histcart

History Carnival

September's History Carnival highlights two entries on the History and Cartography syllabus. 

Walking the Berkshires,  hosts this month's Carnival. Strange Maps and John Krygier's Making Maps: DIY Cartography are front and center among the coverage of interesting history-related blogging sites. 

With apologies to students of Roberto Rossellini for decontextualizing a complex film...

In 1950, Roberto Rossellini directed The Flowers of St. Francis.  In the movie,  Brother Francis (not yet saint) directs one monk to cook for the other friars. The cook throws the brotherhood's entire available supply of food into a giant cauldron which appears to be the height and width of a small room, figuring that he'll make meals enough for them all to last a long time.  Needless to say, the results are apparently hard to digest.

So is Jeremy Black's book, Maps and Politics.  Maps and Politics is a synthesis of theses and discussions about the characteristics, creation, and uses of maps of all kinds, from fantasy maps to real-world representations all thrown into the pot without apparent structure or direction.  Leaving no approach to mapping unexplored (collective groan concerning analogy), Black moves discussion from J.B. Harley's postmodern historiographic focus on maps as discourses of hierarchical power to broaden the analysis to the subjectivity of maps as "product and recorder of human agency." (165)   Black is pointing to limitations he perceives in the theories of  J.B. Harley, to the portion of Harley's  work that discusses deliberate cartographic distortions promulgated to establish and enforce the ideology and rhetoric of governments and institutions.

This approach was only one among Harley's multi-faceted analyses of maps and map theory, their history and their uses, and how to analyze them; but Black emphasizes this aspect of Harley's work to the exclusion of the rest as the foundation for his own analysis of power relationships.   He does make the point that the subjectivity of maps reflects reciprocity among positions of power and diverse points of view in politics, society and culture, not just among empire-mongers; however, he hops around the world, across historical eras, among various cartographic representations and a plethora of analytical categories to do so. 

Which brings me back to Rossellini's St. Francis.  At the end of the movie, Brother Francis tells the monks to spin and spin until they are dizzy, then to go out and preach the gospel in the direction toward which they fall.  One old and simple brother continues to spin long after the others have toppled; Francis asks him repeatedly if he's dizzy yet.  "No," the monk replies again and again as he keeps spinning.  Finally amused and impatient, Brother Francis asks him if he sees anything.  "I see a butterfly."  "Then follow the butterfly," he is told. 

Maybe that works for monks,  but not for monographs. Jeremy Black would've probably done better to fall on a direction, stick with it, and explore more deeply rather than to flit through his subject.

Jeremy Black.  Maps and Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. (Yes, I read the wrong book.  The assignment was actually Jeremy Black's Maps and History, excellently commented upon in blogs of my classmates. Sigh.)

So, what is an historical atlas anyway?

It seems a fair question.  An amazing number of historical geographers (and historians interested in maps) begin books and articles with the basic question, "What is a map?" undoubtedly to clarify that it is a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary object:  image, document, artifact, artwork, a product of history, art, geography, and science, and must be read and researched in multiple contexts. Those contexts, include (but are not limited to) mapmakers themselves, both patrons, authors, and sometimes, intended audience. 

A second common question from historical geographers (not as strong a field in the United States as in Great Britain) is to ask why historians don't use maps more as research tools and as texts intrinsic to historical publications.  Atlases, it would seem, bridge the constraints which seem to exist between text-based historians and the artist, scientist, geographer, and art historian.  Immense collaboration and interdisciplinary skill seem intrinsic to creating the effective thematic atlas.

The new issue that might promote either greater interdisciplinary integration or compartmentalization may well be technology: map creation requires technological expertise and specialization.  What is the role of the gurus of GIS in comparison with cartographers using pre-GIS technology.  Who provides the input for various kinds of maps and with whom do mapmakers consult.  Are historians reluctant to combine maps with historical presentation because of technological discomfort?

One value judgment place on geographically-based maps is the accuracy of representation of physical space, a representation that satellite imagery and mapping software seems to have perfected.  Is this accuracy as complete as it seems and, if so, what sorts of conceptual parameters are placed on analyzing and interpreting contemporary maps?  In fact, how do other academic disciplines use and analyze maps?

And these paragraphs don't answer the question in the title, but to some extent this week's assignment does.

A Couple of Odds and Ends

The Washington Post describes an exhibit, Black Maps: Photographs by David Maisel.  His home page is more interesting, particularly Oblivion, the Lake Project, and the Mining Project.  Are these maps?

What would Gaddis say? A notice of a new class appeared on the bulletin board in Research I where the Center for History and New Media is located--the only humanities-based program in a science-oriented building.  The class is called Quantum Paradoxes.  Course description excerpts:

The most successful scientific theory in history--quantum mechanics--has to date defied intuition.  One reason for this is that it is generally believed that there is no objective reality in the quantum domain...This course offers a new intuitive approach to quantum mechanics.  We'll...discuss...a strange kind of entanglement between past and future (producing fundamentally new phenomenon such as the Cheshire Cat states...) or even stranger phenomenon such as a quantum time machine...

Familiar vocabulary; unfamiliar context.

Drowning in a Sea of Metaphors...

It has always struck me that iconic figures in non-scientific academic fields spend a great deal of time discussing whether their particular fields are art or science. 

Broadly speaking, science is the implementation of methodological activity and, as John Lewis Gaddis points out in The Landscape of History , even within disciplines irrefutably classified as scientific--geology, paleontology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, for example--the criteria or definitions of methodological approaches vary. 

I'm going to offer an equally broad definition of  historical study, paraphrasing Eric Hobsbawn: the process of bringing coherence to the past.  Coherence requires structure, logic, order, consistency, achievable through a variety of approaches, perspectives, and processes. Like science, historical research is a little inductive, a little deductive, a little empirical, but methodological nonetheless. The inter-disciplinary Venn diagram includes huge areas of overlap.

History, however, is essentially democratic; science, less so.  Every man a historian.  Not so, every man a physicist.  The internet has increased accessibility and the sense of public ownership of history and its tools, the raw materials of the historic record, and, it seems to me, commensurately increased the responsibility of professional practitioners to define and expose how they do what they do. In part, this is professional protectionism. In part, it ensures that coherent narratives define fractals of the past and inform the present.  Gaddis is right, I think.  Transparency lifts the burden of a constructed past if we know how and why a narration represents history as it does.

But what does this book have to do with cartography?  It's all in the metaphors (and even Gaddis couldn't restrain from throwing in one sports metaphor--rules of the game intersecting with Machiavelli, no less).  Cartography is science and art, and as Gaddis makes clear, both the science and the art of map production are representational, and historical maps are necessarily objects that must be interpreted. 

It gets tricky.  On the one hand, we can interpret many maps as the tools of power and empire; some as models of the control of man over nature; others as communication devices.  They are created by individuals, groups, printing presses, computers.  A list is endless, but I'm limiting it here to geographical reconstructions, not concept, imaginary, or abstract mapping.  The trick with these maps,too, is that they are usually intended to replicate physical reality on a usable scale.  The more accurate a map, the better.  But is a satellite view of the earth subject to the same interpretive categories as the first maps of new continents?  Do comparisons exist between the decontextualized cartography of the DC or London subway systems and detailed urban reconstructions? The categories of analysis also seem endless and tied to variables.

The Landscape of History applies to cartography on one level, simply because Gaddis advises historians (and perhaps scientists) to apply a contextualized, methodological approach to framing and answering the questions that evidence presents through flexible views of time, space and structure, and the willingness to  perform a few mental gymnastics.

John Lewis Gaddis. The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past. USA: Oxford University Press, 2002

 

 

Lorem ipsum

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean lobortis fermentum mi. Donec sed risus. Duis consectetuer leo euismod nulla. Donec nec diam vel nulla viverra lobortis. In erat felis, fermentum nonummy, pretium nec, tempor nec, dui. Nunc eu pede non sapien euismod vestibulum. In eget tortor. Phasellus sem nisl, lacinia sit amet, eleifend non, feugiat ac, turpis. Integer massa ipsum, eleifend non, dignissim eu, vestibulum non, nulla. Nunc et lectus euismod velit posuere mattis. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.