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"Like a pencil in the hand of God, first traced with bleeding feet."¹

how can a map tell the story of a border? it describes its physical location but who decided its path? who traced out those lines, separating millions of people?

"This mimetic bondage has led to a tendency not only to look down on the maps of the past (with a dismissive scientific chauvinism) but also to regard the maps of other non-Western or early cultures (where the rules of mapmaking were different) as inferior to European maps."²

we see it as truth, but rarely reflect on whose truth that is? why is it that that is the truth - or the supposed truth?

• formless?
• social constructs?
• meaningless?
• valuable?
• real?
• hegemonic?

"Most journalistic maps are flawed because they are inaccurate, misleading, or biased."³

"Social structures are often disguised beneath an abstract, instrumental space, or incarcerated in the coordinates of computer mapping."⁴

1. Beryl Markham, West with the Night, New York: North Point Press, 1983.
2. J.B. Harley, "L'Histoire de la cartographie comme discours," Prefaces 5, December 1987–January 1988, pp. 228–230.
3. Sona Karentz Andrews, review of Cartography in the Media, The American Cartographer, 1989 (forthcoming).
4. J.B. Harley, Deconstructing the Map.

adrian robinson
last updated: december 2025