:
Conceptually, a named mountain is an object. You can point to it on a map at a specific
location and elsewhere that mountain does not exist. But where is the edge of the
mountain? Where does it begin when you move from a location that is not that mountain
to a location that is mountain? (36)
The issue is that this compartmentalization runs concurrently and in contradiction to the
complexity and continuity of our everyday experiences. We have no problem placing a nineyear-old girl playing in the street, a boy playing video games in his boxer shorts, or a homeless
man peering at us from under a bridge within the context of the ebb and flow of our daily lives.
To place these volatile bodies within the context of the map, however, disrupts the map’s veneer
of precision and certainty. Suddenly we are confronted with unwieldy bodies messing up our
simplistic attempts to reduce the dynamic nature of space to the equivalent of a dried insect
hanging neatly from a pin. As historian John Corrigan notes “We should reflect on how our data
is, in a sense, alive and incapable of disclosing human realities if we force it to stop moving.
Data, like butterflies, become something else when they are, as the saying goes, ‘captured,’
pinned to a foamcore board” (82). Now that we have seen how the rhetoricity of the modern map
was developed to deny the interconnectedness of spatiality, everyday experience, and bodily
articulation, let us now explore ways in which we might turn this history on its head and imagine
mapping as a means to do justice to our spatial experiences.

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Re-imagining the Map
How, then, do we draw up maps that avoid the reductive and monolithic and do justice to
the complexity and dynamism of our experience? Before we can discuss how we might create
better maps, we must first divest ourselves of the adamant need to “know” space that is born out
of our queasy relationship to uncertainty. In order to do justice to the multivalence of experience,
I suggest that the responsible cartographer operates from a place of uneasy ambivalence rather
than certainty. To be certain is to have cut oneself off from the multivalence of individual
experiences and diversity of knowledge-making practices.
I understand that, if I examine myself closely, I think and feel in multiple ways about
practically every facet of my lived experience. I recognize that in my orientation to objects and
others within time and space I feel and think multiple, often oppositional, things. This does not
mean that I do not recognize the need to make decisions or am immune to certainty’s seductive
qualities. What it means is that I recognize the capacity for illigetimation, devaluation, and
silence inherent within systems that value bivalent logic, and that I understand that propriety is
circumstantial. I imagine the cartographer then, as approaching the task of map-making with an
awareness of the ambi-(the prefix ambi invoking both the multiple and conflicting connotations
of ambivalence as well as the “surroundedness” of the ambient)-valence (the attributed value of
affective relationships to phenomena) of experience and orientations.
Moving from this understanding of the map as an epistemic encounter with the many,
sometimes conflicting, meanings that shape how we perceive and interact with the world around
us, the cartographer might not be as concerned with discerning and charting what exactly it is
that the map says or means, but what it does. This “doing” of the map collapses together the
relationship between the self and space and positions the map as a site of performative action.

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From this position we can discuss how this “doing” of the map can better express our complex
and dynamic relationships to space and place. To do so, let us move beyond the discipline of
geography and explore alternative ways of expressing spatial experience.
The Map as Art
In this move away from thinking of the map as a rote representation of reality and toward
an understanding of the map as epistemic encounter and site of performative action, it is helpful
to think of cartography through the model of artistic practice rather than as a scientific tool. Mapmaking practices influenced by conceptual art might, for example, lead to subversive spatial
compositions that emphasize the importance of lived experience over reductive representation. A
model based upon artistic practice would make room for relational rather than representational
ways of conveying a sense of location by playing up the tensions between our phenomenological
and materialist readings of space and place. By shifting our focus towards relationships rather
than representations, we can capture the richness of spatiality, and ultimately convey patterns of
experience that would otherwise remain invisible. Relationality allows us to do this because it
demands that we see these patterns not as separate and distinct isolated objects, but as
interwoven elements contingent upon each other for meaning.
The meaning to be had then is lifted from the interstices of a collage of moments. This
approach is what essentially enables us to “do” the map. It is what non-representational theorist
Nigel Thrift refers to as the absorbed coping and engaged agency that dissolves the
subject/object divide by demanding that we engage with knowledge-as-practice, rather than
merely gazing at it (37). The meaning is lifted, the map itself ultimately happens, at the moment
that we engage with it.

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How then does an artistic practice approach enable us to create the kinds of relationships
that will result in deep engagement? Relationships between multiple elements create meaning
through the impressions they make upon each other. These impressions are the meaning itself—
the stuff that is lifted from the interstices of their proximity. Earlier I had referred to the process
by which bodies and space impress upon each other as they engage the business of daily living.
The impressions left by inhabitance—by the presence, occupation, and articulation of bodies
within a space—have long been the inspirational fodder for artists, poets, photographers, and
musicians.
In his recently published collection, Strangers Passing, photographer Joel Sternfeld
employs a theory of the portrait coined “The Circumstantial Portrait,” which begs audiences to
consider how we interpret others as they negotiate the ebb and flow of circumstance and acts of
everyday living in the context of seemingly mundane American landscapes such as the
laundromat, city street, or parking lot. The collection features images such as a young man
collecting shopping carts, a woman in a colorful sari pumping gas, a homeless man against a wall
holding his bedding, and a man in a business suit reading a paper while juggling his laundry.
These images distort our sense of art and our sense of place by asking viewers to question not
only the relationship between art and the everyday, but also how we come to know our own
relationships to the everyday acts we engage in.
Similarly, Marcel Duchamp’s well-known Readymades pose a challenge to the
relationship between the banality of everydayness and the question of what constitutes art.
Duchamp’s Readymades consist of everyday found objects labeled by Duchamp as “art,” despite
their unaltered state. The most famous of these sculptures, “Fountain,” is simply a found
porcelain urinal presented as is, without modification. Like the Sternfeld photos, “Fountain”

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dislocates popular conceptions of art and the everyday by prompting questions of the nature of
art and our relationships to everyday objects.
What both these Sternfeld and Duchamp pieces do is to challenge static representation
and privileging instead of the impressions that result from the dynamic interplay between the
engagement of subject, circumstance, and context. We can use these pieces as tools for thinking
about how impressions are created by relationships between unstated elements, and ultimately as
a way to create maps that function as rhetorical events rather than as static representations of
what a space is prescribed to be.
Unlike impressions, representations work differently in that a representation is a
presumably authentic copy of something that is assumed to already exist conceptually or
materially in the world. An excellent illustration of the problems posed by the belief in the
fidelity of representations can be found in a popular anecdote about a realist philosopher who
challenged Picasso for creating abstract paintings:
It is said that once a realist philosopher went to see the famous painter Picasso. The
philosopher believed in realism and he had come to criticize Picasso because Picasso’s
paintings are abstract, they are not realistic. They don’t depict reality as it is. On the
contrary, they are symbolic, have a totally different dimension—they are symbolistic.
The realist said, ‘I don’t like your paintings. A painting should be real! If you paint my
wife, then your paintings should look like my wife.’ And he took out a picture of his wife
and said, ‘Look at this picture! The painting should be like this.’ Picasso looked at the
picture and said, ‘This is your wife?’ He said, ‘Yes, this is my wife.’ Picasso said, ‘I am
surprised! She is very small and flat’ (Osho 25).

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The point is, of course, that the photograph was merely a rendering of the philosopher’s
wife, an impression. This process of framing representation as “real” separates the viewing
subject from their experiences of the world. Sternfeld and Duchamp’s work relieves the burdens
of separation between subject and text by necessitating the need for the viewing subject’s
involvement in the text’s artistic creation. In the case of texts endowed with unquestioned
authority, like the map, the separation of the subject from the world is met with doubt and
uncertainty when one’s own experience does not “live up” to representational knowledge. In the
map’s case the inability to locate yourself, to point to “I am here” on the map, renders
unintelligible experiences illegitimate if not invisible.
Thinking of the map as a work of performative art allows the map to serve as conduit for
experiencing and sharing the impressions produced by the complex interplay of self, space, and
articulation. By favoring interpretive impressions over objective representations in our approach
to “doing” the map, we might be able to allow experience to speak for itself rather than writing
on experience, which is what happens when the map as an objective representation of reality
dictates experience.
The understanding that cartography requires a certain degree of artistic skill is nothing
new. Cartographers have long understood the artistic techniques and visual creativity necessary
for meeting the purposes of their maps. During the 1960s, however, a growing number of artists
began turning their attention towards the map as a medium for telling alternative kinds of spatial
stories. In the edited collection The Map as Art, Gayle Clemans explains the allure of the map for
artists: “Geographers submit to a tacit agreement to obey certain mapping conventions, to speak
in a malleable but standardized visual language. Artists are free to disobey those rules. They can
mock preoccupation with ownership, spheres of influence, and conventional cultural orientations

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and beliefs” (10). In more recent years, some artist/cartographers have turned their attention
towards psychogeography as a way to explore relational spatial experiences rather than strictly
representational images of space.
Psychogeography developed around the work of Guy Debord and the avant-garde
Situationist Lettrist movement of 1950s Paris. Debord defined psychogeography as “the study of
the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or
not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals" (http://library.nothingness.org/articles/
SI/en/display/2).
Psychogeography encourages the kind of direct interaction with places and its inhabitants
that undoes the dictation of conventional cartography. For the psychogeographer, the map can be
understood as an open-ended and reflexive expression of spatial experience. The map does not
dictate experience, rather, it serves as a conduit of and reflection on experience as it unfolds. The
psychogeographer works not with representation, but at a distance from it, with the aim of
breaking away from routine ways of being and seeking out the freshness of new experiences. As
psychogeographer kanarinka writes, the world “needs new relations and new uses: in other words,
it needs new events, inventions, actions, activities, experiments, inventions, infiltrations,
ceremonies, situations, episodes, and catastrophes” (The Map as Art 25). An exploration of
artist/cartographers engaged with psychogeographic practice can help us imagine new ways of
expressing our relationships to space and place(s) by shifting our attention away from the page
and towards an awareness of our spatial surroundings.
Given the open and dynamic nature of these maps, many artist/cartographers working in
psychogeography develop mapping projects that require active participation from community
and audience members. In doing so, these collective projects work similarly to the Duchamp and

17

Sternfeld pieces by necessitating the involvement of the audience in order to bring the map to life.
It could be argued that projects relying on audience data to create their maps take this
involvement one step further by fostering a sense of personal investment in the individuals who
helped create them, reliving the burden of separation between subject and text to an even greater
degree.
One such project, designed by artists Hugh Davies and Marcus Helm (see example at
http://pro-tribute.blogspot.com/), invites audience members to draw personal maps of a location
within their community, then link the individual maps to a larger map of the area with pins and
wool. These personalized maps are highly subjective and could lead audience members
anywhere within the given surroundings. Davies states that “these maps could lead to private
events, hidden locations, sources of food or water or favorite places of interest. It is hoped that
these contributions will together record and reveal a social map of the landscape's resources,
traditions and stories from the point of view of how its occupants understand it, as well as how
they believe visitors might best interpret the terrain” (http://pro-tribute.blogspot.com/). The end
result is a bricolage of spatial stories that focus on relationships to, rather than representations of,
space and place.
Another artist whose work engages psychogeographic practice is Francis Alÿs, whose
project The Leak calls into question the authority invested in the boundaries delineated by the
conventional map. For The Leak, Alÿs punctured a can of blue paint and, followed by a
camcorder, took a serendipitous walk through a working-class neighborhood in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
By both starting from and returning to an area art gallery, Alÿs makes a statement about how
demarcation compartmentalizes our experience and dictates to us how we are expected to
experience particular places. By marking the area with a leaking can of paint, Alÿs’ work also

18

points to the ways in which our experiences defy these demarcations in the ways that they leak
onto one another. In this way The Leak both marks and calls into question the validity of that
marking. In the act of marking his movements through space, Alÿs reminds us that our bodies
press upon and shape the world that we inhabit.
A similar sentiment is echoed in Nedra Reynolds’ argument in Geographies of Writing
that it is important “to understand geographies as embodied and how the process of social
construction of space occurs at the level of the body, not just at the level of the city or street or
nation” (143). She goes on to explain that our material surroundings are not only seen, but felt,
made up of affective encounters, experiences and moods that reflexively shape how we come to
know the spaces we find ourselves in (147).
Psychogeographers have a keen understanding of the body’s potential to radically alter
didactive experiences of place. One technique used by psychogeographers is that of the derive,
literally translated into English as drift. The derive is the act of wandering through space guided
by feelings and affects rather than prescribed purposes. Such meanderings are no doubt
aesthetically pleasing and enjoyable, but also politically potent. The act of walking serves an
iterative function, much like that of speech, allowing us to speak back to prescribed ways of
going. In his work on walking in the city Michel de Certeau explains how walking functions as
an ennunciative act:
The ordinary practitioners of the city live “down below,” below the thresholds at which
visibility begins. They walk—an elementary form of this experience of the city; they are
walkers, Wandersmanner, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of the urban “text”
they write without being able to read it. These practitioners make use of spaces that
cannot be seen; their knowledge of them is as blind as that of lovers in each other’s arms.

19

The paths that correspond in this intertwining, unrecognized poems in which each body is
an element signed by many others, eludes legibility. It is as though the practices
organizing a bustling city were characterized by their blindness. The networks of these
moving, intersecting writings compose a manifold story that has neither author nor
spectator, shaped out of fragments of trajectories and alterations of spaces: in relation to
representations it remains daily and indefinitely other (92).
As de Certeau tells us, space is (un)shaped by the practices of the bodies that move
through and within it. Routine, inherited practices of bodily articulation within social and public
spaces direct individual bodies towards trajectories that “fit” these bodies to certain paths and not
others. In this alignment the body both reproduces the habitual path and reinscribes the
assumption that there is only one way to go.
4

There are, however, many ways of going through the world. In the act of walking we
can defy this discipline through an understanding of walking as a practice of enunciation that
allows the individual walker to make her own choices and follow her own path. In doing so the
walker gives her own shape to the landscape. She spatializes, undoing the coded, planned, and
specific functions of that which has been designed for her. In her journey the walker articulates
her own personal enactment of space, her meanderings weaving together a personal map of
memories, histories, and desires.
The derive is just one technique that purposefully challenges habitual and prescribed
ways of moving through the world, allowing us to discover unknown trajectories, unknow
known places, approach journeys without destinations, and challenge our own habits and
4

Walking here is to be understood broadly. To go for a walk does not necessitate the use of
one’s legs. There are many ways of moving through the world and many different kinds of
bodies that do so. An interesting and important psychogeographic project to be explored would
be the study of how “immobile” individuals construct derives of their own.
20

perceptions. But how can we apply this radical potential to the map in ways that both make this
enunciation more visible, and challenge trajectories that seek to orient our bodies towards
prescribed ways of being in the world? As we have seen, artist-cartographers challenge us to
consider the ways in which we might imagine maps differently, and how they might serve us as a
series of relational, spatial stories that privilege multiple perspectives and interpretations. Let us
now turn our attention towards the work of artists engaging with digital mapping tools, and
explore how they might help us re-imagine what it means to map.
Digital Possibilities
“Oh my head / It hurts my eyes / The world’s getting bigger as it shrinks in size”
– Donna the Buffalo
The map may still widely be conceived of as an objective tool; however, exciting new
work in digital mapping is helping us re-imagine what it means to map. One artist/cartographer
doing such work is Jeremy Wood, whose work explores GPS satellite technology as a method for
expressing “the politics and poetry of space” through GPS drawings (see examples at
http://www.gpsdrawing.com/info.html). Wood has been creating GPS drawings of his daily
movements and travels for over a decade, collecting a personal cartography that acts as a visual
journal documenting his unique spatial relationships and experiences. These maps make visible
Wood’s impressions upon, and spatialization of, the places he inhabits and moves through. They
reveal the ennunciative act of his movements, and challenge our perceptions and orientations
towards “the right way” of moving through the world.
Wood envisions his project as a way to introduce new approaches to travel, navigation,
and local awareness, stating that “Our journeys are shaped by the rules of the landscape. We
route along engineered solutions as defined by paths and boundaries that tweak and tamper with

21

our travels. At a time when it's getting harder to experience the feeling of being lost perhaps we
should try and stray away from recommended routes” (http://www.gpsdrawing.com/info.html).
GPS is not the only technology being explored by artists looking for alternatives to the
traditional map. Artist Christian Nold has developed a bio-mapping device that measures a
wearer’s Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which points to the wearer’s level of emotional arousal
in conjunction with their geographic location. The resulting data is collected into emotion maps
that “encourage personal reflection on the complex relationship between oneself, the
environment and ones fellow citizens” (http://www.emotionmap.net/map.htm).
One such project that Nold has helped created is the Greenwich Emotion Map
(http://emotionmap.net/map.htm), which involved weekly workshops with 80 local Greenwich
Peninsula residents. To create this communal map the GSRs of individual walkers were collected
and aggregated to create a visualized landscape of their emotional responses to specific routes
and locations within their community. As a group, individuals then visited the map, marking it
with annotations of their experiences. The end result was a map that reflected particular “arousal
hotspots” within the community, and which was distributed to participants, the local tourism
office, and local art venues.
Psychogeographer, artist, and software engineer kanarinka also creates digital projects
that seek to do justice to embodied experiences of space. Guided by the question of how to
measure fear in a post-9/11 society obsessed with security and preparedness, kanarinka used her
own breath as a tool for examining the body’s social and political relationship to space. It takes
154,000 breaths to evacuate Boston. The $827,500 Boston emergency evacuation system was
installed in 2006 to demonstrate the city’s preparedness for evacuating people in snowstorms,
hurricanes, infrastructure failures, fires and/or terrorist attacks.

22

In the spring of 2007, kanarinka, equipped with a microphone for recording the sound of
her breathing, ran the entire evacuation route of Boston in a series of public performances. By
documenting the Boston evacuation route via recorded breaths, kanarinka presents us with a
geography of insecurity that reflects the motives and feelings behind the construction of the route
in a much more visceral way. In addition to the public performances, kanarinka created a website
and podcast of breaths (http://www.ikatun.org/evacuateboston/?page_id=2), as well as a physical
sculpture project that serves as an archive of breaths.
Though the work of digital artist-cartographers does help us re-imagine more complex
ways of mapping, it is important to be skeptical not only of how we choose to express our
understanding of spatial experience (out of concern for reinscribing the inequalities present by
the conventional map), but also of the tools we engage to create those maps. Now that we have
explored the opportunities digital tools afford the effort to create better maps, let us now turn our
attention to the limitations posed by mapping in the digital age.
Digital Limitations
As the artists and cartographers mentioned above have shown us, there are ways of
creating more dynamic maps that challenge rote trajectories and understandings of spatial
experience. But before we blindly jump onto the digital bandwagon it is important, if we want to
be responsible users and circumspect cartographers, that we look critically at the limitations of
the technologies we use. One of the fundamental problems we face in trying to create digital
maps that do this kind of work is that the technologies available to us were not designed to
produce the kind of outcomes I have advocated for in this paper.
The Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software and applications that are largely
responsible for the majority of the digital maps we know and use were originally built with the

23

environmental sciences in mind. More recently, critical geographers working with GIS have
argued for a more humanist-oriented theoretical framework that hopes to push the technology in
new directions that will speak to the complexity, ambiguity, and multiplicity of our spatial
experiences. But as spatial humanities scholars David Bodenhamer, John Corrigan, and Trevor
Harris have argued, “the technology currently requires that humanists fit their questions, data,
and methods to the rigid parameters of the software, which implicitly are based on positivist
assumptions about the world” (ix). These limitations are due to the fact that GIS relies on
quantitative information for its representations and analysis, making GIS a stubborn tool for
qualitative humanities work. As Bodenhamer explains “GIS and its cousins are literal
technologies: they favor precise data that can be managed and parsed within a highly structured
tabular base. Ambiguity, uncertainty, nuance, and uniqueness, all embedded in the evidence
typically available to humanists, do not admit readily to such routinization” (23). It appears that
we are back to the problems of Descartes’ positivism that I spoke of in the beginning of this
paper. So what is to be done?
To assume that we can simply create a map that will evade the problems of positivism
and do full justice to the richness of our experiences is foolish if not irresponsible. We must
remember that representations of impressions and relationships are still representations. By
mapping the ephemeral we risk turning the radical potential of tactics into strategic tools. But
that does not mean that we should not still work towards creating a greater awareness of our
spatial experiences. Despite its obvious disadvantages, GIS does offer up some advantages that
can get us closer to building better maps. One way that GIS lends itself to a more complex
awareness of spatial experience is in its use of layers. As Bodenhamer explains:

24

Geographic information systems operate as a series of layers, each representing a
different theme and tied to a specific location on planet earth. These layers are
transparent, although the user can make any layer or combination of layers opaque while
leaving others visible. In the environmental sciences, for example, one layer might be
rivers and streams, another wetlands, a third floodplains, a fourth population, a fifth roads
and bridges, a sixth utility lines, and so forth” (27).
Put to the use of the arts and humanities, a layered map like the one described by
Bodenhamer could be used to emphasize a multiplicity of relationships to, rather than
representations of, spatial experiences. Taken together these layers would form a deep map,
allowing for each layer to be in conversation with the others. Though such a deep map would
allow for multiple elements to speak to each other and form a variety of unique relationships, a
deep map alone provides us with only a snapshot of a particular time anchored to a particular
place. But to use John Corrigan’s butterfly metaphor once again, our data is alive and cannot be
easily captured and pinned down. This is especially pertinent if we are trying to create mapping
projects that speak to our everyday spatial experiences. For this reason we must push to create
deep maps that are as dynamic, open, and accessible as possible if we desire to convey the
richness of our experiences.
To assume that we can create a “perfect” map that does full justice to all ranges of spatial
experience is both naïve and irresponsible, but that does not mean that we should not try to create
better, layered maps that speak in multiple voices. The following section is a rough attempt, a
thought experiment, in doing just that. What might a better map of Middle Road, the home of
Azura Beebeejaun, look like if it was more open to the dynamic interplay of diverse spatial

25

experiences? To create better maps, we must first imagine what a better map might look like, and
explore ways in which we might bring a better map to life.
Middle Road: An Exercise
It can be argued that Google Earth is a deep map. As I illustrated in the beginning of this
paper, Google’s mapping applications operate in layers. But as I also mentioned, people were
confused and frightened by the image of Azura Beebeejaun’s body because it jarred their
expectations of what they assumed to see in the space of the map. Images of people in these
maps capture our attention because they seem out of place. What this suggests is that these
bodies, with their own individual histories, practices and perceptions, are thought not worthy of
being a part of the map’s story.
So what might a more open, deep, and dynamic digital map look like? Google Earth does
currently allow for users to create “place marks” of particular locations with the option of
creating dialog boxes linked to these markers. These place marks can then be saved and shared
by users, allowing individuals to share their own particular spatial experiences. This is a move in
the right direction, but I think we can do better than that. Digital tools afford us with the
opportunity to link a variety of different media to the layers of the digital map. As Bodenhamer
explains, a digital deep map of heritage and culture could incorporate different media for a more
complex map:
Each artifact—a letter, memoir, photograph, painting, oral account, video, so forth—
would constitute a separate record anchored in time and space, thus allowing us to keep
them in relationship, and each layer would contain the unique view over time—the
dynamic memory—of an individual or a social unit. The layers could incorporate active
and passive cultural artifacts, such as memories generated by intentional recall as well as

26

memories left to us in some fixed or material form. (. . .) The layers of a deep map need
not be restricted to a known or discoverable documentary record but could be opened,
wiki-like, to anyone with a memory or artifact to contribute (27).
I would like us to imagine how different the Google map of Middle Road would look if it
was open to such diverse content. Layers of photos, oral accounts, audio, video, drawings, or
written anecdotes about daily life could be uploaded to the map, providing us with a deeper
awareness of life on Middle Road. Because the content would be open and offer users the ability
to create layers and layers of meaning, a variety of views could be represented, allowing for
many different perspectives and endless interpretations. In an open map as such, the ebb-and
flow of daily life could be better understood, not as descriptive representation, but as a diverse
conversation on our diverse spatial experiences.
This kind of layered digital map could operate in some ways like a modern day version of
the Wunderkammen, or cabinets of curiosity, that arose in mid-sixteenth century Europe as a
precursor to museums (see examples at http://www.sil.si.edu/Exhibitions/wonderbound/
crocodiles.htm). These “wonder rooms” were filled with objects, often from around the world,
that were yet to be classified by the natural sciences. These collections often featured an
amalgamation of a diverse array of man-made objects, animal preserves, works of art, and
illustrations that blurred the distinctions between science and superstition.
Before we begin exploring how a more open and dynamic digital map can be likened to
that of the Wunderkammen however, I think it is important to pause for a moment and recognize
that the political history surrounding how these artifacts were collected and used is deeply,
deeply, problematic. In borrowing from the model of the Wunderkammen I in no way mean to
suggest that we also take with us a legacy of pillaging from other cultures for our amusement or

27

enlightenment. That would, in effect, bring us back to the same problems posed by the
conventional map that I have outlined in this paper. But we can take up elements from the
Wunderkammen model and use them in more ethical and responsible ways.
The Wunderkammen model can help us build a better map if we look at it as way to
demonstrate relational rather than representational knowledge. What the Wunderkammen offers
us is an approach to how different data collected from a diverse number of resources can be
placed within a context that allows for multiple interpretations and meanings that might
otherwise remain unseen. We can use this as a way to imagine what a more open, reflexive, and
diverse digital map of Middle Road might look like. Because such a map would be open, and
allow users to upload their own content, people from across social divisions with varying
attitudes, beliefs, and perspectives could place their own personal accounts of their spatial
experiences alongside others whose content might conflict or diverge from their own. In this way
the layers of the map could function as a bricolage of spatial stories, allowing for photos, audio,
video, and written material that possess one particular meaning to a particular culture to be
placed alongside that which might challenge the ways in which users from other cultures view
the world. Visitors to such a map could then be presented with a variety of relational information
about a given location that would resist static representation.
Maps such as the one I have suggested here are more important than ever. At Google’s
annual tech conference in May 2013 the company unveiled a new Google Maps platform
(currently invite-only) that promises to build customizable maps for everyone. As Google Maps
states on its Lat/Long blog:
What if we told you that during your lifetime, Google could create millions of custom
maps...each one just for you? In the past, such a notion would have been unbelievable: a

28

map was just a map, and you got the same one for New York City, whether you were
searching for the Empire State Building or the coffee shop down the street. What if,
instead, you had a map that’s unique to you, always adapting to the task you want to
perform right this minute? (http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2013/05/meet-newgoogle-maps-map-for-every.html).
This kind of customization can make our lives easier, but maps designed to deliver
exactly what they think you want to see risk our ability to literally and figuratively broaden our
horizons. The Atlantic blogger Emily Badger sums up the threats customization makes to our
ability to do so quite nicely:
Customizable maps now raise the possibility of the filter bubble in our physical lives.
Google is touting "a mapping experience that helps you find places you never would have
thought to search for." But it will do this using what it knows from your search history,
the recommendations of your Google+ friends, or the expertise of review sites like Zagat.
The more you use the map, Google says, the more helpful it will become, and in a way
Google is acknowledging and embracing the inherent subjectivity of all maps. But doesn't
this really mean that you'll find "places you never would have thought to search for" that
are remarkably similar to the places you've already been?
(http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2013/05/potential-problem-personalizedgoogle-maps-we-may-never-know-what-were-not-seeing/5617/)
There is no denying the importance of the map as a tool for getting from one place to the
next or the usefulness of sites like Google Maps for locating goods and services where and when
we need them. But we are doing a disservice to ourselves and the communities we visit when the
maps we use render the everyday experiences of those places, and the lives that come to shape

29

them, invisible. This is not to say that customizable maps are in and of themselves inherently bad.
But they should not be the only kinds of spatial stories we tell.
With layered digital maps we have the ability to tell lots of different stories. We need
more stories and more layers of meaning to better express our own experiences and the
experiences of the lives that intersect with our own. The map, in and of itself, is not a perfect
technology. When we map we must consider the rhetoricity of the map, its history, and critically
engage the tools we use to map if we want to do justice to our spatial experiences. By dismissing
the map altogether we run the risk of having our spatial experience dictated to us by others.
This aim of this paper has been to shed light on how the map operates; but more to the
point, it has been an exploration of the ways in which we might re-imagine the map as a tool for
taking back how our own particular spatial experiences are expressed and disseminated. The job
of building better maps is challenging, and this paper has only briefly addressed the work that
needs to be done in order to create maps that address multiple perspectives and speak in many
voices. Without critically engaging the process and production of mapping on our own terms,
however, we run the risk of allowing the map to speak in our place, telling us, and others, what
those terms are.

30

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