How Maps Lie

This course explores how maps and mapping have
evolved in the age of digital technologies. The
key concepts of "critical cartography" and
"cognitive mapping" will be our guides, two
practices that allow us to see the relations of
power and the subjective interests that are
present within the act of mapmaking. Geographer
Mark Monmonier, from whom this class takes its
title, explains that a map is "the perfect symbol
of the state." Maps legitimize abstract concepts
of power through physical divisions of territory.
Ideologies are made "real" when you can point to
lines and see the borders of countries. Housing
and city policies are validated when seen up on a
map. To map something is to name it and claim it,
thus the history of mapmaking is also the history
of conquest and colonialism. In order to better
understand this, our investigation will cut across
time and historical moments to better understand
our present. Today, technological achievements
have allowed cartographers to map the world,
astronomers and physicists to map the universe,
and biologists to map DNA; in this respect mapping
suggests more than just an understanding of our
spatial relations to the earth, but also how we
view the knowledge in our minds and the cells in
our bodies. The internet will be crucial to the
story that we intend to trace out, both the
history of networked technologies as well as the
utopic imaginings of cyberspace. For this reason
the immense amount of informational mapping
conducted by Silicon Valley tech corporations will
never be far from our sights. As we make our way
through the histories of mapping and cartography
we will simultaneously look to critics, artists
and filmmakers who have turned to these same tools
to challenge or subvert the power of those who
first wielded them. A fundamental tension this
class seeks to understand will focus on what many
argue to be the dangerous effects that might exist
when these technologies are concentrated in a
small number of hands with the argument over the
emancipatory possibilities that might exist when
these technologies are in many hands.