A Hermeneutic Introduction to Maps

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/errs.2021.569

Keywords:

Configuration, Distanciation, Map, Orientation, Text.

Abstract

The aim of this article is to show how a Ricœurian approach to space and place is likely to raise issues about geography and even cartography, rather than just ontological topology in a Heideggerian fashion. Two steps will lead towards that conclusion: the first concerns the role of Ricœur’s long détour in the transition from a transcendental—therefore empty—notion of place to the concrete plurality of places, which turns them into matters for interpretation; the second shows how the task of interpreting of places implies distanciation and even objectification, through which they are constituted as objects of scientific and critical investigation. Maps will be introduced at that point as specific interpretations of places, halfway between text and images, between the subject and the object, and between science and art.

References

Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing. Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).

Federico Bellentani, “Landscape as Text,” in Concepts for Semiotics, eds Claudio Julio Rodríguez Higuera and Tyler James Bennett (Tartu: University of Tartu Press, 2013), 76-87.

Augustin Berque, Thinking through Landscape (London/New York: Routledge, 2013).

Marcel van den Broecke, Ortelius Atlas Maps. An Illustrated Guide (Leyde: Brill, 1996).

Lloyd Brown, The Story of Maps (Boston: Little Brown, 1949), 163.

Edward Casey, Getting Back into Place. Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-world (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993).

———, The Fate of Place. A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

———, Representing Place. Landscape Painting & Maps (Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).

Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels, “Spectacle and Text. Landscape Metaphors in Cultural Geography,” in James Duncan and David Ley (eds), Place/Culture/Representation (London/New York: Routledge, 1993), 57-77.

Denis Cosgrove, “Spectacle and Society. Landscape as Theater in Premodern and Postmodern Cities,” in Irving Rouse (ed.), Understanding Ordinary Landscapes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 99-110.

James Duncan, City as Text. The Politics of Landscape Interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

Evelyn Edson, Mapping Time and Space. How Medieval Mapmakers Viewed Their World (London: British Library Board, 1997).

Nicholas Entrikin, The Betweenness of Place. Toward a Geography of Modernity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).

Paolo Furia, “Understanding and Explanation. Ricœur and Human Geography,” Continental Philosophy Review, 2021, online version: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355109738_Understanding_and_explanation_Paul_Ricoeur_and_human_geography

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Garrett Barden and John Cumming (New York: Seabury Press, 1975).

Tonino Griffero and Marco Tedeschini (eds), “Introduction,” in Atmosphere and Aesthetics. A Plural Perspective (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).

Martin Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture,” in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 115-36.

Peter Jackson, Maps of Meaning. An Introduction to Cultural Geography (London/New York: Routledge 1989).

Bruce Janz (ed.), Place, Space and Hermeneutics (Cham: Springer, 2017).

Bruce Janz, “Is Place a Text?,” in Bruce Janz (ed.), Place, Space and Hermeneutics (Cham: Springer, 2017), 23-34.

Hayden Lorimer, “Cultural Geography. The Busyness of Being ‘More-than-representational,’” Progress in Human Geography, vol. 29/1 (2005), 83-94.

Jeff Malpas, Place and Experience. A Philosophical Topography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

———, Heidegger's Topology. Being, Place, World (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007).

Alberto Martinengo, “From the Linguistic Turn to the Pictorial Turn. Hermeneutics Facing the ‘Third Copernican Revolution,’” Proceedings of the European Society for Aesthetics, vol. 5 (2013), 302-12.

William John Thomas Mitchell, Picture Theory. Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

Abraham Olivier, “Understanding Place,” in Bruce Janz (ed.), Place, Space and Hermeneutics (Cham: Springer, 2017), 9-22.

John Pickles, A History of Spaces. Cartographic Reason, Mapping and the Geo-coded World (London/New York: Routledge, 2004).

Paul Ricœur, “The Model of the Text. Meaningful Action Considered as a Text,” New Literary History, vol. 5/1 (1973), 91-117.

———, Hermeneutics and the Social Sciences. Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation, ed. John Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

———, “Architecture and Narrativity,” Études ricœuriennes/Ricœur Studies, vol. 7/2 (2016), 31-42.

Joachim Ritter, “Landschaft. Zur Funktion des Ästhetischen in der modernen Gesellschaft,” in Subjektivität (Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp, 1974), 141-90.

Robert Sack, “Chorology and Spatial Analysis,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 64/3 (1974), 439-52.

Georg Simmel, “The Philosophy of Landscape,” Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 24/7-8 (2007), 20-9.

George Taylor, “Ricœur’s Philosophy of Imagination,” Journal of French Philosophy, vol. 16/1-2 (2006).

Matteo Vegetti, L’invenzione del globo. Spazio, pottere, communicazione nell’epoca dell’aria (Torino: Einaudi, 2017).

Christopher Watkin, Phenomenology or Deconstruction? (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009).

Maurice Yeates, An Introduction to Quantitative Analysis in Economic Geography (New York: McGraw Hill, 1968).

Downloads

Published

2021-12-15

Issue

Vol. 12 No. 2 (2021)

Section

Articles

License


Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

    1. The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.

    2. Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.

    3. The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons 4.0 License (Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works), or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
      1. Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
      2. Noncommercial—other users (including Publisher) may not use this Work for commercial purposes;
      3. No Derivative Works—other users (including Publisher) may not alter, transform, or build upon this Work,with the understanding that any of the above conditions can be waived with permission from the Author and that where the Work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.

    4. The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

    5. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a pre-publication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.

    6. Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.

    7. The Author represents and warrants that:

      1. the Work is the Author’s original work;
      2. the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
      3. the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
      4. the Work has not previously been published;
      5. the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
      6. the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
         
    8. The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.